It’s a moving visual narrative— a story with no particular beginning and no real end. These are vignettes, snippets of reality—just moments in the history of the city, but they tell a dramatic story.
Sally Canzoneri creates the drama. For instance, she takes an old photograph from a woman’s march in 1913, and a picture of women marching last year and combines them in a “lenticular.”
Lenticular pictures merge two images, presented in 3-dimentional pleats, so that you see one picture from one angle and a different one from another. It requires you to move past it, and, inevitably, you will repeat that several times—captivated by the effect and with the questions suggested by the contrasting appearances.
There is a fascination to it. She says, “They seem to engage people more than flat pieces side-by-side.”
There is also an art to it. By folding two images together, she is “playing with appearances.” The look of the whole piece from a distance is as important as each original picture itself. The basic considerations of composition, color and contrast are as important to the finished lenticular as the individual images.
Step back and they take on a more abstract, even cubist quality…or a sort of Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase look. You might be able to find all manner of references to art past and present because the basic demands of art haven’t changed all that much.
Sally Canzoneri grew up in rural Vermont and moved here in 1979. She received a B.A. from Bennington College `and a J.D. from the University of Illinois. She has been a city planner and a government attorney. She has had numerous exhibits and awards and can be seen through December at the Hill Center (see: At the Galleries).
www.sallycanzoneri.com
Jim Magner’s Thoughts on Art
The art of Sally Canzoneri (See Artist Profile) is about the power of memory and evolving ideas, but it’s also about the power of photography. Yes, photos trigger memories, but can they also implant them? Is it a portrait of your reality, or do you just imagine it to be?
When you look at one of Sally’s “lenticulars,” you automatically examine a time period. If you were alive in any portion of that time, the real story, your story begins. You think about what happened to the world, and to you, when all that was going on. And what happened before that first photo? How did we even get to that point?
When you look at pictures taken 100, or even 50 years apart, it’s like you’re physically moving through time. Can you imagine what a photo taken in the same spot 50 years from now would be like? When you do that, the photographs take on new meaning—the story takes on new power.
However, in any case, whatever happens next will just be another stop on the human behavioral continuum…and the human artistic continuum…where nothing is completely new and nothing is completely old.
Imagination is not only the essential core of art and what we call reality, there would be no art without it.
At the Galleries
Hill Center
921 Pennsylvania. Ave. SE
— Jan. 7
Alec Dubro was born in Brooklyn and raised in the 50s. He “grabbed on to” the 60s before that decade had a label. “Hearts in Atlantis” is mostly a black & white photographic record of the hip generation. He is now a writer and has lived on the Hill for 25 years.
Sally Canzoneri” (See Artist Profile) in “Then – And Now,” uses 3-D lenticulars to draw people into discussions of urban change “in a way my flat photos had not.” She is pairing “images of recent protests and marches with photographs of past demonstrations to get viewers to consider the relationship between these events…”
Cedric Baker balances his work between abstraction and realism in “Soul Searching…Transitions in Soul.” I see myself as a Soul Painter who bares all from within to my art.” “
JoEllen Murphy loves pastels for the way they capture light. In “The Vibrant Landscape,” she applies pastels to capture landscapes in a “painterly manner” rather than strive for traditional realism. The colors are more vibrant than oils and light becomes the subject.
Aziza Claudia Gibson-Hunter, “Playing to Win,” (see Artist Profile) proposes the essential questions of “…how one wins and why.” She uses iconic motifs and symbols, as well as dynamic compositions, to define the phrase, “playing to WIN.”
Cecelia Armellin, with “Wink on Asia,” is the first presentation of her project: “Planet.” She traveled in Asia for months with her camera to “grasp what my eye will feel.” She searches for the “close link between Man and Nature.”
Corner Store Arts
900 So Carolina Ave SE
– Nov. 10
WOMEN BY WOMEN, features some of the area’s prominent female artists to showcase their varied expressions of women: Kris Swanson, Ellen Cornett, Karen Cohen, Deborah Conn, Linda Buttons, Sally Brucker, Julie Dzikiewicz, Kara Hammond and Kay Fuller.
“Artists’ Choice”
Capitol Hill Arts Workshop
545 7th St. SE
Nov 13–Dec 5
Opening Reception: Sat. Nov. 17, 5-7.
The Capitol Hill Art League presents the Artists’ Choice Exhibit in the CHAW Galley. This is an unjuried, members only, exhibit. Expect a great variety of terrific art…and everything is for sale. You can meet and mingle with the artists at the opening reception on Nov. 17.
