Photography interview with Tony Levin

We asked Anthony Garone of Make Weird Music to interview Intaglio Editions artist Tony Levin in 2021 on his King Crimson Photogravure Print Collection, featuring images from the 1981 Discipline tour. Tony talked about his relationship with different members of King Crimson and how he’s been able to photograph from the stage for over 50 years.

Interviewer [00:00]: We are here with Tony Levin in his workshop/studio. And Tony is the basis from King Crimson, Peter Gabriel, and about a thousand other bands he’s played with everyone, just everyone. If you have 10 CDs, you have a CD with Tony Levin on it. So, we are here to talk about Tony’s new collection of photographic prints. It’s a King Crimson box set. What is this set of prints?

Tony Levin [00:32]: Well I’ve been playing bass a long, long time, pretty much since the earth cooled. And most of that time I’ve been taking photographs and I wouldn’t call myself a professional photographer, but that’s because I’m busy playing my music, but I got pretty seriously into it as early as the eighties. And I tried to focus on taking pictures of the bands that I was touring with King Crimson, Peter Gabriel, and others, and in this studio also. And sometime in this last couple of years, I put out a few books of those photos, by the way. And sometime in the last few years, I felt the need to take the best, what I felt feel are the best of those and present them to the public in a really high-quality way and get the best prints possible made from themIt’s been an interesting adventure choosing them and then collating them and having Jon Lybrook do the excellent, super-quality prints of them.

Interviewer [01:27]: Can you talk a little about your sort of interest in photography? Like, was it a hardware thing first or was it, did you see an artist that inspired you as a photographer that made you want to do it?

Tony Levin [01:40]: Interesting question. Always interested in photography as a lot of people are. And I kind of muddled around with it a lot of different cameras. I was very lucky that I went to Japan at an early age and this would be in the seventies and was able to get a high-quality Nikon back then when it was a very expensive item here in the states at a reasonable price in Japan, it was a very different economics situation in those days. And shooting film for those of us old enough to remember is a very different experience than shooting digitally on the road. And it was pretty problematic and tricky to shoot regular pictures on the road with bands and get them developed and see how they look, and then make the adjustments at other shows in other cities, in other countries. So, I got used to that, and experimented with it and tried different things. And occasionally I got lucky and got the pictures I wanted.

Interviewer [02:40]: Are you a full-frame shooter, you know, medium format? Like, what do you get in that level of Specifics?

Tony Levin [02:46]: I had a Mamiya RB 67 medium format, and I loved that camera. And I even lugged it around to take pictures. And I’m not talking about with the tripod I mean talking about while I’m playing the bass, picking up this big thing, and trying to shoot. Mostly, I did that with Peter Gabriel. I got some very good pictures which are in some of the books, but in the weeding down process for the pictures I’ve used for the collection those pictures didn’t make it for various reasons when you have, tens of thousands of pictures, and you’re going to get the best eight of them a lot has to go by the wayside.

Interviewer [03:23]: Can you talk about perhaps film versus digital, you know, as a photographer, do you feel like you know, some people say, oh, I only record music on tape, you know, and then there’s the pro tools crowd. They’re like, it doesn’t make a difference. Are you in that sort of a camp? Do you prefer one or the other?

Tony Levin [03:41]: I loved film and I love digital now. I made one of the biggest mistakes in my photographic career, the biggest mistake, switching to digital too early. So, there’s about five, six years of stuff that I’ve got, good photos but they’re not usable. They’re just too low quality because I switched to digital when it was very small. Yeah. So, I don’t have a preference, it was a wonderful process. I loved the smell of the darkroom and I loved that process. And even that smell brings me back to those years that I spent a lot of nights in my darkroom in New York City, my studio apartment, it wasn’t completely dark except at night. So, I would regularly nightly, I would spend the night developing pictures, and then sooner or later one would come out not looking right. And I would look out and realize the sun had come up and it was going through the studio apartment and just barely seeping into the kitchen, which I had curtained off with dark curtains. But it wasn’t enough. So, that was a great process, but so is Photoshop. And so is the digital world.

