Arts & Leisure
Photography and sculpture at Portsmouth's Banks Gallery
By Rose Safran
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. - At the time of my first visit to Portsmouth's Banks Gallery, there were no special exhibits and the walls of several floors in the gallery were floor-to-ceiling filled by so many contemporary artists that I found it impossible to evaluate the immense number of holdings.Handily located on State Street in Portsmouth, The Banks Gallery shows and sells art of contemporary area artists such as York sculptor Sumner Winebaum, who alerted me about the interesting area art there.
More recently, I revisited the gallery where owner Jamie La Fleur has mounted "Platinum and Bronze" a special exhibition combining the work of photographer Carl Austin Hyatt who has maintained a studio at Portsmouth's Button Factory for years with bronze sculptures by Sumner Winebaum.
We saw many of Winebaum's newest bronzes last year when we covered an exhibit at Concord's Anderson-Soule Gallery. (See The Independent, Oct. 6, 2006.)
These sculptures deal with the wide range of expression found through the many twists and turns, functions, arrangements available to an artist through the versatility of the human hand, including the incorporation of other objects such as nests and figures including at least one surreal soul precariously balanced at the tip of a single forefinger. Over one dozen bronze sculptures involving movement and balance are on view; their telltale names include Dive, Bird in Hand, Food, Hands With Shell, High Wire, Nest, Thumbs Up and Swimmer.
Mounted on the walls behind the Winebaum works and providing a stunning background are Carl Austin Hyatt's extraordinary black and white photographs - platinum prints as well as silver gelatin and digital ones. Hyatt is a masterful artist who makes his own platinum and silver gelatin prints while his digital (pigment ink) works are sent out for processing, according to gallery owner, Jamie La Fleur.
Following college, Hyatt studied for two seasons in the photographic workshop of Ansel Adams at Yosemite Valley; his early photographic portrait of Ansel Adams which his mentor critiqued along with other portraits is now in the collection of Manchester's Currier Museum of Art.
The work on view here shows a strong Adams influence; clearly, lessons learned young from the studio of one of America's greatest photographers have had their impact, not only in an ability to create clarity, striking contrasts, sharp form, dimensional texture that literally jumps out, but also in the subject matter selected.
Like Adams, Hyatt sees the splendor of the globe, the opportunities nature provides, the immense variety available. One only has to look around. And one should travel, seeking the spectacular. Where does Hyatt go? In some of these works he takes the arduous journey in America's Southern Hemisphere specifically to Peru - including traveling the distance to that most extraordinary wonder, Machu Pichu where mists rising from the lush forest, deep dense vegetation, thrusts of jagged mountains and splendid ancient manmade rock formations from a former civilization present the artist with refreshing and demanding challenges. Hyatt accepts these challenges, producing striking works such as "Sacred Rock," a small gelatin silver print, or in "Down at Machu with Clouds," a digital print.
Interested in the culture of the Peru's Qero people, Hyatt also focuses on some of the indigenous personalities he encounters in his travels, producing portraits in which facial lines and expressions tell the story of a life of toil while at the same time revealing the sturdy, strong character of an independent people.
On the Northern Hemisphere, he travels to New Mexico, to Taos to recreate the Rancheros de Taos Church in a small meticulous platinum print. For the fastidious photographer, there is nothing like platinum - it's the Cadillac of the trade; expensive to produce, too.
At home, he sees innumerable opportunities for expression: in the marshes, rock formations, buildings, coastal scenes. Among them are a gelatin silver print of a Rye "Tidal Marsh," a stunning platinum print of Portsmouth Harbor's salt piles, a gelatin silver print of Portsmouth's North Church and a digital print of a sweeping coastal view of Wallis Sands Beach.
In addition to these superb sensitive interpretations of near and faraway places, Carl Hyatt is also fascinated by the artistic opportunities the human figure provides. The exhibition includes a large selection of virtuoso nude images, reflecting an astute eye to angle, form, line, shadow, contrast, depth. These expressions are museum-worthy, up there with some of the best of their kind.
The Banks Gallery has collaborated with Portsmouth's Blue Tree in the production of a book with reproductions of Carl Hyatt's photographs which is for sale in the gallery. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of art works in this exhibit will benefit The Center for the Study of Community at Strawbery Banke Museum, a research and conference-based organization that studies social history, immigration, ethnicity and other cultural topics.
"Platinum and Bronze" will remain on view through Sunday, March 11. The Banks Gallery is located at 123 State St. For further information, call (603) 431-9799.
