John Sexton Talk and Exhibition in Corvallis at Fairbanks Gallery

Paul — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:15:49 +0000

I enjoyed a week long printing workshop with John a few years ago where I learned many darkroom techniques that I continue to use today. He is a great printer and image maker and this show will be inspiring to all visual artists.

EXHIBITION, LECTURE, AND RECEPTION AT OSU
CORVALLIS, APRIL 6-29 – RECEPTION AND LECTURE APRIL 6

I am very pleased to announce that I will be having a retrospective exhibition of my photographs at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. This will be the “premier” installation of my traveling exhibition John Sexton: Thirty-Five Years of Photographs. The exhibition will run from April 6 through 29 in the beautiful Fairbanks Gallery at OSU. We are currently putting the finishing touches on this exhibition. I’m doing last minute work in the darkroom, and Anne and I are busy matting, framing, and crating the exhibition. There will be images from as early as 1973, along with some recently printed images from new negatives.

I will be presenting a lecture on Monday evening, April 6, at the LaSells Stewart Center at OSU, as part of the Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Program. The lecture will be at 7:00 pm. There will be an opening reception at 6:00 pm, prior to the lecture, and a book signing will follow the conclusion of the lecture. The reception and lecture are open to the public and the admission is free. Seating for the lecture is on a first come basis. Fairbanks Gallery and the Visiting Artists & Scholars Lecture Program are sponsored by the OSU Department of Art.

I look forward to seeing a number of friends and past workshop participants from the area on Monday, April 6. During my time on campus I will be visiting with OSU photography students.

Corvallis Fall Festival

Paul — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 07:08:56 +0000

Three other willamette valley photographers (Jon Muyskens, Andrew Yip, and Jeff Conley) and myself joined together to create a booth at the Corvallis Fall Festival. While we were accustom to showing our work at galleries, we knew little about participating in an outdoor arts festival. Our biggest challenge was to design and build the booth. There are many fancy ‘booth systems’ that artists can buy, however they are expensive and heavy, and we really didn’t know if we’d be doing this more than once. So we set off to Home Despot and priced lumber and potential wall covering materials.

We settled on a making panels 3 feet wide by 8 feet high framed out with 2′ x 2′s in a truss design. We then stretched thin gray outdoor carpet over the frames, stapling it in place. The panels can then be connected together on site to make a longer wall using bolts, washers, and butterfly wing nuts. This design worked very well in practice, was portable (the individual panels can easily fit in a small truck), light weight, and cost far less that commercial booth systems – though it’s likely not as durable as metal framed display walls.

Booth wall frames mocked up without the carpet. The L-shaped wall on the right is made up of four panel frames bolted together.

Here Jon and Andrew are working to stretch the gray outdoor carpet tightly over one of the panels. We found that numerous staples (about 2″ centers) were necessary to keep the carpet from sagging. We also put a few staples into the front face of each panel to hold the carpet tighter to the frames. If the staples are carefully placed in the grooves of the carpet they minimally mar the display surface.

Andrew and Jon are stretching and stapling the carpet on a panel.

Andrew and Jeff are finishing up a few last minute touches to the booth before show time.

A bad phone snap of some beautiful prints in our booth.

Two wonderful customers browsing our card wall

Because this was our first outdoor art festival show, this took a lot of effort to pull together. However now that we have our lightweight portable booth ready to go, we may show up at another festival somewhere on the west coast (especially after the economy has recovered a bit). If you stopped by our booth during the festival – thank you!

Zero Point » Shows

John Sexton Talk and Exhibition in Corvallis at Fairbanks Gallery

Corvallis Fall Festival