Interviewer [04:54]: And I imagine you’ve digitized your old film prints. But how many of them, like, were you select things, specific shots, or did you get everything digitized?

Tony Levin [05:06]: I did not get everything digitized, I have too many photos and I never cataloged them well, they are in one place actually here in the building we’re in. But for this, I went through a great number of them and I had already separated the ones that are better than others. And I digitized them as high quality as I could and got them ready for the job.

Interviewer [05:30]: What do you look for aesthetically, or perhaps there’s some other way that you look for a shot that you like, and are there photographers that have inspired you and your aesthetic sense?

Tony Levin [05:44]: There are photographers who have inspired me. I’m not going to name them. I’d have to go through my books to see, but I have a lot of books on photography. And I try to, as with any art, as with music you try to up your artistic sensibility by looking at the best stuff. And somehow having it seep into your sense, especially with format with photos. In my case, because most of the pictures I take, almost all of them are on the road with the same band night after night, you’re doing the same show, maybe different songs, but you’re in the same situation, different dressing rooms. Yes. But dressing rooms night after night, month after month, year after year, even the same dressing rooms. Oh, yes. Four different times I’ve taken pictures of that same guy in that same dressing room through the years. So, one looks for different things than the first time. I can’t really put into words, all the things I look for but I think after all these years, it’s safe to say that I have an eye on the light on everybody and what they’re doing and whether they’re laughing or whether they’re very serious. And if I just see a look, that’s right, I want to have my camera nearby so that I can capture it.

Interviewer [06:55]: The King Crimson photogravure box set: Tell us about it. And you know, what is in it?

Tony Levin [07:03]: Well, its eight photos, eight prints, very high quality. I can’t tell you all the details about the technical bit about the printing, but we can find that from John and very high quality, which I insisted for this, it’s really part of the work of a lifetime of photos on the road and tens of thousands of pictures of King Crimson on the road. And these are my favorites and for reasons, and to me, they tell a story and they each represent that I was lucky to be in that place at that time with a vantage point that other people don’t have from one stage or from backstage being in the band.

Interviewer [07:44]: You’ve been playing for 50 years, right?

Tony Levin [07:49]: Yes.

Interviewer [07:49]: And you know, there’s probably not…

Tony Levin [07:52]: And I’ve been playing well for five years.

Interviewer [07:56]: Yeah. There’s probably not another 50 years, you know, left to go. So, are you looking at this as like a way of, you know, producing some legacy type artwork, you know, something to pass on to the fans or, you know, how are you thinking about it?

Tony Levin [08:11]: Interesting question I don’t think like most guys and women, I know that I play with most musicians. I don’t really think about this in relation to the future. So, this is not the summing up of my career to me or however, I haven’t thought about what I’m going to do for the next book either. I just don’t think about that. When I look through the photos, I recently did a photo book of 250 of my pictures of all bands through the years, I was struck that I really have the chance to present to the public, a very high-quality collection of the images that I like the best. And so, I felt as you sometimes do with music, I felt like this needs to be shared. This needs to get out there. And if I don’t do it in, if this was in the lockdown year, I felt if I don’t do it this year, I’ll get busy touring and doing things that I really love to do and take less immersion and it won’t happen. So, I spent that year trying to get all of these boats together.

Interviewer [09:16]: For me when I’m writing music I’ll have a collection of songs that I’ve produced over the years and some stick around more than others. Is that kind of what happened with this collection? Did you have these photos in mind and at some point I’m going to release it or did you make a decision and just start going through the whole catalog and, oh yeah. There’s that one?

