Redtree Times

Three Sides to the Story— Now at Principle Gallery

Let’s look at photographs as food. Does an exhibition leave you hungry or fill you with the visual equivalent of a snack or feast?

…

Do your photographs offer substance and sustenance? Or a starvation diet? Do your photographs feed another man’s body, his emotions, his love, his intellect, his cupidity, his lower appetites, his transcendental hungers? 

–Minor White, Mirrors, Messages, Manifestations (1969)

The American photographer Minor White (1908-1976) might have been talking about photographs for an exhibit in the passages above, but the same criteria could be applied to any sort of artistic exhibition. I look at the work for my shows, including the one opening tonight at the Principle Gallery, in very much the same sort of way.

Using White’s analogy, the individual paintings are the dishes that make up the meal that is the exhibit. As an artist, you are like the chef trying to serve up tasty dishes with flavorful depths that make the meal satisfying as a whole.

Not only do you never want it to be said that you allowed people to leave the table hungry, but you want them to give them tastes that linger in their mind long after they have left the meal.

I like this show and its wide and varied menu of dishes very much. It fills me with its variety of dishes and flavors, very much satisfying my appetites. Will it do the same for others? I hope so. Any artist wants their work to reach out to people and move them in some way or connect with them on a deeper level. That would be the substance and sustenance to which White refers.

But, in the end, the table is set and out of my hands now.

So, we shall wait and see.

This year’s show at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria is called Passages. It opens today, Friday, June 9, with an opening reception that begins at 6 and goes until 8:30 PM. I haven’t been at an opening at the Principle Gallery since 2019 and while I am more than a little anxious, I am looking forward to seeing and speaking with folks down there again.

Hope you can make it. Bring your appetite!