5th Annual – 2011 Alameda on Camera

Thank You to our Award Sponsors!
The Island Alameda Sun Alameda Journal John Sheridan Arts
Alameda Patch Aliea Wallace Bridgehead Studios

Exhibit Review by Karen Braun Malpas

"Alameda On Camera" is the much anticipated new show at the Frank Bette Center. In this annual event, 48 artists are given 48 hrs. to record the particulars of 1/48th of the map of Alameda which they have randomly drawn. They have one month to use their gathered images in the production of photo-based work which is now exhibited.

The photographic images shown are not all on traditional paper but also, canvas, metal, soft fabric, even streaming like a small video of still shots. Many are altered or enhanced in a computer. Some look like precious pieces from a museum collection while others look like posters for an upscale urban loft. Even with the reduced variable of medium in this group show, the self will out, individual viewpoint persists.

The diverse and unique architecture of Alameda provided inspiration for several artists. Stellar among these is Alia Wallace's "Off The Map" where multiple houses have been cut up and reassembled in a new order so that a craftsman roof may sit atop the second story of a Victorian which rests on a stucco bungalow. While the City Planning Department would never allow this, the realm of the imagination does not require a remodel permit. Genie Scott's sector included "The Harvey Dana House" which became richer for her and us through historical research. Viewed up close, one sees aspects of the building have been precisely cut, mounted on thin board and reapplied thus casting shadows on the surface, giving the image a subtle 3-dimensionality evocative of a pop-up book.

E.B.Bounds shows a forgettable row of uniform houses with unforgettable garage doors which are illuminated from behind revealing a deep and dreamy view into another world. Nighttime has lent this other worldly quality to "Modern Nostalgia"by Brandon Fancher. By day, the Encinal Market is a pragmatic stop. By night, it relaxes behind closed doors as the headlights of cars pass it by en route to other destinations. Similarly, the pale home in Richard Leons's "Moonstruck" glows in the night, potent with romance and memory of lives lived within.

Various innovative formats are displayed. Susan Tuttle made a gameboard similar to Monopoly of Alameda sights and sites. Erinn Larsen made a silk scarf, "Urban Palette" of mostly bluish images transferred from her photos. John Anderson made a pillow-like seagull cruising above a sky quilt of many individual skies..."Softflight",creating with the created. Because snow was predicted at sea level the weekend of the photo shoot, Denise Cicuto was among the disappointed. However,because she is an artist,she is free of the vagaries of weather,and so, she made a piece entitled "The Treachery of Snow" which employs faux snow in shake-up globes.

The human figure is beautifully interpreted in "Ballet Dreams" and "Flying" by Andrea Dimicelli. The dancers are captured in moments when their focus in inward as athletes rather than outward as performers. Not to be missed is Steven Zegas' "A Steady Hand" showing 7 ways to moor a boat. In black and white, it nonetheless occupies a realm apart from diagrams in the boy scout handbook. The complexity of the over and undering tells us something about intent, resolution and integrity. In "Focus on the Graffiti," Chris Adamson found lettering which seems to be a profound message to us from the universe but, what does it mean?

The quality of the work is high and the viewpoints are creative. Residents, Alamedophiles and random visitors will all find abundant visual rewards here. This show will hang April 1 through May 28.