Online Exhibit
Online exhibit of artwork relating to grape growing and winemaking, or the Sonoma County agricultural lifestyle, curated by Alice Warnecke Sutro with artist interviews.
GOING TO ORIGIN
HARVEST PHOTO EXHIBit
My favorite photographer is Henri Cartier-Bresson. He captured humanity with candid street shots from the 1930s to the end of the last century. His photos toe the line between universal and personal in that aching way where you relate enough to feel empathy but have a safe distance to not feel overly implicated. You can emote on the subjects of his work with judgement, laughter and tears, and kid yourself that it’s about someone else, when in fact you know very well that it is about yourself, and every other human being. Artists who hold open the space between dualities have my rapt attention.
I became friends with photographer Brett Walker in 2014 when he was in residency next door to my home, at Chalk Hill Artist Residency at Warnecke Ranch. That was the year that Isabel was born, and Brett has made family portraits of us every year since then. He has also returned to the ranch regularly to shoot houses, landscapes and people doing things. Things like harvest. Vineyards and harvest can be shot in a way that is boringly bucolic and self congratulatory. I think that has it’s place, but it is also misleading. Mother Nature is mercurial, and the great repository of all opposing forces, cohabitating. What I see with Brett’s work is the courage to show the beauty alongside the mercurial. When Brett takes a picture, what is shown is a perfect shot, but somehow skewed. Skewed enough through framing, composition or frankly just the moment captured, that the mercurial undependable side of life is revealed through some cracks, apparent alongside the beautiful, stoic and dependable part of life. A balance between predictability and chaos. And such is how we farm, and how we live with nature.
I think this capacity really comes from within Brett, that it is perhaps studied, and honed, or maybe it is inadvertent. Most importantly, it is not fetishized, nor masked. Brett has a very personal point of view, it is in every one of his pictures, and I think it is invaluable to turn that type of eye onto harvest. Please note, I wrote these paragraphs before meeting with Brett for the conversation below. I had giddy anticipation to see where the conversation would go after revealing my very intimate opinion of his work to him. These types of conversations between artists and makers are what make my world go round. They go on for years and are sometimes verbal (over the phone or formal crits in the studio), or sometimes silent or gestural (in the field in the process of making or through the objects that were made).
My point with this exhibit is to bring you into the excitement of that conversation, with vines and grapes and wine as the main subject matter, which is our shared experience with SUTRO (yours and mine). I’ve also included shots that Brett took while documenting one of my art installations and a few of our family portraits over the years. A conversation is also a time when space is held open between dualities. Let’s pour a glass of wine in that space.
Prints available in 8x10 and 16x12 open edition artist proofs. Size is approximate, prints come signed and dated by the artist on the back. Custom and larger sizes available, please inquire. More of his work can be seen here.
Click on the images to expand the frame.
