Preview of works Exhibited at Studio 239

Open House Weekend, May 21-23, 2010

Some of the allure of memory is that its imagery is just beyond our grasp; we get only hints and suggestions of detail, of space, of color.  The pinhole camera uniquely captures this pleasure, this sense of the eerie—precision eluding the viewer but the subjects, the color and light pull from what we felt was once seen.

These images of the Southern Vermont woods are made with a layering of technique.  They are first captured on film with a pinhole camera in 3 to 4-second, handheld exposures. The negatives are then scanned to a digital file and printed in both negative and positive formats on Fabriano Artistico papers. The texture of the Fabriano paper adds a sculptural quality—a depth as the light reflects more diffusely on the surface.

Experience the works up close:

- May 21-23, 2010 at Studio 239, Bayport, NY. Open House Weekend. Friday 6-9pm, Saturday & Sunday 10-3pm

- June 4, 2010 at First Friday, Philadelphia, PA. Friday 5-9 pm…Old City art district, see http://www.oldcityarts.org/start.html.

Note: For a discussion on the complexity of images, words, and music over time, see: www.philoctetes.org/Past_Programs/The_Lure_and_Blur_of_the_Real.

Have you ever tried Pinhole Photography? Would love to hear your comments and thoughts…

Below is one of the handheld, pinhole images of a wooden sculpture that I first worked up quickly at VCCA.  I later scanned the negatives for detail and toned them brown.  This image is 10 inches square, printed at Indian Hill Imageworks on Fabriano Artistico–14 x 17-inches.

Next Week:  Color, Color, Color in Vermont

I’ve just finished developing shots made with my Zero Image Pinhole during my stay at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst, Virginia.  I was able to develop the negatives using the coffee and vitamin C mix, Caffenol C, but didn’t have a scanner.  So these first looks at the negatives are worked up from digital shots on a light table–a way to keep up and running while on the road.

I used Fuji Acros 100 film and spot metered for the bright snow.  The radiating slats are partial angles of a wood sculpture that sits out in the field, across from the art studios here.  I shot them in late afternoon light and love the graphic effect but will see how they work up later in a scan.

White Sycamore, Sweet Briar College

Filed under: photography, Uncategorized Tagged: Caffenol C, Fuji Acros, pinhole photography, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts ]]> http://carolmcgorry.com/2010/02/28/from-the-field/feed/ 1 carolmcgorry slats1-b Slats 5 Slats3 slats6 Sycamore3 http://carolmcgorry.com/2010/02/06/snowfalls-at-vcca/ http://carolmcgorry.com/2010/02/06/snowfalls-at-vcca/#comments Sat, 06 Feb 2010 21:26:42 +0000 carolmcgorry http://carolmcgorry.com/?p=766 ]]>

Filed under: photography, Uncategorized Tagged: Virginia Center for the Creative Arts ]]> http://carolmcgorry.com/2010/02/06/snowfalls-at-vcca/feed/ 0 carolmcgorry Gate2VCCA Cabin5Vcca HorseVCCA http://carolmcgorry.com/2010/01/16/coffee-infusion/ http://carolmcgorry.com/2010/01/16/coffee-infusion/#comments Sun, 17 Jan 2010 01:48:49 +0000 carolmcgorry http://carolmcgorry.com/?p=731 ]]>

Wissahickon Creek, Fairmont Park, Philadelphia

Late Leaf Fall, Shelburne Farms, Vermont

Stop by Studio 239 in Bayport this Saturday, December 5th,  between 2 and 6 in the afternoon, to view new black and white prints made along the hillsides of Vermont and shot with my Zero Image, pinhole camera.   (See additional images here in Portfolio.)

The show will also feature the most recent prints from my Shetland Islands series–overlapping, panoramic images of cliffs and bays printed on Japanese Unryu and hung as scrolls; wavy, blue and green grasses, blowing in the ever present wind at Shetland on Canson Rag Photographique; and grainy, black and white pinhole shots of my great-grandmother’s croft.

Email me for directions: studio239@gmail.com.

The shot below, of Burra Voe in Northmavine, is printed on Washi Unryu; the natural swirls in the paper add to the ripples on the water’s surface, to the sense of constant movement in the bay off Yell Sound.

Burra Voe, Shetland Islands

Sheep.  Sheep.   Sheep.

They’re everywhere in Shetland—on the hillside, next to the road,     near the shore.

You see them in your dreams.

Next week, in Vermont with Stephen Schaub of Indian Hill Imageworks, I’ll be experimenting with an encaustic treatment of some Shetland images, layering prints with wax and—hopefully—burnishing in strands of raw fleece brought home from the isles.

Posted in photography, Uncategorized Tagged: Shetland Sheep ]]> http://carolmcgorry.com/2009/10/30/sheep-dreams/feed/ 2 carolmcgorry Sheep Dreams http://carolmcgorry.com/2009/03/28/meadow-croft/ http://carolmcgorry.com/2009/03/28/meadow-croft/#comments Sat, 28 Mar 2009 23:11:45 +0000 carolmcgorry http://carolmcgorry.com/?p=300 ]]>

We were just a few hours into spring last Friday morning, and yet had snowflakes.  Crazy winter on Long Island.  Snowstorms.  Cold.