Tony Levin [09:36]: The ladder going through the whole catalog. I never was organized enough with my music or my photography to keep a record of, okay, these are the best. These are, these, and these and these I did have, I had them on, I think the negatives organized by tour and by year. So, it wasn’t that huge a job, but no, it involved going through them all and finding which ones resonated with me in that way, some of them, which were very good images to me and meaningful didn’t warrant, being among the prints, just didn’t warrant. Some of them were color and didn’t want to be in black and white. There were a whole lot of parameters and the ones that were there were plenty that was good. I could limit myself to eighty. It could have been 80 and we’d have a stack of photos to talk about. But I limited myself and, I feel good about the ones we chose.

Interviewer [10:29]: Did you go from 20 to 15 to 10, or did you go from 1 to 3 to, you know, 8 you know, when you were selecting these?

Tony Levin [10:37]: I think it was about 12 to 15 and the decisions on what’s practical for a collection, what I want the box set to look like, and this special custom box for the box set and things like that of course, I think many people will want the individual photo that they like the best and that’s fine. And that’s the way it should be. Yeah. So, the weeding down wasn’t that bad after the point where I headed down to 12 or so.

Interviewer [11:04]: Have you ever done an art show or a gallery of your photography?

Tony Levin [11:07]: I’ve had a few exhibitions through the years and I used to keep a box of the two exhibition sets of photos and I lost them. I lost both boxes. I have the feeling I sent them to be an exhibit somewhere and I forgot about it. And I never asked for them back. I think that’s what happened. I had one from the Woodstock festival, the second one, not the original one, just a wonderful set of prints from the audience in the mud and things like that. And that’s gone.

Interviewer [11:42]: Oh man, that’s tough. So, in your exhibitions, obviously, people know you for the bass and the stick, your music work. But how are people responding? Who doesn’t know anything about, you know, what you play?

Tony Levin [12:00]: I don’t know. I have not been to exhibitions of my photos.

Interviewer [12:04]: Okay.

Tony Levin [12:04]: What I hear a lot from is, are bands of the bands and the, of course, I put the photos on my website and on my web diary, right? My road diary and I have for many years. And I hear a lot of feedback that people love the photos, of course. And I’m probably happiest that I can finally offer it to them. Oh, you, maybe you wanted that photo on your wall. It’s nice to finally have that option. But I don’t really have too much experience of people seeing the photos, who don’t know the band or know me and what it is. I do musically.

Interviewer [12:36]: And for me, I don’t know, perhaps you’re like this, you’re an early adopter of technology, you know, you’re using digital cameras. I see you using a 360-degree camera?

Tony Levin [12:46]: Abusing it.

Interviewer [12:47]: Abusing it. And I’m curious, is this kind of like, maybe you get sick of looking at a screen and you just want to see these things on paper?

Tony Levin [13:00]: Oh, yes. I had mentioned before the tactile joy of having something that you can say, this is it, but also my life, my home, and my life are enriched by the very high-quality paintings and photos that I have on the wall. And so I have, I think, like most people, I have a high, I place a high value on the one picture that’s very special to you. And if it has a double meaning, because it, it, it involves a band that you’re a fan of, or a concert that you are at or something like that, then all the better.

Editioning New Art Prints of Vintage Photographs with the Legendary Tony Levin

Tony Levin and Jon Lybrook reviewing prints by Intaglio Editions in 2019

People sometimes wonder how an average King Crimson fan like me found himself a dream-gig working with legendary artist, Tony Levin editioning his vintage photography with him as signed, archive-quality prints. As someone who has been following the work of Tony Levin for decades, I ask myself the same thing. Especially now that the new Peter Gabriel album and tour, and official release of Tony’s vintage photo collection of Peter is nearly here! This print project has been years in-the-making. Decades, if you consider the photos themselves were made over 40 years ago!

Having grown up in the 1970s and 80s and studied photography, choral music and experimental filmmaking, I learned about King Crimson through college friends with ties to the music world, and Peter Gabriel through MTV. Tony’s artful influence on these bodies of work is testimony to his importance to modern music, and world culture as a whole. He is one of the most in-demand artists in the world.

