Jack Long
October 20, 2017 – January 13, 2018
We are honored to open the 2017-18 Featured Member Exhibition with the celebrated art photographer Jack Long’s Liquid Art Photographs. Jack’s work crosses mysticism and science to create imagery that contrastingly both satisfies the senses and leave people scratching their heads. The word unique is not an hyperbole when it’s used to describe his word. Jack continues to challenge his creativity as well as the curiosity of the audience.
Artist Statement
My work is what I call Liquid Art Photography. I work with constructed apparatus and sets to create short lived sculptural liquid events. These events occur in just a fraction of a second and are captured with flash photography. The works are original in concept and completion.
My aim is to produce the image in a single capture. Digital composition is not used to produce even the most complex images. My primary goal is to create the most visually interesting and aesthetically pleasing images possible. While there is much serendipity and chaos, the concept of what I am trying to achieve is rigorously planned. The art is very much in the process of creating these images. A bit of performance, a dance with fluids, technology and photography. They become very temporary three-dimensional sculptures. Photography, through composition and lighting, are the only means to view these very brief events.
2017–18 Featured Member Exhibition selection juror
Each year, a juror selects four outstanding artists from the Annual Members Show to exhibit individually in their own Featured Member Exhibition. Each exhibition opens on Gallery Night and runs for about 10 weeks.
For the 2017-18 season of FME, we are honored to have Della Wells as the selections juror. Della and her distinguished work have been recognized locally and nationally, and collected privately and in public institutions. She may already have a place in the history books of self taught AND African-American artists, but still seem like she’s climbing that next peak, and then the one after that. Della has exhibited at WPCA, extensively, and curated significant exhibitions.
About Della
(from marciaweberartobjects.com)
Della Wells was born in 1951 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and is a self-taught artist. As a child, she made up stories and characters, many based on her mother’s recollections of growing up in North Carolina during the 1920’s, 1930’s and 1940’s. Wells used these stories to escape the madness of her mother’s mental illness and her father’s rage and eventually used them to inspire the collage art she creates today.
Wells feels strongly that “being a master of your spiritual self does not come until you understand from where you came from.” She incorporates her own folklore in her work which often has subtle symbols from the civil rights struggle.
Wells’ work has appeared in various publications including Self Taught, Outsider and Folk art Guide to American Artists, Locations and Resources by Betty-Carol Sellen and Cynthia J. Johnanson and the book, “Permission To Paint Please: A 150 Year History of African American Artists in Wisconsin” written by Evelyn Patricia Terry.
A play about her life, “Don’t Tell Me I Can’t Fly” was written for a performance at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D. C. and it was also presented in Wisconsin. Her work was also provided illustrations for a children’s book published by National Geographic and for another book to be published in 2016, “Electric Angel.”
Wells’ work is exhibited in Europe and throughout the U.S. in folk art and outsider galleries from coast to coast.
2017–18 Featured Member Exhibition artists and exhibition schedules
Jack Long
Oct. 20 – Jan. 6, 2018
Kathy Jo House
Jan. 19 – April 7, 2018
Rodney Mustelier
April 20 – July 7, 2018
Gary Warren Niebuhr
July 20 – Oct. 6, 2018
For info on the 2015-16 Featured Member Exhibition artists and jurors, click on image below.
