PRESS RELEASE
OPENING RECEPTION:
JRB ART AT THE ELMS PRESENTS
“This Place We Have Become”
Barry Snidow and Shane and Sara Scribner
OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma---JRB Art at The Elms presents a solo exhibition of photography by Barry Snidow alongside a thematic exhibition with work by both Sara and Shane Scribner. These exhibitions open with a reception from 6:00 to 10:00 pm on Friday, November 6, 2015, during the Paseo’s First Friday Gallery Walk and continue through Sunday, November 29th.
November’s program provides three painterly depictions of time, with three very different modes of portrayal. Barry Snidow’s photographic prints, Shane Scribner’s paintings of brief quotidian moments, and Sara Scribner’s eternal women all combine the timeless with the distinctly dated. Snidow’s printing of earlier images using antique photographic processes creates a limbo for the viewer, while likewise Sara Scribner’s women hark seemingly simultaneously from today and the past. Shane Scribner’s paintings place each woman in a specific moment of her own, which becomes timeless for the viewer as we contemplate her thoughts. Together, these artists fill the gallery with varied artworks, all asking the viewer how we know where we are in time.
Barry Snidow’s current body of work explores the boundaries of time and medium by returning to one of the original photographic processes to create distinctively painterly photographs. For this show (his first at JRB Art at The Elms, having taught for 28 years at North Lake College) he used two antique photographic methods, cyanotype and gum bichromate, to fashion unique handmade works. Sifting through his images from the last ten years, Snidow kept in mind the goals of the photo secessionists and the abstract expressionists, picking the most painterly images from his oeuvre. Of the resulting body of photographic prints, all made within the last few months, he says he is “hoping to bring more attention to how things look rather than what they are.” In one work, the viewer peers into what seems like one of Edward Hopper’s paintings. Another’s palette and geometry is reminiscent of Native American textile weavings, but in fact shows an architectural building face. By returning to photography’s beginning, Snidow finds a color palette and a depth of contrast that allows him to bring our realities at once forward and backward in history, blending time and process to show us the painterly layer in between a photograph and its print.
Husband and wife Shane and Sara Scribner present “This Place We Have Become,” a joint exhibition based on mutual inspiration from the title’s theme. The couple met while studying at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, and have since made Oklahoma their home (Shane is a Tulsa native), where they work side by side at easels only 5 feet apart. Although they might share models and inspiration (and many things besides) their works stand apart as from two distinct individuals, and this is their first show for JRB Art at the Elms as a duo. In this body of work, Sara’s women find themselves in the midst of solitary moments, often in interaction with a profound animal. As the viewer comprehends each moment, they might realize that further basis in time is incalculable, as elements of their wardrobe or setting feel simultaneously contemporary and antique. Inspired by the beauty and strength of both women and wardrobe, Sara’s work shows such reverence for her subject that in beholding the paintings viewers are struck by each woman’s confidence. Not unlike Botticelli’s Primavera, 1477-1482 or his Birth of Venus, 1482-1485, her grand paintings can be seen as timeless allegories. Shane’s figures, also women, approach the female body from constantly shifting viewpoints, although the focus remains similar: typically nude, and brightly lit. His process with one painting pushes him towards a new outlook in the next, and so while ruminating on similar themes, each painting sits at a different depth from the subject, finds her in a different pose, a different mood. Like Sara, he paints each woman in a particular moment, but where Sara’s are about display, Shane’s are highly introverted. Many of his works for the show include water, drawing parallels to figures such as Ophelia, whose inner feelings, so ignored in her time, have provided inspiration for countless artists since. Although each moment might seem minute, Shane’s comfort with the feminine form allows his paintings to transmit an incredible depth of feeling and of movement, both physical and emotional – a fluid balance between reflection and what is to come. In their first joint exhibition, Sara and Shane explore feminine timelessness: Sara with various ephemera, and Shane in the absence of any.