Needless to say, I am excited to be working with Tony again. This time, on another set of editions of choice photos from his vintage art rock collection. His classic, film photography work of Peter Gabriel, King Crimson and other bands has been circulating in books, exhibitions, and across the internet for decades. To be able to work with the artist remotely during COVID to clean up and enhance these images for a definitive print collection of his hits has been rewarding, but a slow process, due to the work involved and the demands on Tony’s time.

I first met Tony before a King Crimson concert in 1995, along with drummer Bill Bruford, and again later, through friends I was webmaster for, California Guitar Trio. I also produced and managed a live concert webcast from the Boulder Theater with him in back in 2000. We stayed in touch over the years and then one night backstage at a Peter Gabriel/Sting concert, I suggested making prints for him to sell with me and my company, as an exclusive joint venture, and he agreed!

California Guitar Trio with Tony Levin rehearsing in Jon and Bonnie Lybrook's Living Room in 2000
California Guitar Trio with Tony Levin rehearsing in Jon and Bonnie Lybrook’s Living Room in 2000

There were many hurdles to get to this point with Tony’s projects, however. Lots of decisions to be made about editing changes, format, size, and style of print. Quality is the one thing neither of us are willing to compromise on, however. The museum-quality container we decided on for Tony’s full King Crimson photogravure print collection was an expensive decision, but one we stand behind. We had 25 made, 4 of which were given to the 4 members of the Discipline era of the band: Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Bill Bruford and Tony Levin.

King Crimson 8-print photogravure collection by Tony Levin
King Crimson 8-print photogravure collection by Tony Levin

Tony is a wonderful and thoughtful collaborator, as one might imagine, having worked with some of the best performers in the world for over 50 years,. The same was true of working with Adrian Belew, when we were fortunate to consult with him a number of years ago. it was great to learn both artists are good communicators, and have a clear knowledge of what they want to see in a print, and what their domain knowledge limitations are. This openness in the discussions gave us room to narrow down options, such as folios, layout, embossments, papers, and embellishments. Sadly the project we planned with Adrian never came to market, but it sure was a joy working directly with him for the time we did get to work together!

Tony has done most of the computer editing of his images in Photoshop himself, leaving the more mundane cleanup work to me, which I’m happy to do for this project. I’ve been enjoying his photography for over 20 years, after all. He has had certain requirements and constraints for each project, but has allowed me to provide business and creative input at every stage. Not that he always accepts the input, but once we have a plan in place, I can rest assured we will roll with it.

Due to people’s interest in these projects, we’ve been getting lots of feedback from social media in real time regarding changes we’ve made to this iconic collection of Peter Gabriel photographs, in particular. Fans have provided new insight on some of Tony’s photographs, such as the venues and dates where some of these legendary photographs were taken. Some of the artist’s notes about the photos stored with the original negatives were sometimes written hastily, or left undocumented. Such is the life of a rock and roll titan. Luckily his hundreds of thousands of fans help make up for any gaps in this kind of information.

For example, not all photographs work well as monochromatic, photogravure prints. For that reason I have also invested in professional Epson printers, allowing us to edition in high-resolution color. Inkjet prints are considerably more affordable and less time consuming to edition than traditional printing, so we have a range of print styles when working directly with the artists.

As a traditional printmaker and consultant in charge of editioning fine art prints by artists and other printmakers I often find myself incorporating art techniques and solutions I’ve found for my own work. Lending that direct experience to new projects sometimes helps my clients, by planning the work better, before editioning prints. The process of planning can be slow, but can ultimately provides a better-quality, long-lasting art for the artist and collector.

The Peter Gabriel Vintage Photo collection by Tony Levin officially ships May 18, 2023. Order your prints by visiting https://TonyLevinPrints.com.

