Continuum

Ever since the inception of a viable photographic technology in the early 19th century, fine artists utilizing the photographic medium have experienced widespread acceptance difficulties, not normally associated with historically, more traditional art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture. The pervasive attitude that photography, as a non "hand made" art form, was somehow inferior to other mediums did not fully begin to dissipate in the United States until the 1960's when high visibility artists such as Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg significantly blurred the lines between photography, painting and printmaking in their own art. During the sometimes intense cultural transition born of the 1960's so many artists found integrating photographic materials into their art such a powerful addition that the "artistic stigma" previously held by the art museums, art critics/reviewers, and art galleries was no longer a valid position to maintain. At that time large changes in the arts, and photography in particular, also occurred in the university systems across the United State when exceptional artists and educators like Robert Heinecken at UCLA and Todd Walker at California State University Northridge nurtured a new generation of artists integrating photographic materials and concepts into their imagery.

Forty years ago Robert von Sternberg glimpsed the enormous diversity of artistic photography in the greater Los Angeles area and while acting as a guest curator for the Downey Museum of Art in 1969 set out to create an exhibition, entitled "Continuum", that would illustrate that specific diversity within a continuum. This exhibition at the Sylvia White Gallery follows the trajectory of some of the original participants but also includes newer members that have also dedicated their lives to careers in art often as university educators and prominent artists using photographic materials to share their vision.

Lewis Baltz is an American photographer, Paris and Venice-based, and is a Professor in the School of Visual Arts, at the IUAV. He became influential as part of the "New Topography" movement of the late Seventies. Baltz realized a "counter aesthetics" by revealing with a dispassionate eye desolate landscapes and forgotten places. Baltz studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and received a Master of Fine Arts from Claremont Graduate Schoolin 1971. Currently Baltz works on information architecture day, exposing the crisis of technology. His works have been exhibited world-wide in museums such as The Museum of Modern Art Paris, Museum of Contemporary Art Helsinki, San Francisco MOMA, Los Angeles MOMA, and the Whitney Museum of American Art New York. Publications: The New Industrial Parks; San Quentin Point; Candlestick Point; Rule without Exception; Deaths in Newport; Politics of Bacteria, Docile Bodies, Ronde de Nuit.

Santa Barbara native Darryl Curran was raised in Port Hueneme and graduated from Ventura College (AA) and UCLA (BA and MA degrees in Art). His creative work has challenged the narrow definition of “photography” as he has experimented with the image making potential of the medium. Currently he employes 19th century printing techniques and camera less strategies such as photograms and “scanner as camera”. He was on the faculty of the Department of Art, California State University Fullerton, 1967 until his retirement in 2001. His work is included in permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY; The Grunwald Center for Graphic Art, UCLA/Hammer Museum; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the International Museum of Photography/George Eastman House, Rochester, NY, and others.

Robbert Flick is a Southern California artist who uses photography as his primary medium. Flick, a native of Holland, received a B.A. at the University of British Columbia and an M.A. and M.F.A. at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been exhibiting his photographs for over 30 years and his work has been shown and collected at numerous private and public venues both nationally and internationally. He has been the recipient of two NEA Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Flintridge Visual Artist Award and was a Getty Scholar at the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities. A 30 year retrospective of his work was held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2004 accompanied by a major Monograph “Robbert Flick; Trajectories” jointly published by LACMA and Steidl Verlag , Germany. His work is represented by Rose Gallery in Santa Monica and Robert Mann Gallery in New York. From 1976 until 2006 he headed the photography program at the University of Southern California Roski School of Fine Arts.

Susan Rankaitis is a visual artist whose works combine painting, drawing and photography. Her pieces often allude to questions relating to contemporary biological sciences. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she received her BFA degree in Painting from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana and her MFA in Art (Painting and Photography) from USC in 1977. Her solo exhibitions include the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Photographic Arts, Museum of Contemporary Photography, International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House and Center for Creative Photography. Ms Rankaitis received two artist's fellowships in photography from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as grants or fellowships from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, Graves, Djerassi, Borchard, Flintridge and Mellon Foundations. Her current pieces from the Introspection Series, unique combined media pieces on photographic paper, are part of her overall LIMBICWORK project, begin in 2005 and continue her investigation into the brain and emotion via the interplay between art and science. Ms. Rankaitis holds the Fletcher Jones Chair in Studio Art at Scripps College and is represented in New York by the Robert Mann Gallery.

