By Jeff Eason
This month at the Mazie Jones and Open Door galleries,
two artists with similar employment statuses exhibit work
that takes photography to completely new worlds. That, however,
is where the similarities end.
Artists Judy Humphrey and Elvin Hatch are both retired college
professors utilizing their newly found free time to explore
their art. Their work will be on display during February
at the galleries in the Jones House Community and Cultural
Center in downtown Boone. The Watauga Arts Council will
host an artists’ reception for the exhibits at the
Jones House on Friday, February 6 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. The
reception is part of this week’s First Friday Art Crawl,
sponsored by the Downtown Boone Development Association.
Judy Humphrey
“My exhibit is called Personal Refuge,” said
longtime Boone resident and former ASU art professor Judy
Humphrey. “It is all new works from the past year,
the result of a grant I received when I retired to investigate
Polaroid transfer methods.”
Elvin Hatch |
Judy Humphrey |
While most people think of Polaroids as the small square
photographs that develop in about two minutes, the ones
Humphrey used were slightly different with some being about
four times as large as conventional Polaroids. After receiving
her grant a few years ago, Humphrey discovered that Polaroid
was going to discontinue making the film. So she bought
800 pieces of Polaroid film from the remaining stock at
the company.
“When I learned they were no longer going to make the
film I bought plenty,” said Humphrey. “But it
was a little problematic because it does have a definite
shelf-life. For my uses, I prefer that the film is just
beyond its expiration date. My 800 sheets expired this month,
so I really have to get to work now.”
For her original art pieces, Humphrey takes photographs
using the Polaroid film and a primitive pinhole camera.
She then separates the positive image from the negative
image in the middle of the development process. She creates
her image by pressing the still-developing emulsion of the
negative on a prepared piece of paper and, using a brayer,
creating a permanent image.
“Part of my grant was to investigate pinhole technology
and Polaroid film, which is a marriage of the most ancient
kind of camera with a more recent film technology,”
said Humphrey. “It is ironic because the film is now
defunct. There’s no more.”
Humphrey’s new work is on display at the Open Door
Gallery on the second floor of the Jones House.
“My underlying concerns are always aesthetics,”
said Humphrey. “I’m really composition-oriented.
Composition is very important to me, even if someone looks
at it and has no idea what my theme might be, I want the
image to entertain the eye.”
Elvin Hatch
Artist Elvin Hatch is also a retired college professor,
but taught anthropology at the University of California
at Santa Barbara from 1967 to 2005. His new exhibit, Formation,
is on display in the Mazie Jones Gallery of the Jones House
this month.
The new exhibit features both early work of the artist going
back to 1957 plus newer works that he has created since
he retired.
“I am especially drawn toward compositions that express
tension or energy, such as organized chaos, the juxtaposition
of color, and asymmetry,” said Hatch. “What I’ve
tried to do here is give some sort of sense of the development
of my art—literally from my college days through to
several weeks ago.”
Most of Hatch’s new work consists of collage and photo
montage. They express his interest in color, composition
and anthropology, particularly that of small communities.
“I started doing anthropological research in western
North Carolina in 1996,” said Hatch. “I’ve
done research on small communities in small California farm
towns, in New Zealand ranch towns and then later in the
South. It’s an interesting triangulation. In the South
I realized that the mountains are more interesting than
the lowlands.”
Today, Hatch maintains his two homes in Santa Barbara and
Blowing Rock. As a child, he had a keen interest in art
and original attended Fresno State College with the intention
of getting a degree in art. He switched to studying anthropology
and eventually earned his PhD in the subject from UCLA.
“Since retiring, I now have the time to pursue both
anthropology and art,” said Hatch. “My new art
is collage and some of what they call photo montage. That’s
where you take a photograph or a set of photographs and
you mix them. You put them together so its neither fish
nor fowl. I also really like collage—taking shapes
and arranging them.”
For much of Hatch’s work, he utilizes new technologies
such as PhotoShop along with older collage techniques such
as scissors and glue.
“I like what happens when you take a photograph and
you give it a sharp edge and past it to another piece of
a photograph with a sharp edge.”
The Watauga Arts Council galleries are sponsored in part
by Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff and Grassroots Funds of the
North Carolina Arts Council. For more information, call
(828) 264-1789.
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