Interested in editioning your work with traditional and contemporary printmaker Jon Lybrook of Intaglio Editions? We’ve been making custom, fine art prints for over 20 years. Tell us about your project and sign up for a free consultation here: https://shop.intaglioeditions.com/index.php?rp=/store/start-here-get-a-quote

The Creative Photography of Angela Faris Belt’s “Entropy”

Angela Faris Belt is a fine art photographer, author and educator who engages other artists involved in creative photography with her writing.  For her own photography, Angela uses a wide range of media to create conceptual images.  I had the opportunity to chat with Angela about her series “Entropy”, which started as the result of having to salvage her work from a computer crash.  The crash caused the scrambling a large number of her original digital photographs permanently, which she then proceeded to examine and curate for use in a show.

In a quick interview below, Angela answers eight questions about this series and her work in general.  The work is currently on display starting tonight at the Dairy Center for the Arts in Boulder, Colorado and runs through August 2015.

Grassland Ends by Angela Faris Belt

Grassland Ends by Angela Faris Belt

Your “Entropy” series seems on the surface to be the glorification of, and finding the beauty in, the results of the critical malfunctioning of a system storing your raw vision. Is that how you’d describe it?

AFB:  In many respects that’s right. My file system crashed while I was uploading images from a trip to the Great Sand Dunes. My hard drive was backed up, but that shoot was very important to me so I ran a recovery program to save it. Obviously the results weren’t as I’d hoped, and my first response was abject horror. But scrolling through the “recovered” files I realized something really unique and beautiful was happening, some kind of new landscapes that combined my own vision of the land with the digital language used to express it.

 

Dunes by Angela Faris Belt

Dunes by Angela Faris Belt

You’ve battled cancer and resulting physical difficulties for many years. Would you say this series is related to your body’s own malfunction and subsequent recovery?

AFB:  Wow, that’s the first time anyone’s made that connection. In fact I hadn’t even made it, so it definitely wasn’t conscious. But I do believe if you look closely at any artist’s work you’ll find parallels between its themes and the artist’s life experience. Our experiences form who we are; they influence our interests and guide our endeavors, so I think there is always an innate connection. In this case, disparate aspects of my life that I keep in discrete spaces on my hard drive became intermingled—my research and conceptual landscape images, contact sheets, demo images I use in teaching, and even personal snapshots and medical images like MRI’s and CT scans I’d saved. So the connection you mention between bodily and computer malfunction does emerge in several of the images, especially in the contact-sheet-looking images where the “inner workings” of a physical self juxtapose with the landscape.

 

Philosophically, I don’t really see the malfunction of a system (whether physical or digital) as wholly negative though; it’s part of the nature of things, and as such it helps to define the system of which it’s a part. Things we typically perceive as “mal-functioning” are at the same time “functioning” on some other level—even when we don’t like or understand it. That’s part of what worked for me in the recovered files.

Many of the pieces you selected seem to be of nature, but fragmented with repeating geometry characteristic of the digital world: static noise patterns, bifurcating triangles, and long horizontal lines segmenting your images and fractured iterations of your original photographs. What purpose does repetition of form serve in this series and art in general?

AFB:  A vast majority of the recovered files were a cacophony of static or repeated patterns with nothing else going on—no meaningful content whatsoever. But when that randomized data was interspersed with some recognizable content, the result offered up a bizarre sort of symmetry that held potential meaning. The repeated and mirrored content in many of the images made me think about how so many of our images of nature are variations on a theme. That is, if we follow a formula for making a good picture of, say, a waterfall, we can then make a good picture of any waterfall. In that way these images are essentially interchangeable. Almost anyone can envision it, because you’ve seen it a thousand times: cascading water + pristine land on each side + camera on a tripod + long shutter speed = pretty waterfall picture. The formula developed because it works to meet our expectations—our ideal of how a waterfall should look. But those pictures usually have nothing to do with the specific waterfall imaged, which further underscores our homogenized beliefs about waterfalls (or any type of landscape image).

Some of the images resemble contact sheets often used to proof a series of photos back when we shot film instead of digital. In spite of the avant-garde/techno feel of some of these images, there is a definite sense of your experience in traditional photography and attention to detail as well. What do you believe some of these compositions you’ve chosen from your recovered hard drive say about your relationship to photography as a whole?

