Pictures of Nothing

Restoration Hardware Gallery on Melrose, West Hollywood

When I moved back to California pictures of nothing fascinated me. Literally. Images of anything, everything and nothing at the same time. In 2016 Restoration Hardware offered me a residency of sorts with some of those images. They offer eight of my photographs and feature them in their stores, catalogs and online. In this year's Source Book they honored me by name on every page an image of mine was used and I got a phone call from an old friend who saw it and and reached out to congratulate me. The image above is from Restoration Hardware on Melrose, West Hollywood and the image below is from the Las Vegas Restoration Hardware. This was the beginning of something very different for me. Trusting the Universe more than ever was key. Yes is the answer but there were so many questions.

I was offered a solo show in Mill Valley, California and expanded the idea into color nothingness. The venue was amazing, I was allowed to hang 23 pieces ranging in size from a 48"x96" of the Golden Gate Bridge to 12"x12" pieces printed on ceramic tile. The piece below called, "Dawn" a 48"x48" aluminum print was one of my favorites. Many attended the opening and I shared my joy with everyone until they made us leave.

I also experimented with sepia toned images printed on aluminum without white ink to create work like this piece, the process reminds me of Tin Type's from the past.

Not long after my solo show "Life Wide Open", I learned about O'Hanlon Center for the Arts in Mill Valley and fell in love with it's artist community. I started entering work in their juried group shows with much success. Below is a piece called "Louis Balls" which made it into a show called "Reflections".

Around this time I entered some work for a juried show at one of my favorite galleries in San Francisco, S.F. Camerawork. The show was to be titled, "Circus" and I thought the carousel image from my last show was a shoe in. You were entitled to enter 10 pieces and when I read the criteria for the show it stated, political circus, media circus etc. were valid interpretations. I entered work from a show of mine at Concordia University, "A House Divided". The images were from a trip I took across America while the Occupy movement was going on. The most exciting part of entering this show was who was going to jury it, Linde B. Lehtinen, curator of photography, SF MOMA, Paloma Shutes, photo editor, The Sunday Magazine and Arthur Tress, a legendary San Francisco photographer. I got a call on my birthday from SF Camerawork, they told me that I got into the show. This is the piece they choose and me at the opening of "Circus".

Another bonus of this adventure was hearing the jurors tell us why they chose what they chose.

That same summer Diana Bradley and I hosted a show in her garden on the Belvedere Lagoon, called "Art in the Garden. It was a wonderful afternoon with her watercolors and my photographs hanging outside in the garden.