Linda Devenow and Sandi O’Brien, The Light Beyond

September 19 – November 30, 2023
Reception & Gallery Talk on Wednesday October 11, 3-5pm

South Santiam Hall Gallery
Linn-Benton Community College
6500 Pacific Blvd SW
Albany, Oregon 97321
541-917-4999
https://www.linnbenton.edu/student-life/arts-and-performance/galleries/ssh-gallery.php
Open weekdays from 8am to 5pm

Two Eugene-area artists explore the surreal world of infrared photography in an exhibit this fall on Linn-Benton Community College’s Albany campus.

“The Light Beyond” features the work of photographers Linda Devenow and Sandi O’Brien.

A native of Michigan, Devenow came to Eugene 20 years ago with a strong background in commercial photography. She began exploring the infrared spectrum in 2018, first in black-and-white and more recently in color. Much of her work on display in the SSH Gallery focuses on eliciting color and emotion from landscape scenes that resemble oil and watercolor paintings, often flirting with abstraction.

O’Brien works primarily in black-and-white as she seeks out landscapes that “invite the viewer to step into the scene,” as she puts it. “In the last few years I have been enamored with infrared photography due to the other-worldliness and magical quality that I find I can’t get in a straight black-and-white or color photograph.” A retired mental health therapist, O’Brien lives in Creswell.

Both use digital cameras that have been converted to capture varying ranges of the infrared spectrum, which lies just beyond the visible range of light and is thus invisible to the human eye.