AFB:  I’m part of the last generation of “born and bred” darkroom photographers who in graduate school began staring down the barrel of the digital photography age, and I for one wasn’t about to go willingly. During a conversation about it, my mentor, artist Joseph Grigely said, “Artists can’t be dependent on any particular medium or technology to make art.” I always remembered that, even though I thought I’d never adopt digital media. But years later as issues with my health developed, spending hours amidst darkroom chemistry aggravated them, and that sort-of forced my hand. So one day I got up, sold all of my camera and darkroom equipment, bought a digital camera and Photoshop, and never looked back.

 

I do think the influence of traditional darkroom practices is present many of these images, because that’s the tradition I came from and many of my digital working methods are a holdover. I champion the necessity of contact sheets, as my students can attest (or should I say protest). They allow us to look at the cumulative result of our work in a comparative space, to spend time going back and forth among several images. So even though I work digitally I still print contact sheets of my best images to use as an editing tool, and some of the images in Entropy that I found most interesting contain some of those elements—text, evenly spaced similar images, etc. In those images things that were once tangential—like file names and the variety of images on a single page—took on meaning. When you look at contact sheets you don’t think of them in terms of cumulative meaning…they’re just the best means of spending time with one’s work and deciphering what works within the context of all the images made.

 

I like the fact that even if the medium an artist uses isn’t intended to contribute to the work’s meaning, traces of it are always there. These contact-sheet-style images bring different aspects of that to the forefront. I intentionally chose files where the images they contained suggested meanings that would otherwise never be alluded to when seen in isolation or when viewing them as a contact sheet in the editing process.

X-Ray and Butterfly by Angela Faris Belt

X-Ray and Butterfly by Angela Faris Belt

You started this project with the goal of salvaging your work, but eventually gave in to accepting the random changes the recovery program and/or data corruption introduced. This formed a new context for your decision-making, and one could only assume, changed which images you chose to present. Some might call this the result of “happy accidents” or gifts from the universe. Is that how you see it?

AFB:  Well, the crash didn’t prevent me from printing and exhibiting any of my fine art images, since everything was backed up (with the exception of the Great Sand Dunes shoot, which only exists sporadically throughout Entropy). But the recovery program opened a window for the “ghost in the machine” to show itself, I responded to that. The whole thing reflects the lack of control we have over even the things we perceive as foregone conclusions. I suppose another bright side is that it allowed me to introduce some pretty landscape snapshots (my photographic guilty pleasure) because they were re-contextualized in conceptually interesting ways.

 

I love things like that—serendipity, happy accidents, random acts of kindness, and gifts from the Universe. Nature writer Annie Dillard says, “Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”  Gifts are different than expectations. I like to think of the universe as showering us with gifts; they’re just hard to recognize when we’re so busy trying to open an umbrella! As I looked through the files I recognized literally each one of my photographs (and some from artist tear sheets and students’ projects, which I deliberately omitted), and I just had to let go of what I had intended for some of them and welcome the breadth and depth of new meaning derived from the resulting images.

Has having to evaluate your original photographs transmogrified by a random technical failure changed how you photograph subjects now? If so, how?

AFB:  Oddly, no, but I think it’s because my work is always based on seeing something that’s already there, and translating it (using photographic language) for others to see and understand. In this case it’s changed my approach to making art in a broader sense by allowing me to examine the possibilities of using digital media itself to infuse meaning into the images. In the past I used historic/alternative photographic processes in my work, but when I switched to digital media I became rather photo-centric, meaning that I concentrated on the image as a singular construct. Now I’m beginning to experiment with layering images, and using Photoshop as a linguistic tool much as I would have used historic/alternative darkroom processes to add a “material” depth of meaning to the images. Nothing has come of this yet; I’m just experimenting with the tools.

The composition of photographs represents the state of mind of the photographer in many respects. Do the images you have chosen represent a mental state in general, or are they more of an intellectual statement than a visceral one?

