Exhibit poster - thank you Linda Doll

The poster for Inspired By draws on the image by Linda A. Doll. This is a detail of the full image with added text. Pixel2Editions is preparing the poster to hang at the exhibit. 

Theresa Jackson: From my very early days of studying photography, I’ve been interested in the space between 2 dimensions and 3 dimensions. A traditionally printed photo is a completely 2 dimensional representation of a 3 dimensional space. A drawing or a painting has some amount of 3 dimensionality because of the texture of applied material to a surface. In college I exposed my negatives through sheets of mylar that I applied brushed ink to. The print resulted with a brushed textured, but it was still completely 2 dimensional.

Theresa Jackson / Abraham Sings

I’ve always been inspired by the work of Matisse. I am fascinated with his ability to represent a 3 dimensional space 2 dimensionally with patterns. More recently I have fallen in love with the work of Gustav Klimpt. His ornately decorated portraits are the specific inspiration for my piece Abraham Sings.

Another view, another inspiration

We find our inspiration in many ways. Eric Johnson provides us with one of his transformations that take us -- if we let ourselves perceive beyond the ordinary trappings of word categories -- into a novel view of the 'ordinary' object we thought we first saw.

Eric Johnson / The Original

Eric Johnson / An Inspired By Way of Perceiving the Object

Joe Nalven:  Playing with the title of the upcoming PAG show, Inspired By, can you tell us what takes you from the ordinary to the extra-ordinary in your art?

Eric Johnson:  Lately I've been off on a tangent where I take a picture strictly for the shapes and lines, and then give it new life as a colorful offspring of sorts. For the surface texture and color, I was inspired by New Yorker Magazine covers, and for the transformation part, I was thinking about "transformers," and the way they transform from a collection of parts into a new coherent thing.

The original picture was taken in my sisters backyard. They have a large yard and stuff has accumulated out there. I'm intrigued by the idea that stuff they vow to clean up some day is providing me with raw material for making abstract pictures.

Welcome to the Photo Arts Group exhibit: Inspired by. We exhibit widely and most of our exhibits, past, present and future, are listed at our PAG website. 

Inspired by considers the thing, person, place, event - the whatever - that has engaged the photographers in this exhibit. 

Happy or sad? No matter.
Oddity or familiar? No matter.
Abstract or figurative? No matter. 

All of these permutations, and more. 

Curiously, at the core of each photographer's image, we might well find a common sensibility - about why we take photographs and then craft them into an object of art.

“You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.” Ansel Adams

Joe Nalven / Loaves and Fishes