By snoadmin
Photography dominates the student art galleries this week. Artwork from post-graduate Julie Caban, and other BFA photography students sets off a handful of abstract installations.
The “Ebb & Flow” of tides is the primary subject of the graduate work of Julie Caban. Caban focuses on the sport, and emphasizes the lack of control that a surfer has over the waves he or she eagerly seeks out.
As viewers enter, medium-sized square prints, mounted at different heights along the wall are displayed. The images on their own are not spectacular but have a warm and down-to-earth feeling. Some of the images are soft-focused and not color-balanced. Caban attributes that to her use of a lomographic camera, more specifically her Holga.
“You have less control of the outcome,” Caban said regarding the camera. She also said digital would have been too perfect. Further illustration of this point is evident in the artist’s arrangement of the pieces on the wall, which at a glance seems random and strange.
A series of large-scale prints on plywood panels explains the order in which the photo prints were mounted. According to a tide scale printed on the wall of the gallery, the prints are chronologically arranged by their corresponding tidal heights. The result is a document of a day of surfing in all of its grit and glory. Screen-printed wood panels were used to explain the photo print arrangement and to provide some variety of scale. The panels were actually waxed and ridden by Caban and her friends after a recommendation from her thesis committee.
To the other side of the plywood boards, is a 26-photo series that forms the letters of the alphabet.
“The pieces represent a desire to explore an all new typeface using some of the signs and code of surf culture,” Caban said.
Across the way in the large gallery, several students from the photography department explore the dynamics of family. Introspective pictures of family members, simple and sincere portraits of mothers, and some remixes of family tourist photos are on display.
Sharley Cotter’s work helped her delve further into her layered understanding of her family’s history. It is evident in her work that, even though she knew all of her subjects, she spent a great deal of time establishing rapport with her subjects to get the mood just right. A side profile view of a blonde woman on a bed with an out-of-focus person in the background is particularly haunting.
Near Cotter’s exhibit is the work of Mark Pearson. Pearson’s work melds actual family portraits with satellite digital imagery that has a meme-like pan appeal. The collages no longer represent accurate memories but have a new value in their hybridization of the sentimental and the digital.
In Elizabeth Bicher’s series of portraits of mothers offers a different and very sincere approach to family portraiture. Nature photography by Eric Herbranson is interestingly stylistic. An example would be the final exposure on the left end of the series that defies any simple explanation of technique, but is extremely rich with texture.
The weekly student art galleries run Sunday through Thursday from noon to 5 p.m. between the FA2 and FA3 buildings at Cal State Long Beach.
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