AFB:  For me art is always a balance of both; if it’s visceral enough it sparks something in my intellect as well. I sat this entire folder of recovered files aside for several years; I knew there was something there, but the timing wasn’t right because I was working on other things. But all the while the images were affecting me, because I never forgot them. I think I needed to wait until I found space to “edit from” rather then “create” new images in order to make good decisions about these files, and to cull an appropriate representation of images from the tens of thousands. I found hundreds of images that were visually lovely but had nothing to offer in terms of broadening or deepening the concepts emerging in the work, and I found hundreds of conceptually fascinating images that were a visual cacophony; both kinds of images were omitted from final body of work. It’s how I relate to any art. Take music for instance: if I heard about a new innovative kind of music, but it sounds atrocious, then I’d have a hard time caring what it might have to offer intellectually or to the world of music in general.

Falling Rock by Angela Faris Belt

Falling Rock by Angela Faris Belt

What would you like people to take away from this series of work?

AFB:  For a time I lived just off the Blue Ridge Parkway in the North Carolina mountains. It was one of the most beautiful landscapes one could hope to live in, and I had a very nice neighbor not far away. Driving home early one particularly beautiful morning I saw her outside and I exclaimed, “Did you see that glorious sunrise?!” She responded, “Oh, you get used to it.” At that moment, I had heartfelt sympathy for her, and since then I realized that most of us grow numb even to the most spectacular landscape or natural event. We allow our perceptions to become too blunt to see the sublime in the familiar. It’s a shame, really, since the beauty we most often encounter is entwined in our everyday experience. Since that time I’ve referred to that kind of thinking as a kind of “poverty of spirit” that I consciously work never to succumb to.

 

I suppose I’d like people to think about the images they see, and to allow them to deepen their perceptions of their “everyday” landscape. I’d like people to recognize that the natural world is comprised of uniqueness rather than ubiquity, and that a generic photograph of a sunset is as limiting to our perception of an individual sunset’s transformative power as describing it with the simple word “sunset”. I also want the images to touch people as lovely landscapes in their own right, and remind them that through serendipity we can see the mystery underlying all things revealed.

Work from fine art photographer Angela Faris Belt‘s series “Entropy” is on display starting tonight at the Dairy Center for the Arts in Boulder.  The show runs through August.  Contact The Dairy for hours and directions.

Photogravure Artists Talk at Brookover Gallery

Over 40 people gathered for the photogravure talk at Brookover Gallery in Jackson

Over 40 people gathered for the photogravure talk by Jon Lybrook at Brookover Gallery in Jackson

Over 40 people gathered at the Brookover Gallery in Jackson, Wyoming this week to learn about modern techniques for producing handmade photogravure prints. Jon Lybrook of Intaglio Editions has printed nine editions for David Brookover so far with more scheduled for release in the summer. This spring David is going on an excursion to Iceland and Europe for over two months to travel and capture more amazing images of the natural world.

david-and-ascentionDavid has been photographing the great outdoors for over 40 years gaining an international reputation for technical and artistic excellence as a large format photographer using an 8×10″ view camera.  In recent years, he has moved to digital and has begun publishing his prints as photogravures on handmade Japanese gampi as well as heavier western papers from Italy and Germany.

Printmaker Jon Lybrook and Photographer David Brookover

Printmaker Jon Lybrook and Photographer David Brookover – February 17, 2014

Historically the collaboration between photogravure artists and the printmaker has been based on a tremendous amount of trust and goodwill. The artist must trust that the printmaker will make the correct technical decisions and the printmaker must trust the artist will make the best aesthetic decisions. The lines between what is technical and what is aesthetic are often blurred and so, sometimes the roles of artist and technician are reversed.

The talk was sponsored by the Teton Photography Group of Jackson and covered a brief technical explanation of the polymer photogravure plate and printmaking process followed by a show-and-tell of materials, papers, and techniques for printmaking.  Examples of chine colle, the technique of applying fine, colored papers onto a handmade print were shown as well as descriptions of how a typical intaglio plate is inked and printed on a press using dampened, fine art paper.  Jon Lybrook also showed examples of his own printed work, both photographic and non-figurative and those of other photogravure artists he has worked with.

