Bill Laing, S.J. Luke, Paul Barden and Phil Coleman, POV/Botaniques

An on-line exhibit presented by the Art Gallery at Linn-Benton Community College
https://www.linnbenton.edu/student-life/arts-and-performance/galleries/digital-exhibitions.php

October 14 through December 9, 2020

Gallery Talk on Zoom October 20th from 5 to 6pm
https://linnbenton.zoom.us/j/93335169122

Linn-Benton Community College
6500 SW Pacific Blvd.
Albany, Oregon 97321
541-917-4999
linnbenton.edu

“POV/botaniques” is an on-line exhibit featuring four perspectives on plant photography hosted by the Art Gallery at Linn-Benton Community College Oct. 14 through Dec. 31. Because the Albany campus is closed to events this term, the exhibit has moved on-line. It can be seen at https://www.linnbenton.edu/student-life/arts-and-performance/galleries/digital-exhibitions.php

The photographers, one from Arizona, one from Northern California and two from the Corvallis area, will take part in a Zoom gallery talk on Oct. 20 from 5-6 p.m.. The talk is open to the public at https://linnbenton.zoom.us/j/93335169122.

Each of the four photographers in the show take a different approach to their search for art within various forms of flora:

•Phil Coleman explores the hidden details deep within flowers through extreme closeup views that play with color and design. “The symmetry and frequent color contrasts, undoubtedly encoded in their genes, attract my eye,” says the Philomath photographer. “Most of the time, a macro lens combined with the merger of many images (focus stacking) let me show features that would be hard to capture in a single photo.”

•Stephanie Luke uses light and shadow to reveal surprisingly mysterious milieus in the natural surroundings of her suburban neighborhood of Cottonwood, Calif. “The search for inspiration is an on-going part of our journey as artists,” says Luke. “My hope is to always be flexible and open enough to realize when it appears. This group of images represents a sampling of what I discovered.”

•Bill Laing, who recently relocated from Corvallis to Oro Valley, Ariz., shares his fascination with the unexpected color and beauty of cacti in the Sonoran Desert around his new home. “I’ve tried to make images that are expressive and evocative through closeup attention to detail and revealing perspective,” explains Laing. “The trick is to slow down and see these plants for what they are—exquisite designs by nature, perfectly adapted to their harsh surroundings.”

•Paul Barden, who lives on a small farm outside Corvallis, is a multi-talented photographer who enjoys learning a variety of photographic processes. For this show Barden exhibits a selection of elegant, often brooding, still lifes made with his 5×7- and 8×10-inch wet-plate cameras, a technically demanding process that dates to the 19th century. After reading “The Secret Life of Plants” as a teenager, Barden says he came to think of our planet’s botanical inhabitants as being on par with our own lives: “complex, aware, and exquisitely responsive to their environments. From that moment on, I saw plant life differently, and my work has long celebrated these Children of The Soil.”