Lacus Plasticus | Ryan Zoghlin Artist Talk (Online)

We are thrilled to present an evening with creative artist Ryan Zoghlin. Join us online on June 18th at 7pm Eastern.

This conversation is free to all. Held online on our Zoom platform, for your safety and the safety of others, we will be asking you to register for the event. We will have a waiting list in case of a full house.

In support of his exhibition in our Atelier Gallery, Lacus Plasticus, we invite you to a conversation with Ryan Zoghlin. Known for his use of alternative photographic processes, Zoghlin has created a series blending science, technology and the environment building a fanciful series call Lacus Plasticus.

Many artists look to our surroundings to explore their creativity, and Zoghlin has found that inspiration off the shores of Lake Michigan. Repurposing plastics to create unique underwater environments using the light of the sun with the Photogram process, these one of a kind images tell the story of a natural habitat from unnatural sources.

Statement
For almost 40 years, I’ve been sailing off the beaches of Lake Michigan. As a kid and now a father with children, I’ve always loved the shore. As time has marched on, I’ve noticed the increase in plastics on the beach year after year. A few years ago, I started collecting and disposing of the plastic bits I would find. Now I collect plastic to create photogram photographs. The images depict plastic parts and pieces as underwater creatures. The pieces dramatize, for now, a fictitious state where plastics displace nature. I’ve been calling this series, “Lacus Plasticus”.

About Ryan Zoghlin –
My memory of a love for photography started early on. Using my father’s Pentax Spotmatic during a family road trip to Cape Canaveral, I clearly remember taking photographs of an early rocket sitting on its launch pad. By 14, I had my own darkroom and was very fortunate to have a very good photography department in my high school. This gave me the tools to move on to Rochester Institute of Technology, where I gained a solid technical background in photographic illustration. Wishing to explore photography as fine art and art in general, I moved on to study at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where I received a BFA in photography and sculpture in 1991.

My personal pursuits in photography have not waned through the years. Though my subject matter is varied, the intensity and thought put into each project is the same. While some work has been produced as digital prints from both color negatives and digital files, most of my work is done traditionally in a personal darkroom that I’ve maintained for the last 35 years. In the same time, I’ve used many alternative processes such as kallitypes, ambrotypes, cyanotypes, and orotones in my art. My work in orotones has been included in the Getty Conservation Institute’s Research on the Conservation of Photographs project.

My work has been a part of the Museum of Contemporary Photography’s Midwest Photographers Project in Chicago and is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Art in Houston, TX. A recipient of an Illinois Art Council Fellowship and a Buhl Foundation Grant, I have also been featured in publications including Black & White Magazine, Photography Quarterly, Diffusion Magazine, Camera Arts Magazine and Photo District News, as well as many others. I am currently represented by Etherton Gallery in Tucson, AZ and Obscura Gallery in Santa Fe, NM