Thermal Glide (2014)

Thermal Glide (2014) by David Brookover printed on handmade Japanese Gampi paper

Raw Gampi and Kozo

Gampi and Kozo, shown here in their raw forms are extremely tough fiber from which some of the best handmade asian papers are made.

 

Last standing from among the 40 people who atteneded the photogravure discussion.

David’s Gallery Assistant Katherine Cronin (far left) and other hard-core art and photography enthusiasts from the Teton Photography Group remain after the talk – February 17, 2014.

The Brookover Gallery

The Brookover Gallery in Jackson Wyoming is located at 125 North Cache Street, Jackson Wyoming and may be reached at 307-732-3988.  Call for hours and directions.

 

 

 

 

Abstract Paintings by Homare Ikeda at Lone Tree Arts Center thru November 10, 2013

"Jade" by Homare Ikeda

“Jade” by Homare Ikeda

A wide range of brilliant and colorful, abstract paintings by Denver artist Homare Ikeda is on display at the Lone Tree Art Center in South Denver through November 10, 2013.  “Lines in Space” is the second in a series of “Commissioners Choice” exhibits at the arts center.

Huge paintings fill the main lobby while more intimate and detailed works on paper and canvas line the administration areas of the building.  Ikeda is prolific, and the 30 plus pieces provide an robust sampling of his more recent work represented by the William Havu gallery in Denver.

Broad brush strokes juxtaposed with immaculate detail, a variety of imaginative textures, repeating marks, and thoughtful color combinations provide the foundation for much of the work. He has once said much of his inspiration comes from the idea of being witness to the earliest beginnings of life.  Microscopic forms such as paramecium and protozoan shaped figures are often a recurring theme in his work.

From his artist statement:

To me, painting has become a vehicle to travel in and out of the world of unknown. A blob of paints is daubed, scratched, scraped and painted one layer upon another. The thickly painted surface is the reminiscent of my journey into the heart of sea where all my reflections of life are imbued. The sea is the genesis of the original form of life. I begin my painting with a simple vision. The first stages are usually kept fluid and open. As the painting progresses, I keep adding or scraping the layers of paints. I see them as the metaphor of life. At a certain point in this process, the painting starts to take over my control.

Homare Ikeda was born on the island of Yoron, near Okinawa, Japan. He has lived, studied, and taught in the United States since 1978. He and his wife Mamiko Ikeda both currently teach at the Art Students League of Denver.

For further information on the exhibit, which runs until November 10, contact Lone Tree Arts Center at 720-509-1000 or visit www.LoneTreeArtsCenter.org

The lobby hours are 10am-4pm Monday through Friday and before and during scheduled performances.  Artwork is for sale by inquiring at the box office.

Invisible Museum and Denver’s Month of Printmaking (Mo’Print )

Recently we attended a arts fundraising event in Denver to raise money and awareness for what’s being called Mo’Print, or the Month of Printmaking.  The event was well-attended in spite of the rain and tornado warnings. Great food, wine, conversation, and a fine art print auction of work donated by supporting artists was included.  We also had the privilege of touring the house of Sue Canyon who has a large and intriguing art collection.

Mo’Print is a new, month-long, city-wide event to promote fine art printmaking in all its forms, but primarily traditional, hand-printed works on paper.  The idea is to have this event every other March, opposite from when the well-established, biennial “Month of Photography” festival occurs in Denver .

Guests having a great time at the Invisible Museum fundraiser in Denver

Guests having a great time at the Invisible Museum fundraiser in Denver

More event photos by Jon Lybrook.

The Invisible Museum, which sponsored the event, is a 501(c)3 non-profit who’s mission is “To facilitate projects in the visual arts that would not otherwise be imagined  proposed or completed.”

More information on Mo’Print Denver can be found here:  http://invisiblemuseum.org/MoPrint/