September 21, 2013–February 16, 2014
Art League Gallery
A sense of place locates us within the world and provides context to our experiences within it. We also identify with places as extensions of ourselves — garnering pride, nostalgia, or sometimes embarrassment in them. Without place, we feel dislocated and disjointed, afloat without an orientation.
The work of local photographers Susan Moore, Steve Moriarty, Fred Slaski and Steve Toepp highlights this importance. Whether exploring unique qualities of a ubiquitous subdivision (Moore), setting the stage for an epiphany (Moriarty), evoking a quiet sense of poetry (Slaski), or representing time through decay (Toepp), everything we see is affected by a sense of place. It provides a contact point for each image, adding meaning and reflecting the sometimes subtle yet always important role place plays in our lives.
This exhibition overlaps with Ansel Adams: Masterworks, on exhibit in the SBMA’s Warner Gallery (November 1, 2013–January 12, 2014), and offers a complement to Adams’s uncanny ability to present a place as a moment — ever changing and ephemeral.
Images:
(Top of page)
Susan Moore, Wembley Drive 5.13, 2013, Archival ink jet print
(Above, from left to right)
Steve Moriarty, Paris, Rue de L’Université, 1976, Gelatin silver print
Fred Slaski, James Madison Elementary School, Rainy Night, 2012, Selenium tone gelatin silver print
Steve Toepp, Dead City: Church #756, Circa 2010, Dye sublimation into aluminum (archival)
Susan Moore (South Bend, IN) received an IAC Individual Artist Grant in 2010 and an IU South Bend Research Grant in 2012. Moore has a MFA from Washington University, St. Louis, MO; a MA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; and a BA from Columbia College, Chicago, IL. Her work has been exhibited at Photo Place Gallery, Middlebury, VT; Santa Reparata Gallery of Contemporary Art, Florence, Italy; and the Buchanan Center for the Arts, Monmouth, IL.
Steve Moriarty (South Bend, IN) is an emeritus curator of photography at the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame. He received a MFA in photography from the University of Notre Dame, and has photographed extensively in El Salvador since 1985.
Fred Slaski (South Bend, IN) received a BA and a Certificate of Film Studies from Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. His photographs have been exhibited at the South Bend Christian Reform Church Gallery, South Bend, IN; the Jewish Federation Mishawaka Gallery, Mishawaka, IN; and the South Bend Museum of Art, South bend, IN.
Steve Toepp (Mishawaka, IN) received a BA in photography from Columbia College, Chicago, IL; and is owner of Midwest Photographics, a still photography and video production studio located in Mishawaka, IN. Recent exhibitions of his photographs include the Midwest Museum of American Art, Elkhart, IN; Spencer Gallery, Mishawaka, IN; and Studio Arts Center, South Bend, IN.
