2020 Exhibitions
Naomi Savage
STRETCHING THE LIMITS OF PHOTOGRAPHY
October 1st - December 26th, 2020
Naomi Savage (1927-2005) was a highly innovative photographer, who regarded the darkroom as a laboratory where she could invent new and exciting techniques that began with photography but which expanded the capability of the medium to new and previously unexplored limits. She was the niece of Man Ray and studied with him for a brief period in Hollywood, California. It was he who taught her that photography had no boundaries. “The darkroom,” he told her, “was a place to make fearless tries at whatever images came to mind.” She followed this advice throughout her career, being the first to display metal-plate photoengravings (customarily used as a means by which to make prints) as finished works of art, thereby causing the very medium of photography to be redefined. She first showed her work in the 1950’s and 1960’s in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and was represented in the 1970’s to mid-1980’s by the prestigious gallery of Lee Witkin in New York City. Her work can be found in some of the most distinguished museums in the United States, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Princeton University Art Museum, and The Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona. When digital photography emerged in the 1990’s, Savage embraced it completely, considering it as a new and revolutionary means by which to engage in an even greater diversity of experimentation. The influence of Man ray appears throughout her work, both formally, thematically, and conceptually, as she fully adopted his position that art follows no rules and is without limitation, thereby, in the case of Naomi Savage, resulting in a range of works that stretched the limits of photography.
BlackWhite
ART FROM 1400BCE TO 2019
January 30th - April 30th, 2020
Milton Art Bank (MAB) is thrilled to present BLACK WHITE, an exhibition of artworks and objects spanning a wide range of mediums, genres, and historical periods. These works explore the many ways black and white are used in art. Black is the absence of visible light, while white contains all wavelengths of visible light. One draws in and absorbs while the other pushes out and repels. These two colors have been locked in binary opposition throughout history: Evil/Good; Dark/Light; Night/Day; Dirty/Clean. However, this belies the true nature of their relationship, for they are actually sympathetic companions, the one needing the other in order to find its fullest expression. For how can we ever truly know what is light without ever experiencing that which is dark?
There are innumerable ways in which artists have used black and white: formally, conceptually, metaphorically, politically, graphically, structurally. Some of the works on view are simply black, some simply white, while others mix the two colors to create striking ranges of gray. There are also works that are neither strictly black nor white, but rather use muted colors to portray an idea black and white, of opposition and pairing. In order to help the viewer better understand some of the larger ideas and motifs found in the works in BLACK WHITE, MAB has invited noted author and art critic Lance Esplund to peruse the exhibition and write about works he considers exemplary of how black and white can function in an artwork. His texts can be found throughout the gallery by the works they describe, and the viewer is invited to use them as their guide through the exhibition.
Evelyn Twitchell
FIELD NOTES
October 3rd, 2019 - January 11th, 2020
FIELD NOTES
In these abstract paintings, I am taking note—of both the natural landscape outside my studio and my own interior landscape. I paint what resonates, not what I see.
I want my paintings to have the effect of a song or a poem: to build and linger; to capture a glimpse or memory; to strike chords and speak to the qualities of things. Not the appearance of the yard or the river or the sky, but the experience of patterns or light or mood. To renew an awareness of a moment in nature…
Standing in a yard in July watching fireflies.
Driving past desolate cornfields in winter.
Blue light at dusk.
Bark.
The heavy light of August.
Soft, pink spring light before the trees get their first green leaves.
Hanging fog.
An undulating swarm.
-Evelyn Twitchell