Gallery Talk
Striped Door seeks to reach both casual visitors and serious art collectors
Located at the southern end of Second Avenue, the Striped Door Gallery has been around for nearly a year, but in recent months it has undergone a change with the hiring of director Virginia Cannon, an Atlanta native who brings a mix of national and regional artists. Cannon's focus is on the mid- to late-career artist, and while she emphasizes that she's trying to reach a broad audience, she acknowledges that Striped Door also wants to attract the serious collector. With artwork well over the thousand-dollar mark, novice collectors and gallery-goers may feel a bit shy about looking around, but the Striped Door environment is laid-back and welcoming.
"There are a lot of galleries that take on emerging artists, but I come with a stable of artists that I've been developing for the past 15 years," Cannon explains of her current group show, which highlights works by photographer Anna Tomczak, painter Jennifer Quigley and outsider sculptor Tree, alongside works by Nichole Lobdell, Donald Willis and Scott Hall.
A Florida-based photographer, Tomczak has been working with Cannon for the past decade. Using an increasingly rare technique, Tomczak's photography resembles the compositions of 17th century Dutch oil paintings, filled with exotic bouquets of flowers and soft lighting, but the artist also incorporates old postcards and photographs and layers of painterly color to create unique assemblages. Upon first glance, these photographs look like a collage of digital imagery, but are actually captured using a large-format 20-by-24-inch Polaroid camera, which stands nearly 5 feet tall and weighs 235 pounds. This type of Polaroid was originally intended for portraiture and making records of works of art.
There are only a few of these Polaroid cameras left in the United States, which artists can use for a limited number of days per year. At a gallery talk this Saturday, May 22, at 7 p.m., Tomczak will discuss the history of the camera, how Polacolor transfers are created and how she became involved with this rare process. Photographer Scott Hall will also talk about his process of creating "photographs" without a camera. Striped Door is located at 522 Third Ave. S., but the main entrance is around the corner, on Second Avenue.
—Nicole Pietrantoni
