This Sunday, Montpelier photographer John Snell will be giving a talk about photography and his work currently on display at the White Meeting House in Waterbury Village. It is free and open to the public.
Who goes to an art talk, you might wonder? Maybe you’re thinking to yourself that an art talk is a formal, fancy thing for Other People, or for People Who Wear Black Turtlenecks, or for People Who Speak in Many Syllables? Actually, art talks are fun for just about ANYONE of just about any age or background. Don’t you enjoy hearing where a friend got an idea for a crazy new scheme? or how they finally solved a problem they had been stewing on for a couple months? Or finding out how someone finds time to make something cool in a busy, busy world? That’s pretty much what an art talk is like. If you go to an art talk locally, you will probably even bump into someone you know from around town and think, wow, who knew they were interested in this too!
How does an art talk work? You go to the venue, check out at the works that are on display. (In this case about 20 large photographs taken by John, all from local places) Then everyone sits down or gathers around and the artist will typically talk for 15 or so minutes about how they got started, or why they do what they do, or how they make their particular pieces, or some challenges they are trying to work on currently… And then folks ask a few questions, which are often things that are of particular interest to them (in this case, it might be like how do you decide where to shoot? which camera to use? can I do this with my cell phone? where do you print your pictures? did you go to school for this?) And then everyone heads back out to their regular lives, hopefully enriched and a little inspired to embrace the day or week or time ahead of them even more fully!
Where can you go to art talks? Locally, we host them at the White Meeting House; Whitney hosts them at Axel’s Gallery & Frame Shop; and Across Roads Center for the Arts hosts them too. Further afield, you can find them at the Fleming in Burlington, at the VT College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, at Spruce Peak in Stowe… They’re often free and they’re almost always a lovely jolt of inspiration and energy added to life.
So, back to THIS art talk, coming up on Sunday the 24th at 11:30 AM… John Snell is a really chatty, warm and down-to-earth guy. He takes beautiful pictures of nature — closeups and interesting angles that let us see things from every-day life in a different way. For instance, there’s a beautiful one of frost along the edge of a leaf — zoomed in so close that you can see the crazy complexity of the ice crystals. Another favorite of mine is a closeup picture of a the ripples in a pond — and the colors reflected in the moving water are this crazy mash-up of intense blues and big orange-y yellows that just make me want to touch it and try to separate the colors and understand what I could be looking at and could it possibly be real?
And that’s another great thing about John — his work is totally straight on and not all… digitized. Sure he uses a digital camera, but his biggest manipulation to a picture? If there is one at all, it’s that he threw a pebble into the water to recreate a ripple, or nudged a branch away from another so he could isolate it in his viewfinder. That is to say, his work is about what he actually sees in the world around him, not just what imagines and manipulates. That’s something easy to relate to, right?
Please consider adding this fun event to your weekend’s calendar. Treat yourself to a little inspiration, a little community connection and some friendly company!
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