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March Issue 2004
Nature Art Gallery in Raleigh, NC, Features Works by Lawrence S. Earley and Diana Hooper Bloomfield
Through Mar. 28, 2004, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences' Nature Art Gallery, in Raleigh, NC, focuses on the beauty within the familiar in the exhibition, Photographic Landscapes: From the Piedmont to the Coast. The gallery will feature North Carolina landscapes as seen through the eyes of two Raleigh, photographers, Lawrence S. Earley and Diana Hooper Bloomfield.
"To be a landscape photographer from the North Carolina Piedmont is seemingly to be always looking elsewhere for photographic subject matter," said Earley. "We travel abroad, drive long hours to the mountains, paddle in coastal marshes and hike through open savannas, all to find that bright glint of a brand new landscape. And all, perhaps, to avoid looking at the unspectacular landscape in front of our everyday eyes." Although described by naturalist Michael Godfrey as a fairly boring landscape "plowed, paved, or in succession," Earley sees North Carolina's Piedmont as inviting, offering a rewarding mix of natural and domesticated areas. He enjoys moving through a landscape, taking a measure of it with his body as well as with his camera. What is ordinary to the casual viewer, Earley sees as "full of juxtapositions of streaming light and hooded shadows—hints of the transcendental in the guise of the every day."
A photographer for more than 30 years, Earley has documented the landscapes of the Southeast, with a particular interest in the natural communities of the Piedmont. Earley is the former editor of Wildlife in North Carolina magazine, and wrote more than 300 articles on the environment, natural history, North Carolina history and conservation. He has been a freelance writer for many regional and national magazines including Audubon, Nature Conservancy and National Parks. His book on the natural and cultural history of the longleaf pine ecosystem, Looking for Longleaf: The Fall and Rise of the American Forest, is scheduled for publication by UNC Press later this year.
During her youth, Diana Hooper Bloomfield spent summers on the North Carolina coast, where she fell in love with the desolate, end-of-the-world feeling of Bogue Banks, Cedar Island and Shackleford Banks. "As an adult, I value this ever-changing landscape even more," said Bloomfield. "It is that atmosphere and untouched beauty that I've tried to re-create."
Bloomfield uses older, "alternative," processes to capture an image, such as a pinhole camera - a simple wooden box with a pinhole for the aperture - and guesses at the exposures. "No viewfinder exists, so I can never be sure of what I'm getting on film," said Bloomfield. "I like this element of surprise and the images that emerge in the darkroom seem magical." She often develops her pinhole images through the 19th century processes of platinum/palladium and cyanotope. She brings out the negative through metal solutions hand-applied onto watercolor paper, complimenting the low-tech simplicity, beauty and magical nature of the pinhole image.
Bloomfield is an instructor with the Craft Center at NC State University and the Center of Documentary Studies at Duke University. An exhibiting photographer for more than 20 years, Bloomfield is a veteran of more than 50 solo, invitational and juried exhibits. She has received a United Arts Council of Raleigh/Wake County Regional Artist Project Grant and a New Jersey State Visual Art Fellowship. Her photographs are in the permanent collections of the NCSU School of Design, the Rocky Mount Art Center and the Hugh P. Morton Collection of Ravenscroft School.
Bloomfield has exhibited within the state at the Green Hill Center for NC Art, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art and the Center for Documentary Studies; and outside North Carolina at The Camera Club of New York, Philadelphia's Print Center and the Contemporary Crafts Gallery, Portland, OR.
The Nature Art Gallery, inside the Museum Store, hosts new exhibitions by Southern artists every eight weeks. All exhibited art is for sale. For a complete schedule of Nature Art Gallery exhibits, please visit (www.naturalsciences.org) or call the Museum Store at 919/733-7450, ext. 369.
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc. Copyright© 2004 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts Online, Copyright© 2004 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.