Longyear Gallery Features Newcomers Powell and Freeman

Dogwood 1 photo with watercolor mixed media by Don Freeman 

Madonna and Child by Don Freeman 

Sangeet: Madhi by Alan Powell - Processed, photograph is separated into 4 plates according to color and grayscale. The plates are then digitally transferred the image to wood with a laser cutter.

Bonnie Mitchell’s ‘Still Life 1’ photography 

MARGARETVILLE — This Late Winter Group Showing’s opening reception was the official welcoming exhibition for both Don Freeman and Alan Powell. The two very technical creative photographer/artists bring their decades of experience in digital photography, printing, and fascinating mixed medium talents to the local Margaretville community gallery. 

Don Freeman was a fashion and interior design magazine photographer with a foundation in painting. Freeman shot 25 features for World of Interiors and worked with Martha Stewart Living and Vogue magazine. While working as a graphic designer in NYC, Freeman made his peace by combining both of his passions; photography and creative images, “I realized that my love was photography rather than painting, not figuratively but a bit more abstract.” He describes his photos as “painterly.” Freeman describes his styles and techniques, “I've been doing photography as art since the 80's when I lived in the East Village, NY. At first, I was creating paintings (Madonna and Child) in acrylic and silk-screening photographs I took of famous paintings as appropriation. I started taking pictures of my own content-(statues, objects and architecture) in black and white then printing them in the darkroom, then subjecting them to toners that dyed the silver content in the print -this created the beautiful, accidental, non-deliberate colors I loved. Pompeii was my first large series using this technique. (exhibited at Christina Grajales Gallery in New York, 2019). "Blue Stairs" and "Magnolias" are examples of this technique at my current show at Longyear Gallery.”  Freeman talks about his current direction, “My latest work involves mostly techniques I do on the computer, the final result is printed digitally on Hahnemuhle photo rag paper. First the photograph is layered with a combination of pencil sketch, watercolor on japanese paper, and sometimes, plant pressings and images from nature that are hand done. The transparent quality of the image is like a Japanese Wood block print technique (Mokuhanga) which differs from European wood block prints because the Japanese use watercolor ink-so therefore transparent.” 

At the opening reception this past Saturday, Freeman really seemed to be enjoying himself chatting with everyone, “I decided to join the cooperative Longyear Gallery, to explore
more possibilities to show my work to a new audience and meet more artists.  What I admire about the artists at Longyear is we are all about the same age and in the same position as artists, many of us lived in New York, and had admirable careers in the arts; teaching, making videos, films, writing and commercial photography.”

Alan Powell, the other newcomer to the gallery, seemed to equally embrace the privilege of being a newly featured artist at Longyear. It was fascinating and a bit surprising to hear that Powell uses many of the same techniques as Freeman. Although Powell seems to make use of the coloring of his images a bit more prominently. In this exhibition, he chose several more of his modified photos of the Mexico Museum Mummies that he had shown last month. Powell explains his inspiration and techniques involved with this series. “My monotypes and monoprints were from a series of photographs I took of the Mummies of Guanajuato.  The concept of the prints evolved from trying to capture the spirits of these people at the moment of their death to a way of dealing with the horror of the Hamas Israeli War.

A monotype is a unique one-of-a-kind print. The first set I called ghost prints.”  One of the wonderful things about artists like Powell and Freeman is how they don’t seem to keep any of the secrets of their amazing creations, Powell explains, “I laid mylar over the photographs and made cut out stencils that were given texture created by glue and thick paint on top of the cut-out shapes in mylar. I used a variety of plates and colors. The last set was using white inked plates on a dark background made from crushed paper that is inked, cut out circles painted with iron dust and images of trees and birds deep in the background. Generally, I ran the print through the press two to three times.” Powell being moved by the events unfolding in the Middle East, said he was inspired to highlight a combination of images with his mummy photo-based creations, “A monoprint is where the artist uses a fixed Matrix (plate) and then does variations with the plate to get a variety of prints, but all rooted in a base image. The Monoprint is called "I am who I am” The piece is signed in Arabic/ English and Hebrew. My deep emotional reaction to the Hamas /Israeli War where people are being killed just because of their ethnic identity. The base image is from three photographs of female mummies from Guanajuato, Mexico at the moment of their death. The three photographs were digitally composited and etched with a laser on a piece of plexiglass plastic.  I constructed a cardboard and mylar landscape of the remains of Gaza City after its destruction. I printed the plates with all sorts of combinations and colors.”

It is a tremendous challenge to choose who to highlight from the outstanding pool of talented artists at Longyear Gallery, but we’ve got to wrap this one up. The other stunning piece from this exhibition that begged to be mentioned is by Bonnie Mitchell with her ‘Still Life 1’ photograph of a white pitcher containing flowers tilting out across the backdrop of a fabulous painting which creates an almost seamless blend of beauty, an absolute composition of fine art.