Unfettered Photographs in Carriage Barn Show

New Canaan, CT (Oct. 14, 1993) -- "Unfettered Photographs: Stretching Definitions," a special exhibition of some 90 works of art by 15 artists, opened at The Carriage Barn Gallery, Waveny Park, New Canaan, on Sunday, October 10, and runs through Sunday, October 31.

The show brings together artists who share a respect for photography, but whose art is neither limited to or defined by the photographic arts alone. The challenging exhibition has several large sculptural installations, including: Hegira, an eight-foot six-inch-high by twelve-foot-long construction of movable, painted photographic panels created by Linda Lindroth, of New Haven, and Windows, an eight-foot four-inch-tall "building" by Joseph Kugielsky, of Newtown, which features 51 windows of collaged photographic imagery.

"To many artists' eyes," said Helen Barnett, director of The Carriage Barn Gallery, who conceived of the show, "photography is more than a 'recording device,' it is a kind of visual poetry that expresses feelings, not just of how life or things commonly appear, or of what photographs should do or be."

"Some of the imagery has been created before or during the actual process of taking the photograph, while other alterations have been created during or after the darkroom process," explained John Cusano, the guest curator, who selected the artists and their work. "The means may be photography or photographic imagery, but the addition of a variety of original techniques and non-photographic ingredients by the artists fuels the creative process and leads to inspiring discoveries."

One of the emerging contemporary artists in the exhibition is Bridgeport native Thomas Mezzanotte, 40, of Trumbull, a recent recipient of a Connecticut Commission on the Arts Individual Artist's Award (only 20 were given in the entire state in all disciplines). The group includes M.I. Cake, of Farmington, a woman who began her art career eight years ago when she enrolled in the Hartford Art School at 72 years of age. A 1935 Swarthmore College graduate, she spent 33 years raising three children, and now, at 80, is perfecting her skill in collage.

The selected artists, represented in permanent museum collections in Europe and throughout the U.S., including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, exhibit widely and continue to win prestigious grants and awards. Also in the show: Eva Fuka, of Fairfield; Nancy Iddings, of Milford; Jan Murdock, of East Haven; Robert Calafiore, of New Britain; Phillip Fortune, of Hartford; Jon M. Eastman, of Hartford; Stuart Frolick, of Altadena, California (formerly of Greenwich); Stephen Brigidi, of Bristol, Rhode Island, and Esther Solondz, of Providence, RI; Silvia Taccani, of New York, and Stephen Tomasko, of Newark, Delaware.

Thomas Mezzanotte's first interest in photography was "in its ability to record." "I would shoot images of peeling paint and rusting metal and almost inevitably I would be disappointed," said the artist who had a solo show at Carriage Barn Gallery in 1990. "The physical presence of the original object which so attracted me in the first place had been lost in the translation." For Messanotte, this was "the starting point for new exploration." "In place of what had been lost," he said, "I discovered a sensual beauty inherent to photographic materials beyond their ability to record." Mezzanotte sees himself "as a painter whose pallet is filled with metal salts as with paint."

Nancy Iddings admits she's been tempted to call her work, "photo drawings," since it "lies in the realm between photography and drawing." "After all," she says, "photography is the documentation of light--whether it's reflected off a surface as in traditional photography or directly captured by light traces as in my work."

"The reality," Phillip Fortune says, "was that a single camera view couldn't convey all that I wanted in an image." For Kugielsky now, "the montaging of images" more accurately "coincides with life's layered experience." And for Lindroth: "Photography is seen as not merely a means to present 'a picture of something'; but, more often, the photograph is seen as a physical object."

"I always get perplexed when people ask me to describe my work," says Jon Eastman. His studio is in a 19th century axe factory on the Farmington River, where some of the buildings that make up the compound still remain empty and untouched since the last axe was manufactured in the late 1950's. "'I present photography in a sculptured manner,' is what I usually say," Eastman said. "Well, then, are you a photographer or a sculptor?" is the inevitable next question. Eastman's answer?-- "Either."

Meanwhile, Eastman's artistic purpose holds steady: "To rub a layer of dust off a [factory] window and peak into one of these cavernous rooms is what I'm translating in my work," he says. "The beauty of the foreboding; the mystery of the isolation." Eastman's concern remains with creating art, not with what to call it.

"After all," Cusano says, "the creative process is not about being fettered." If there is a theme to the show, Cusano concedes, "It just might be about going past restrictions, self or otherwise imposed, to create new meaning."

The exhibition, presented by the not-for-profit New Canaan Society for the Arts, is being sponsored by The Q Design Group Ltd., a Wilton graphic design house, in a unique first-time association for both organizations. The Carriage Barn Gallery, Waveny Park, 677 South Ave., New Canaan, is open Wednesday through Sunday, 1 to 5 pm. Admission is free. 203-972-1895.#