I’ve been working these past months, piloting a couple of film cameras to work with in Shetland this May.  I don’t think I would otherwise have tortured myself, photographing in the frigid air, and the snow is sometimes so uninspiring.  So I stayed near home and ended up photographing, again and again at Meadow Croft, John E.Roosevelt’s one-time summer home in Sayville.

I’ve passed this spot many times-less than a mile from my home-and never really walked in, but one Sunday, my friend Carol asked me to meet her there, to stop in at the wood shack at the far end of the estate where Barney offers tastes of the Loughlin wines grown there.  I left sooner than Carol, to walk around and try out my Olympus XA and LOMO 35mm cameras.  I bought the 1979 Olympus for just $75 at an online auction and the LOMO new and am trying to decide which effects I want.  They both have good lenses and work quickly, although the XA has a coupled rangefinder for precision focus, whereas the LOMO is a scale focus and I have to estimate the distance in feet and set the lens, a bit wacky, but maybe I want this.  (For more on these cameras, see thefigitalrevolution.com.)

Before Carol showed up, I walked around the open fields in front of the Dutch Revival house and then back toward the two-story garage.  I was photographing the garage from a predictable distance-more than 20 feet-easy, infinity on both cameras.  But then I noticed that one of the windows on the otherwise locked garage was open, less than an inch.  I pushed the window up a bit, just enough to prop the XA and LOMO on the ledge and shoot into a room where the light fell obliquely onto a back wall.  I guessed at the distance and shot a few frames, but, by the time Carol came up beside me, my fingers were burning from the cold, even with gloves on, and I could no longer advance the film levers.

We walked to Barney’s shack which is warmed by a  wood-burning stove and then took our wine in plastic cups back up to the house to sit in the rockers on the porch…feet up on the rail…no one in view.  I went back to Meadow Croft all winter; even though it was so often cold, because it was eerie and mysterious and silent.  And last week I borrowed an Olympus XA-4–a later XA model that like the LOMO is scale focused but it has a 28mm lens–more in the frame and more depth of field.

Further test shots to follow.

Connie McGorry, St. James, NY

Guest Writer:  Constance McGorry, my mother, 90 this January.

Connie and my father, Gerard, were married for 61 years, prior to his death in 2002.  They parented eight children, and my mother is now grandmother to 19 and great-grandmother to 17.  Recently, we sat together at her home in St. James, and, rubbing her hands together, she said: My hands hurt everyday. While we were growing up in Bayside, Queens, she worked, at times, evenings at St. Mary’s Children’s Hospital and at Bayside Gardens Nursing Home.  Later, when we were all out working ourselves, she was a salesperson and then a benefits’ clerk at Gertz Department Store in Flushing. 

The pieces below are some of her thoughts about those hands that now hurt everyday.

Day

I always thought that no matter what your hands might have to do, where your hands might have to go, you could always wash them.

In the hospital, when they first bring your baby to you, you’re always curious to see if everything is okay.  You open the blanket to look and touch but they shiver.  So you wrap them back up, hold them, and then they quiet down.

One winter, four of our children came down with whooping cough at the same time.  They would have to eat between spasms to get some nourishment as they would otherwise choke while coughing.  I had to keep food at hand to give it to each one between coughing fits.  It was a four-ring circus that lasted for six weeks.  I was lucky to have four bunk beds to keep them in one bedroom, just off the kitchen, and these two hands to carry the chore out.

One day, on a trip to Rego Park with Mary holding onto the carriage, Carol in the carriage and Gerard on a seat across the carriage, we crossed 63^rd Drive when Mary let go of the carriage to run ahead just as a truck was racing around the corner.  I was able to grab her arm just in time to keep her from getting run over.

Night

At St Mary’s Children’s Hospital, I took care of the infants overnight, actually babies born pre-maturely.  They didn’t have two parents, an unwed mother or a father that left, and I bottle fed them, kept them dry, held them, and laid their clothes out.  My sons had a lot of comic books at home, and, one time, rather than throw them out, I brought them in.  When the morning came, and the children woke, I gave them the comic books.  One boy was so excited; he wanted to put his arms around me.  I thought he just wanted a hug, and so I stooped over but one of the nurse’s stopped him and said to me, “Back away.  He’s on his way to bite you.  He won’t kiss you; he bites instead.”

Then I worked nights at Bayside Gardens Nursing Home.  I remember one patient in particular who had a severe case of Parkinson’s.  On a Saturday evening after he had some company, his tremors acted up, and his muscles grew rigid.  He was in pain and couldn’t get to sleep and wasn’t able to get comfortable.  With the aid of a few small pillows, placed strategically behind his head, one under his legs and another under his feet, the nerves and muscles settled down and he was so happy to be able to get some rest.

