Verve Gallery of Photography has announced Reverie & Rhapsody, an exhibition exploring “dreams, memory and time, and the rhythm of contemplation and mystery that is held within all three”. The three-person exhibition includes Verve gallery artists Susan Burnstine, Susan kae Grant and Beth Moon. The Opening Reception is held on Friday, August 28, 2009 from 5-7pm. There will be a Gallery Talk with Photographers Beth Moon and Susan Burnstine on Friday, August 28 from 3-5pm, and with Photographer Susan kae Grant and Composer Sarah Alexander on Saturday, August 29 from 2-4pm. The exhibition is on view through Saturday, November 7, 2009.

Press Release

Verve Gallery of Photography Presents a Group Exhibition by Three Gallery Artists

Santa Fe, NM (PRWEB) August 18, 2009—Verve Gallery of Photography is pleased to present Reverie & Rhapsody, an exhibition exploring dreams, memory and time, and the rhythm of contemplation and mystery that is held within all three. The three-person exhibition includes Verve gallery artists Susan Burnstine, Susan kae Grant and Beth Moon. The Opening Reception is held on Friday, August 28, 2009 from 5-7pm. There will be a Gallery Talk with Photographers Beth Moon and Susan Burnstine on Friday, August 28 from 3-5pm, and with Photographer Susan kae Grant and Composer Sarah Alexander on Saturday, August 29 from 2-4pm. The exhibition is on view through Saturday, November 7, 2009.

REVERIE & RHAPSODY
Susan Burnstine • Susan kae Grant • Beth Moon

Opening Reception: Friday, August 28, 2009, 5-7pm
Exhibit is on view through Saturday, November 7, 2009

Gallery Talk with Beth Moon and Susan Burnstine,
Friday, August 28, 3-4pm

Gallery Talk with Susan kae Grant and Sarah Alexander,
Saturday, August 29, 2-4pm

SUSAN BURNSTINE

Conceived as a trilogy, Susan Burnstine’s black and white medium format imagery is presented in three successive chapters, On Waking Dreams, Between and Flight, which explore three states of mind: dreaming (subconscious), sleeping (unconscious), and waking (conscious). This ongoing body of work explores the fleeting moments between dreaming and waking - the blurred seconds in which imagination and reality collide.

To create the surrealist, black and white imagery, she recalls a significant metaphor, contemplative moment or pathway into the unknown from a dream the night before. She then captures the fading memory on film that very same day using details from her own imaginings.

In order to be able to portray her visions entirely in-camera (rather than with post-processing manipulations), she created her own hand-made film cameras and lenses that are frequently unpredictable and technically challenging. These limitations allowed her to rely on instinct and intuition, both tools of which are used in dream interpretation as well.

Susan Burnstine is an award winning fine art and commercial photographer based in Los Angeles. Susan is represented in galleries across the country, widely published throughout the world and has also written for several photography magazines, including a monthly column for Black & White Photography (UK). She was nominated for the 2009 Santa Fe Prize for Photography and winner of numerous awards including B&W Magazine’s 2008 Portfolio Spotlight Award.

SUSAN KAE GRANT

Susan Kae Grant’s, Vision of an Insomniac: New Work from the Night Journey Series, embodies the collaboration of artistic creativity and sleep laboratory methodology in the exploration of REM sleep, dreams, memory, and the unconscious. The work is composed of a series of intriguingly haunting, large-scale, black and white images and sound that recreate the fragmented and multi sensorial experience of dreaming.

Night Journey is a body of work based on the artist’s inquiry into the unconscious, which led her to work with sleep scientist, John Herman, at the sleep research laboratory of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. To access unconscious visual memory, Grant used herself as the subject and was digitally monitored and awakened from REM sleep and then interrogated by trained technicians. Grant used the tapes of these narrative interviews as inspiration to create the imagery for the series. The photographs are made of shadows from sets created in the studio.

The series now takes two different forms; a suite of lushly printed black & white prints which she will be exhibiting at Verve Gallery, and a room-size installation of 24, 4’x8’ digital murals printed on sheer chiffon fabric juxtaposed with a sound track of whispered phrases.

Visions on an Insomniac provides the most recent chapter to the on- going body of work that explores the mysterious space between illusion and reality and consists of images, electroacoustic sound and cast shadows. To create the sound piece for the gallery, Grant received a research grant to commission and collaborate with sound artist, Sarah Alexander. The work provides visitors entry into an imaginary world of whimsical creations that portray life on the lyrical and playful edge of balance and stability.

Susan Kae Grant received a B.S. in 1976 and a MFA in Photography and Book Arts in 1979 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a Professor and Head of the Photography & Bookmaking Program at Texas Woman’s University and teaches workshops annually at the International Center for Photography in New York City. She was the recipient of the “Crystal Apple Teaching Award” from the Society of Photographic Education in 2003 & 2005 and “The Excellence in Photographic Teaching Award” from the Santa Fe Center for Photography. Grant’s photography is in permanent collections of various national museums including the George Eastman House; the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; the J. Paul Getty Museum; the Victoria and Albert Museum; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Sarah Alexander is a University of North Texas graduate where she studied electronic composition at the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia (CEMI) under Butch Rovan. She has studied with Meredith Monk and members of her vocal ensemble in New York. She is a seasoned vocal and instrumental performer, having participated in U.S. tours and regional festivals as a dance accompanist. Her electroacoustic compositions have been performed in the U.S. and on European radio.

BETH MOON

Time, memory and nature are the central motifs that underlie the photographic imagery of Beth Moon. Her platinum palladium images reveal a magical and intuitive appreciation for the ways in which these elements define our understanding of man’s place in the universe.

In the Portraits of Time series, Moon has photographed ancient trees expressing their language, spirit and beauty. Moon records the symbolic groves of the giant sequoias in the morning mist, the Joshua trees in the hot desert sun, the majestic, sentinel-like Baobab trees, and the ancient yew - all of which are intricate and elegant in their simplicity of form. As our earth becomes increasingly crowded these symbolic trees will take on a greater significance reminding us, through their grandeur and age as they stand as the earth’s largest, living monuments, how essential they are to our psychology and how precious they are to the soul of the world.

Moon captures the strange balance between childhood innocence and the darker wisdom of nature in the project, Thy Kingdom Come. With a metaphoric language, these images examine the relationship between man, animal and earth. With child and animal the main subject of these images, Moon expresses that the children walk these meridians, living purely in the moment, embodying the unreflective consciousness of the animal.

Also included in the exhibition are images from Savage Garden, a series of evocative portraits of the intricately structured flesh-eating plants, which evoke the poetic sensibility of nature.

Although Beth was a fine art major, she is a self-taught photographer with interests in alternative printing processes. The majority of her work today employs the Mike Ware platinum printing method that she learned while living in England. Beth has exhibited widely in England, France and throughout the U.S. with solo shows in London, San Francisco and Chicago. She has won several awards including the Golden Light Award from the Maine Photographic Workshops and she been published widely in major photographic magazines.

Photo credits: Susan Burnstine: Within These Walls | Susan kae Grant: Balance, 2009 | Beth Moon: Three Figures, 2007

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