DECEMBER 9, 2020
2020 Bay Area Current(ly) EXHIBITION INTERVIEW #3

Please join us on Saturday, December 12, 2020 at 1:00 PM as Chris Johnson interviews Laura Plageman about her fascinating recent work. Ms Plageman’s work was recently selected for PhotoAlliance’s Bay Area Current(ly) exhibition.

Please register in advance for this meeting by clicking here. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Ms Plageman describes her recent work as follows:
“These images are digital collages from an in-progress series I began during quarantine. To create this work, I am using my photographs of the landscape that focus on transitions in the natural world and speak to human relationships to the land over time. From a distance our natural surroundings can appear pristine, but as we inspect more closely, we find human presence is pervasive. In this work, I embed multiple moments into a single image that is both fractured and constructed. Careful inspection reveals the mundane residue of human detritus and consumption becoming an integrated part of the environment. Here, the experience of landscape is complex and interconnected — layering and compressing time, space and place. ”

Artist Laura Plageman lives and works in Oakland, CA. She earned a BA at Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT) and an MFA from the California College of the Arts (San Francisco, CA). She is best known for her studio practice of creatively re-working her photographs of landscapes and abstractions, exploring the power and emotion of the photograph as both medium and message. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and institutions across the United States and internationally, including recent exhibitions with Lightfield Arts in NY and the Houston Center for Photography in Houston. Laura will be included in the upcoming exhibition, The Art of Trees, at the Gund Gallery of Kenyon College in Ohio in January, 2021. Images and information can be found here.

Chris Johnson is a photographic and video artist, curator and writer. Johnson studied photography with Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham and Wynn Bullock and has been the recipient of grants from the Rockefeller Foundation (w/ Hank Willis Thomas). He is a full Professor and Chair of the Photography Program at the California College of the Arts. His photographic artwork has been published and exhibited at the Smithsonian Institute, the Oakland Museum and numerous galleries and is represented in collections including the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson Arizona and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The Bay Area Current(ly) exhibit showcases recent trends in photography by San Francisco Bay area artists. View the entire exhibit here.

DECEMBER 6, 2020
2020 Bay Area Current(ly) EXHIBITION INTERVIEW #2

Please join us on Saturday, December 19, 2020 at 1:00 PM PT as Binh Danh interviews Anna Rotty about her exciting recent work. Ms. Rotty’s work was recently selected for the PhotoAlliance’s 2020 Bay Area Current(ly) exhibition.

Please register in advance for this meeting by clicking here.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Ms Rotty describes her recent work as follows:
“As life slowed down, and I, like many others, retreated into a narrowed physical space, I’ve found opportunities to reflect in ways that were previously buried. I create alternative landscapes to enter and escape into within the familiarity of my home. Using light and reflective materials, I hope to express the drastic shift in emotions each day holds, and conjure alternative realities for the future. I respond to events happening in my broader environment, considering our human relationship with the landscape and the power and resilience of nature.”

Anna Rotty lives in Oakland, CA. She has been part of the San Francisco Artists Studios since 2017 after a month-long residency with One Plus One Plus Two Collective. Anna has recently exhibited with Incline Gallery, SF Camerawork, PhotoPlace Gallery and UMass Amherst. Projects have been featured with Six Feet Photography and Juxtapoz, and her alternative-process photography was recently recognized by the Rfotofolio Denis Roussel Award. Community and collaboration is an important part of Anna’s practice. She recently participated in a collaborative call and response project with Borderline Collective and the Museo Eduardo Carrillo and spent the last few months working for the San Francisco Department of Elections with poll workers.

Binh Danh was a juror for the PhotoAlliance 2020 Bay Area Current(ly) exhibition and he chose Rotty’s work for this interview. He earned a BFA from San José State University and an MFA from Stanford University. His awards include a Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation, San Francisco, and recently, a 2019 Creative Work Fund, collaborating with the Visual and Performing Art Department at the California State University, Monterey Bay. His work has been collected by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Gallery of Art, Washington; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and San Jose Museum of Art, among others. He is an Assistant Professor of Art at San José State University.

The Bay Area Current(ly) exhibit showcases recent trends in photography by San Francisco Bay area artists. View the entire exhibit here.

NOVEMBER 30, 2020
2020 Bay Area Current(ly) EXHIBITION INTERVIEW #1

Ann Jastrab will be interviewing the Rolls & Tubes Collective on Sunday, December 6, 2020 at 2:00 PM live via Zoom.
This is part of the PhotoAlliance-sponsored Bay Area Current(ly) exhibit.

View the completed interview on our YouTube channel.

Rolls & Tubes Collective is comprised of four women photographers from California; Christy McDonald, Colleen Mullins, Jenny Sampson, and Nicole White. The commodification of the commonplace has become a running theme of the COVID-19 pandemic. Having made homebodies of us all, COVID-19 has created absurd rolling shortages, of flour, hair dye, and of course, toilet paper. This was the genesis of the ongoing work by the Rolls & Tubes Collective. In this work, each of the four artists has reinterpreted a known photograph in the arc of contemporary, and the history of photography, utilizing toilet paper as an element of the image.

Ann M. Jastrab is the Executive Director at the Center for Photographic Art (CPA) in Carmel, California. CPA strives to advance photography through education, exhibition and publication. These regional traditions—including mastery of craft, the concept of mentorship, and dedication to the photographic arts—evolved out of CPA's predecessor, the renowned Friends of Photography established in 1967 by iconic artists Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock and Cole Weston. While respecting these West Coast traditions, CPA is also at the vanguard of the future of photographic imagery. Before coming onboard at CPA, Ann was the gallery manager at Scott Nichols Gallery in San Francisco where she incorporated contemporary artists with the living legends photography. Ann also worked as the gallery director at RayKo Photo Center in San Francisco for 10 years until their closure in 2017.

View the entire Bay Area Current(ly) exhibit here.