Robert von Sternberg, born in Glendale, California (1939) graduated from California State University, Long Beach (BA, MA) and served as a Professor of Art at California State University, Northridge from 1971-2005. As an artist he has been a publicly exhibiting photographer for over 40 years. His work continues to reflect his personal philosophy regarding both the accidental and intentional interaction between humanity and selected elements of nature. von Sternbergs images are represented in numerous public collections including the following: Museum of Modern Art, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, International Museum of Photography, Rochester, New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

The late Robert Heinecken was a pioneer in the in practice of fine art photography in Southern California during the 1960’s. Most of his photographic work was “cameraless, ie., exploring “photograms," a method of exposing light sensitive materials to light through magazine, newspaper or mail-order catalog pages. He, along with Jerry McMillan and others, understood the potential of the photographic images as object, rather than document, and produced innovative “photo sculptures”, that were significant contributions to the exhibition, “Photography into Sculpture," organized and circulated by the Museum of Modern Art, 1970-72. He formed the Photography curriculum at UCLA’S Department of Art, and taught there until he retired in the early 1990’s. His work is in numerous permanent collections including:The Museum of Modern Art, NY;the International Museum of Photography/George Eastman House, Rochester;the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; University Art Museum, University of New Mexico. His archive is housed at The Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson.

Jo Ann Callis has worked primarily in photography and has lately also been making objects and paintings as well as photographs. All her work deals with interiors and domestic life, both psychologically and physically. Her works are always intentionally set up before shooting the picture, and sometimes are in a tableau. She is interested in common objects that resonate in our personal lives. Callis graduated from UCLA and has taught at Cal Arts for many years. She has been exhibiting work since 1975, both internationally and in this country. Her photographs are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and in San Francisco as well as LACMA, and MOCA in Los Angeles, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and The Center of Creative Photography in Tuscon, to name just a few. Most recently she has had a survey exhibition of her work at the J.Paul Getty Museum. The museum published a catalogue of her photographs titled “Woman Twirling.” She is represented by Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica.

Anthony Friedkin began photographing as a child. He started working in the darkroom at age eleven, processing and printing his own images. Since that time, which was in the early 1960's, he has accomplished a significant body of work. His photographs are included in major Museum collections: New York's Museum of Modern Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum and others. He is represented in numerous private collections as well. His photographs have been published in Japan, Russia, Europe, and many Fine Art magazines in America. A book of his work titled "TIMEKEEPER" was published in 2003. Friedkin uses his camera as a means of personal discovery. His full frame black & white photographs explore the many mysteries of moments in time. He creates his own distinctive exhibition prints in his darkroom. He says of his work " I believe in extraordinary photographs that draw you in and cannot be easily defined-celebrating perception and its many hidden layers of reality."

Jerry McMillan was born in Oklahoma in 1936 and came west after high school to Los Angeles with his childhood friends, Mason Williams and Ed Ruscha. McMillan attended Chouinard Art Institute and taught photography as a fine art at California State University Northridge and The Pasadena Art Center of Design. His unique sense of design combined with a powerful and innovative approach to utilizing materials has made him quite distinctive as an artist. McMillan has exhibited extensively internationally and examples of his art are found in many prestigious public collections such as: the Museum of Modern Art, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California, Fort Worth Art Museum. Texas, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California, and the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California.

Eileen Cowin is committed to a continuing investigation of the nature of narrative and the relationship between fiction and non-fiction. She is exploring ideas about chance, fate, memory and experience. This is revealed in a body of work which includes photographs, video, text and installations. Cowin has been exhibiting publicly for almost 40 years. Her work is in many public collections including The J.Paul Getty Museum and the Los Angeles Museum of Art.

Jane O'Neal, a Los Angeles resident, graduated from California State University, Fullerton Department of Art and has extensively exhibited her fine art photographs across the United States. Samples of her work are included in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Fogg Museum at Harvard University, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Center for Creative Photography in Tuscon, Arizona. O'Neals most recent work involves digitally captured botanical still life imagery utilizing a flatbed scanner and printed on archival papers.

Todd Walker was born in 1917 in Salt Lake City, Utah. He spent most of his working life in Los Angeles, graduating from Art Center in 1941. His influence as a major photographer developed during the 60's, as a teacher at UCLA, Art Center and California State University, Northridge. His professional work involved experimentation with the interaction of light sensitive materials and altered photo chemistry. During his lifetime, his work was exhibited widely in 58 solo exhibitions, including Museum of Science and Industry, Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester NY and the International Center for Photography in New York. He was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1983.

Please join us for an opening reception, , 3-5pm
Exhibition dates are January 6- February 13 , 2010
For more information, please call 805 643 8300 or email sylvia@sylviawhite.com.

Sylvia White Gallery
1783 East Main Street
Ventura, California 93001
Gallery Hours: Wednesday - Saturday Noon-5PM
805.643.8300
www.sylviawhite.com

Exhibition Review by Ray Zone