Winter Preview 2022
2022 @ Blue Sky Gallery – Preview of Winter Exhibitions
January
Jana Sophia Nolle intervenes as an artist as she brings together two contrasting worlds: the homes of the houseless of the streets of San Francisco and their neighboring counterparts in their well-to-do living rooms. Nolle gives visual life to this complex social and economic reality in Living Room: San Francisco and Berlin.
image © Jana Sophia Nolle
image © Jana Sophia Nolle
In Dear Friend, Kensuke Koike works with pre-existing vintage images or postcards, to create new images by cutting and pasting, and reassembling by hand. Koike’s “renewed” photographs challenge the viewer’s expectations with new associations that reveal humor, curiosity, absurdity, and beauty.
image © Kensuke Koike
image © Kensuke Koike
February
Ward Shortridge, who passed away in December 2019 at the age of 59, contributed a unique oeuvre to Portland’s photo scene. For the month of February, a memorial retrospective comes to Blue Sky. “The best photographs, like the best therapy, occur when I don’t talk too much, when I engage my subjects with unconditional acceptance and love, when I let go of my desire for a particular result and take my direction from the life that is presented to me,” said Ward of his photographic process.
image © Ward Shortridge
image © Ward Shortridge
March
The psychological nature of identity and family, heritage and belonging, is revealed in the work of Birthe Piontek. With the images of family, home, aging and loss, that make up Abendlied, we are encouraged to wonder: what is unique to a family, and what are the universal messages bound up in these spaces, experiences, and interactions?
image © Birthe Piontek
image © Birthe Piontek
In Dan Nelken’s, HeadStrong: Women of Rural Uganda, the artist explores his interest in the “outsider” both as a group and individual. In photographing the women of rural Uganda, he gives them a place of prominence and dignity and highlights their contributions in the face of a patriarchal society.
image © Dan Nelken
image © Dan Nelken