For the incontinent patients, when I came on, I would turn them on their side, put a pillow and a rubber sheet at their back.  I figured it was good if you turned people, kept them on their side, then only one side gets wet.  It kept them from breaking down, because if you lay too long on a wet bed, are old and have poor circulation, you get bed sores.

The sores are like pudding.  I would take the sulfur powder, spread it on the sore and cover it with gauze and eventually it would heal.  But they’d have two or three.  A bedsore has an odor you can’t get out of your nose.  When I got home, I would take all the clothes that I wore that day and wash them, and my hands were so dry from the rubbing alcohol.

My daughter Mary remembers a morning when I came home from my night shift, around 7:30.  She says I told her that someone had died in my arms that night.  Apparently, I had held someone in the throes of death, and I had scratches on my hands and arms.  She says I asked her to stay home from high school that day to take care of the rest of the kids.  I don’t remember this, but usually people did die at night between 2 and 4 am.

One time, I was asked to go to Flushing Hospital to sit with a dying man. He had been a patient at the nursing home but they took him to the hospital…the truth is, they didn’t want him to die in the nursing home.  The man’s daughter had been at the hospital with her father for 24 hours and didn’t want to leave him.  I knew him, and he knew me.  The head of the nursing home called me and asked me if I would go sit with him in the hospital, and the daughter would trust me to sit with him and let her go home.  I was there four hours when he came out of a semi-coma and wanted a drink.  I went down to where they had the crushed ice, brought some back to him to moisten his lips, when he sat up and took his last breath.

I went down the hall to get a doctor to come in, and they pronounced him dead, but now I had to go home.  It was early in the morning, and I didn’t have any money with me for a taxi, so I had to walk to the bus terminal.  The Q13 to Bayside wasn’t running yet so I had to take the Little Neck bus which left me off on Northern Boulevard, to walk about 15 blocks along Bell Boulevard, home.

I was still in shock; it happened so quickly.

Up until you retire, your decisions are apparent.  You just keep doing what you’re doing.  Once you’re retired, you wake up and ask, what day is it, what month is it, what should I do today…you have to make decisions.

This week, my grandson James came running in and, from across the room, tossed me a Styrofoam cooler top.  I tried to catch it but it bounced, and I dropped it.  “Nice grip you have there,” he said.

Guest Writer:  Elizabeth Cone     Essayist, SUNY Colleague, Photographer

(for more essays by Elizabeth see http://chateaucone.blogspot.com)

On a tourist ferry boat on the way to a 12^th century abbey on a tiny island in the Firth of Forth, all green hills and grey water and silvery mist around us, a man with white hair and a friendly wide open face with bright blue eyes sits next to me, on the edge of the seat, as though he’s about to get up again, and he tells me this: “I want you to know you dinna have to worry. Whatever is troubling you will be settled and over by month’s end, all your troubles, darlin’, you’ll have no worries at all.” And there is that Scottish song in his voice, and something Celtic in the air around him–something old and pagan and knowing–so I try to smile and almost believe him.

My guidebook tells me that Inchcolm Abbey was founded by Augustinian priors in 1123, but it is one of those places that I think must have been sacred even before the abbey was built on it. Walking through the ruins I can smell burnt palm, like church on Ash Wednesday, and I think it’s somehow more than hundreds of years of ashes on foreheads and “Meménto, homo, quia pulvis es, et in púlverem revertéris.”  I feel something else here. It stirs my blood and all my senses. My fingertips tingle and my hair wants to stand on end, and there are all these spots of darkness with unexpected shafts of light from bared windows in thick stone walls, as if to remind the men who lived and worked and studied and prayed here of the existence of good and evil.

My father has answers to all the hard questions, answers provided by the Franciscan brothers who taught him all the way from first grade through college, and by the priests he has heard preach in the fifty years since. But I don’t think answers are what I want.

I don’t know if what I feel is holy or magic and mystery or faith or the leftover passion of people who believed in something or even whether those are different things. But I think that sort of passion, that fervor–it has to have been absorbed for centuries by the sea and the air and the stone, and it’s emitted now like something radioactive–the presence of ancient gods and beliefs and rituals older than anything we can imagine.

There seems something so suburban about churches at home with their accidents of location. I want a church that is built on an ancient and sacred Indian site, somewhere where pacts were made with spirits, where there were sacrifices under full moons, where ancient and barbaric rituals were conducted to honor forces beyond the reach of history. I think there are places that are holy–that are magic–where there are things present that are outside our ken.

It is the language of ruins, of the remains of stone circles and abbeys, of brochs and cairns, of naves, of cannon’s choirs, chancels and cloisters, of stone arches and transepts and arcades, the shapes and textures of stone and the geometry of rose windows, that tell me things.

Stone has a half-life. Invisible waves and particles at ancient, sacred sites-the essence of monks and holy men, of druids and of prophets, of chants and hymns sung countless times-are still emitted from the stone, long ago abandoned by the temporal institutions that built them, left to ruin and reclaimed by nymphs, spirits of nature, by Dionysus, the god of wine and the fertility of the earth, or by forces so far beyond our comprehension, our language, that all we can do is call them God.