Eye Smack at Gallery 13 - September 2

Place: GALLERY 13

Event: Eye Smack featuring Polly Norman ‘Photographic abstraction through the looking glass.'

When: September 2 - October 9, 2009. Artist Reception: Friday Sept. 18, 2009 6-9PM.

Info: Polly Norman makes photographic works that invoke the early work of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray, who experimented with photographic processes at the inception of modern photography using a direct-image -to-print process called photograms. Polly Norman's work is a reflection of this history through her layering of image, use of light, and the dark room process. She is a tinkerer and experimentor who translates real time constructions into photographic images, employing the optical nature of glass, found objects, dark room printing techniques, and the manipulation of the silver gelatin print. She uses materials and light to their fullest capacity in the printing and finishing of her black and white abstracts. Normans' work is a combination of surrealistic landscape and painterly abstract. She strategically places pieces of translucent materials on the surface of the photographic paper at the moment of exposure, which is primary to the layering of photo print and photo gram, blended as a single work . In some cases translucent color, in the form of photo oils and pencil, are added to select works, which acts as a ‘filter' where color is applied, deepening the optical field of her abstractions. Polly Normans work can be described as surreal, optical, fluid, obtuse, impressionist, and transcendent, however description does not alter, in any way, the stroke of genius the artist exhibits in her convergence of photographic history technology, process, and style.

GALLERY 13