Art is Life is Art: Susan Reep Photo Art

I’m getting ready to exhibit a few works in Burn the Witch, an all-woman art show held in Bakersfield. I’ve had fun with these.  First is Carry Me Home.

I had been wanting to use this carriage image from a vintage fruit crate label, so that was the motivation to begin with.  I also wanted to use embellishments – pearls, jewel-type butterflies and stars.  I’m not sure what made me use the background photo of the aspens near Crested Butte, Colorado.  The artistic process is not entirely explicable, but as I worked I began to think of the televangelist shows, especially the one that used to have the pinkish-haired lady who wore prom dresses and lots of glitz.  At least that’s the way I thought of her.  I envisioned her in this frilly pink carriage being transported to heaven with pink pearl reins and butterflies that transformed into stars.  It was difficult to get this one right but over a period of several days I got it to where I not only was satisfied, but actually like it quite a bit!  I had fun making the feathery images with my new paintbrush also.

All the King’s Horses

The photo of this piece is not good – I’ll give the disclaimer right away.  This is one of the replicas of the Triumphal Quadriga – the four horses – at St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice.  The four original horses are in the Basilica with no photos allowed, but these replicas are on the balcony overlooking Piazza San Marco.  It was hard to get this photo – getting an image from the angle I wanted with no people around.  But I had time and I waited until I had my opportunity.  Is there a better place to wait around than the balcony of the Basilica overlooking Piazza San Marco?  Can’t think of one offhand.

Blue seemed like a good color for the canvas.  In between the nine squares is a deeper blue – can’t see it here.  The horse is fragmented to represent the many journeys it made in real life.  The origin of the horses is unclear – may be Greek or Roman.  Probably Greek from about 175 B.C.  They journeyed to Rome involuntarily, probably to adorn Trajan’s Arch (Trajan had a lot of arches build in different cities), and from Rome ended up in Constantinople.  When the Venetians sacked Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, they helped themselves to the four horses.  In about 1797 Napoleon removed the horses to Paris, but in 1815 they were returned to Venice.  Supposedly, he was just “borrowing” them. That’s six moves for four bronze horses (with a high copper content).  When it was discovered that the statues were suffering from the acidic sea air and were oxidizing, they were moved into the basilica and these replicas put on the balcony.  What an exhausting story!

So I put my photo on this nine-part canvas as a metaphor for the horses’ fractured history.  In Greek mythology, there are nine muses, so the number seemed apt – the statues started in Greece and certainly served as muses for a number of cultures, judging from their travels around the globe.

Here’s a picture of the original horses – not taken by me since photography is forbidden.

Here are a few of my images.  You’ll recognize the last one and see from the others some of the challenges of getting a photo up there.

You’ll see this one in Burn the Witch als0 – a very small mounted photo.

And finally

You can see more photos of Italy and also read my travel journal for more information.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 at 12:08 PM and is filed under Art, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.