Creativity takes many forms. Performing artists use their bodies, writers elucidate thoughts and put them on paper, and visual artists take their tools to a blank canvas or light sensitive paper. Artists, passionate about their craft are compelled to create exposing the invisible and engaging us in thought, emotion and narrative. We celebrate the tools artists surround themselves with as we create a studio visit through the works of two photographic artists, Chris Rauschenberg and Meggan Gould.
The intimacy of the studio and beautiful chaos of making is a visual feast. Chris Rauschenberg’s series Studio Views fills the gallery with color and creativity. These large scale composites engage us in the details and connection to the art practice of Rauschenberg’s friends and colleagues. Meggan Gould explores the darkrooms of fellow photographers, exposing the tools of the medium used in darkness.
About Chris Rauschenberg
Christopher Rauschenberg was born in New York in 1951, has practiced photographic art since 1957, and has a B.A. in photography from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.
He has had 127 solo shows in eight countries on three continents. His work has also been featured in group shows in six more countries. Available monographs of his work include three books, twenty print-on-demand books and a deck of cards.
His work is held in the collections of 13 major museums.
In 1995, he organized a group of a dozen artists who joined him in a nine year long systematic photographic exploration and documentation of the city of Portland. (PortlandGridProject.com) His second group of a dozen artists completed a second nine year re-exploration and round four is now in progress.
In 1997 and 1998, he took three trips to Paris and rephotographed 500 of the images made of that city by Eugene Atget between 1890 and 1927. (LensCulture interview)
He is a co-founder and past president of Photolucida (a Portland photography festival formerly called Photo Americas). He is a co-founder, co-curator and Board Chairman of Blue Sky Gallery where, over the last 48 years, he has co-curated and co-produced 1024 exhibitions. He is a co-founder and current member of the co-op Nine Gallery. He’s edited and produced around 200 art and photography publications. In 2003, he was the Bonnie Bronson Fellow.
About Meggan Gould
Meggan Gould lives and works in the mountains outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she is a Professor of Art at the University of New Mexico. She received an MFA from the University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth, and a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her work has been exhibited widely in the United States and internationally, and is included in many private and corporate collections, as well as public collections including the DeCordova Museum, the New Mexico Museum of Art, Light Work, and the University of New Mexico Art Museum. Her multifaceted practice uses photography, writing, drawing, sculpture, and installation in an open-ended dissection of vision and photographic tools.
