Vignettes at Castell Photography

Castell Photography is pleased to announce the opening of their newest exhibition,Vignettes, featuring photo-based works from artists Dan Estabrook, Sharon Hart, and Stacey Page on Friday, June 1st, from 6p.m. to 8p.m.. Dan Estabrook will also be giving an informal artist talk at the gallery on Saturday, June 2nd, at 4p.m.

Estabrook has been making contemporary art using a variety of 19th century photographic techniques for the past 20 years, most recently focusing on the earliest paper photographs - calotype negatives and salted paper prints - as sources for hand manipulation with paint and pencil. Estabrook, a modern master, has been exhibited widely and is represented by the Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago, Daniel Cooney Fine Art in New York, and Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta. Estabrook attended Harvard University, received his MFA from the University of Illinois and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Works exhibited will include Estabrook’s 9 Symptoms series in it’s entirety, as well a selection of work from his At Sea series. In Nine Symptoms, Estabrook tackles the emotions he has experienced falling in love, evoking old medical photographs to directly confront the passion, obsession, apprehension and excitement brought on by love, as well as its loss. The artist eloquently states “Using and emulating nineteenth-century printing techniques, and making visible the very physical materials of which photographs are made, I attempt to have seemingly anonymous photographs become highly personal objects. In these images a single repeated shape, a formation of fowers, or the patterns of dust and decay are almost legible texts, inscribed on the skin of paper, tin, and glass.”

Stacey Page, an artist currently living and working in Athens, Georgia, creates unique and charming one of a kind works using found photographs. Page adds embroidery to the discarded portraits, creating cunning narratives. The artist states, “The original photograph desires a specifc response. There are reoccurring hints of crowns, masks, mutations or developments. Themes and imagery based on status, avatar, identity, fashion, evolution, with the relationships and conficts of humankind.” When asked whether she was trying to add or hide something in the images, she simply said ”It is a resurrection, perhaps allowing a little fame to a discarded identity.” Page’s work has be included in multiple exhibitions in both the US and abroad, and she was chosen by Ariel Shanberg, executive director of the renowned Center for Photography at Woodstock, as the juror’s choice award winner at Castell Photography’s annual juried exhibition in the fall of 2011. Sharon Hart, a native of Washington DC, is a professor and working artist living in Kentucky. Hart earned her MFA from the University of North at Chapel Hill and her BFA from Maine College of Art. Works featured in this exhibition will include a selection of work from the artists’ mixed media series entitled Reveal, in which all work have been manipulated through the use of photomontage, the darkroom, as well as digital processes. Lastly, the pieces are reworked with traditional materials such as charcoal and paint in order to bring about a more complex, layered depth both formally and conceptually. The artist states, "This evolving body of work questions male and female cultural identities, interactions between humans and other animals, surveillance, mass media representations, and linguistic habits. I utilize often dark and occasionally humorous imagery that provokes a confrontation with critical social and political issues...The velvety, deep black that veils the pieces enhances and obscures. It also covers and conceals, just as the content of the work brings up issues that are often uncomfortable, sugar coated, or accepted as the status quo.”

Gallery Director Heidi Gruner states, “We are thrilled to exhibit this unique group of works from these three exceptionally talented artists. It's intriguing to see such a varied selection of imagery, tied together by the artists' use of subtle yet unforced narration, and by the use of physical manipulation by each artists' hand . All three have given us, the viewer, just enough information to get lost in these works, enough story to entice intrigue, just enough narrative to fnd ourselves somehow attached to these characters portrayed.”

The opening reception for Vignettes will be held on Friday, June 1st from 6p.m. to 8p.m, and will coincide with the Asheville Downtown Gallery Association's first art walk of the year. All three artists will be in attendance to meet guest, answer any questions, and enjoy the event. Specialty cocktails will be served, and there will be a live DJ to celebrate the evening. The show will remain on exhibit through June 30th. Estabrook’s informal artist talk, held at 4pm on the 2nd, is open to the public, artists, collectors, and enthusiasts, and all others are encouraged to attend.

For more information please contact the gallery.

Telephone: (828) 255 1188

Email: info@castellphotography.com

www.castellphotographygallery.com

2c Wilson Alley

Asheville, NC 28801