January Issue 2000
32 Megs in Four Corners an Internet Exhibit by Tom Ogburn
With many artists on the web today, it is not surprising to note that there is a lot of good art to be seen. What is less common is to find a virtual exhibit being treated as though it were a physical venue for a show.
South Carolina native Tom Ogburn has mounted a digital opening, to run from Jan. 15th through Apr. 15th. The images are all taken with a digital camera that Ogburn uses in documenting his paintings and woodcuts. The location is on the web at (http://www.tomogburn.com). You'll have to look for the link to the show, which is entitled 32 Megs in Four Corners.
"I was not really thinking about doing a photographic sequence when we left for our trip," explains Ogburn. "I keep the camera around mainly to record a painting that I have finished, or for adding to the website." On entering New Mexico in mid-November, Ogburn pulled over to snap a photo of an old road sign for Route 66 outside Tucumcari. "I couldn't help it," he adds. "Route 66 was my favorite TV show when I was a kid. I was hooked on the road by the time I was out of junior high school."
Planning to keep the snapshot as a souvenir, Ogburn soon noticed an even stranger and more foreboding sight along the roadside. "A rancher had tied a dead coyote to a fence post, obviously as some sort of statement." Ogburn supposes that it was probably a message directed at environmentalists, as there is a great deal of disagreement between the two groups over the ranging coyotes. "At any rate, it made me think that maybe there was something in the works for the rest of the trip," he said, " and the idea hit me to go ahead and do a visual documentary of our travels through the four corners states."
The result is a surreal visual travelogue over
a period of 15 days. While first intending to just "map"
the views and sights along the way, Ogburn eventually began to
manipulate many of the raw images. When viewing this exhibit,
you get the sense of being in a strange little world, or that
you are somehow trapped in a surreal movie - possibly City
of Lost Children. Many of the photographs are crisp renditions
of small personal views while others are quite startling in the
use of color and digitized enhancements. " It has made me
wonder about what is around South Carolina, say just in a 40 mile
radius of my house," says Ogburn.
He and his wife Jocelyn live outside Bethune, SC. He's thinking
of beginning a series based on similar little vignettes from the
sandhills region of the state. Ogburn worked professionally as
a graphic designer and illustrator for years, both in South Carolina
and Washington state. He is very familiar with many of the programs
used by designers to publish advertisements, magazines, newspapers
and books. " I was so tired of using the computer commercially,"
he explains, " and now here we go. I have been using the
computer to do some image output for the paintings I do, but I've
never really honed in on digital imagery as fine art before."
Ogburn plans to promote the exhibit in a traditional
way using invitations, and also sending out e-mail invitations.
"I've been sending out e-mail reminders to exhibits now for
about three years," he mentions, " and it is a great
way to follow through on the printed invitations. My website has
only been up since Halloween, and the response has been really
nice. People seem to be using it more and more to scout out art
events."
If you want to be included on the e-mail reminders for his shows
and for the painters' group "Osmosis," which shows extensively
around the Carolinas, be sure to look for his online guest book.
It's another nice tradition that has successfully crossed over
onto the internet.
For further information, contact Tom Ogburn, e-mail at (tomogburn@yahoo.com), on the web at (http://www.tomogburn.com), or call at 803-432-2410.
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