Mark Sink Photography

Warhol interview by Gary Comenas warholstars.org 2012

2012-01-21T13:06:00.002-07:00

www.warholstars.org

Interview with Mark Sink
by Gary Comenas 2012

Mark Sink is a photographer who was also the subject of a number of photographs by Andy Warhol and is mentioned in Warhol’s diaries. One of Warhol’s photographs of Mark can be found at: http://chronicle.com/blogs/arts/warhol-in-colorado-memories-and-memorabilia/28196.

Some of Mark’s images of Warhol can be found on his website at: http://gallerysink.com/marksink/index.html.

Liza Minnelli and Andy Warhol
(Photo: Mark Sink)

1. When did you meet Andy Warhol?

We met on in September 1981 in Fort Collins, Colorado. I was an art student and bicycle racer. Andy was my hero. He was in Fort Collins for an exhibition called “Warhol at Colorado State University” and he took some pictures of me.

As you might know the Warhol museum and Foundation gave out tens of thousands of Andy photographs to university gallery collections across the country. Three of our universities received hundreds of silver print and Polaroid images. Somebody knew me in the selection process as many images of me taken by Andy in Colorado were in the donations. The humorous part is that many of the photos are of me with my pants down. I find it even funnier to see how the academic university curators and writers dealt with this, for instance in The Chronicle. (http://chronicle.com/blogs/arts/warhol-in-colorado-memories-and-memorabilia/ 28196)

But there is even an earlier connection than that. My great-aunt was Frances Breese Miller. She lived on the beach in Bridgehampton in a 1920s modernist home called The Sand Box.

The Sand Box

At Frances’ funeral I was looking through her guest book and in the summer 1967 Andy and Edie Sedgwick and the whole crew signed the book thanking her for a wonderful weekend.

Pages from the guest book of The Sand Box

What was wild for me was just below the crew was my note and signature! We had visited Great Aunt Frances that summer while on a family road trip to Expo 67 in Canada. I was very, very excited by this news but when I told Andy about it he said, “No, we were never there." When pressed he said “Please stop, we weren’t there, you have it wrong."

That stuck with me. Why would he deny it and forcefully so? For awhile I thought it was because of the Danny Williams story but the dates don’t match up right. So now I would love just to find out what movie they shot there. Recently I even found a South Hampton newspaper article with pictures documenting the film they shot there.

Andy Warhol in The Hamptons Voice, July 14, 1967
(click to enlarge)

2. Can you tell me more about me about meeting Warhol in 1981? Who actually introduced you to him?

In 1981 Andy was summoned to Colorado State University by John and Kimiko Powers. A friend of mine, Craig Scott, had met Andy previously that summer in New York through Christopher Makos when he [Craig] was out there on his racing bike and in lycra shorts for the National bike races. Chris picked Craig up at Uncle Charlie’s in the [Greenwich] Village and later that afternoon introduced him to Andy. They went to lunch at the River Café under the Brooklyn Bridge.

Craig and I were working at the Spoke bicycle shop in Denver. I had followed him there after a job in a restaurant kitchen. Craig encouraged me to quit smoking and to start racing bicycles. I was going to college in downtown Denver and had recently taken art history classes learning about the Factory, viewing several of Warhol’s films. I was enamored with Interview magazine and dreamt of making portraits like those in the pages. When Craig returned from NYC I was very jealous when he told me of his adventures with Andy. I didn’t know Craig was gay then. I didn’t know Andy was gay then. I didn’t know much then.

When Andy came to Fort Collins Craig declined to come. He said he had to work. Later I realized that he didn’t come because he was still in the closet. But he told me to go right up to Andy and tell him I sent him to say hello and to get a poster. I did just that. I went early and found Andy before anything was happening. He was sitting in a classroom and was getting ready to sign posters of the show. I sat down next to him and told him Craig had sent me and says hello. Andy then said something like how wonderful that Craig had sent me. He told me to stay if I could. So, there I was – Andy’s date. He paraded me all over the campus.

3. Whatever happened to Craig?

He died of AIDS.

4. Did you take many images of Warhol?

I took a lot of images. Andy had to have pictures taken with a Cow and his Soup Can. I met Bob Colacello and Fred Hughes at that point. We all smoked a joint right out on the lawn on the campus – all but Andy. We talked a lot. They invited me back to the hotel. I raced back and was stopped by the police and in a panic explained I needed to get to Andy Warhol immediately!! And I was let go.

5. So you arrived at Warhol’s hotel…

Yeah, at the cheap Motel 6 they were staying at Andy was preparing for a nap before the opening. We talked a little and then I showed him my recent bicycle scrape. It was a big one. I had fallen hard during the finals of a state championship – in fact on the final sprint. I was pushed off a turn with ten others and popped a tire and slid on the pavement on my side.

6. Did he think it strange that you showed him your bicycle wound?

No, he loved it. He was working a book called America. I guess the photos were going to go in but were edited out at the last second. Christopher was getting jealous of Andy’s attention to me.

I was star struck. I would have done anything for Andy. Jokingly when Andy went up to his room to nap I jumped on the bed with him, thanking him and bouncing around like a puppy dog. He was a little shocked but pleasantly told me he was very tired. I realized he didn’t have the same adrenaline running that I had going. I mean, like, Bob, Fred and Chris were in the next room licking their chops like hungry wolves. I was a prime fresh find.

7. How did you come to work for Interview magazine?

That night at the opening Andy was in a crush of fans. I got a paperback book of his portraits and took cuts in the long line and handed it to him. He went through every page in the book and signed his favorite portraits to the dismay of the waiting crowd. He also drew penises and money symbols on the inside of the cover and on pages of the Philosophy of Andy Warhol book. Then he wrote down his phone number on a piece of brown paper bag he tore off sitting next to him. Then he told me I should work for Interview magazine “representing Colorado.” Stunned, I was on the masthead the next month.

I have several black and white Campbell Soup Can t-shirts from the exhibition. Andy told me secretly that those were made from the original Soup Can screens made in 1967-8. He said he did it because it was shockingly expensive to have a commercial company do it for the CSU show so he had his assistants do it at the Factory for much less and they threw out the screen after.

8. What was it like working for Interview magazine?

It was a very exciting time. I opened accounts with some businesses to carry the magazine and I also, at that point, sold advertising and found leads for portrait commissions. A great experience was when I got to shoot and submit images with Christopher Makos for a page in Interview – “New Faces in the Rockies.” They sent me a small budget for “Interview parties” which Andy attended on one of his then annual visits to Aspen.

9. You also spent some time at Warhol’s office at 860 Broadway in New York…

I took lots of portraits of him there and he liked me hanging around. Vincent [Fremont] seemed to like me too. Fred [Hughes] had a crush on me. But the Factory boys despised me. They would play mean tricks on me. Like telling me never to accept any gifts from Andy because that was how he tested you to see if you were a gold digger or a trustworthy friend. So I turned down many random gift offers while out walking, shopping with Andy. On my birthday I turned down an offer of a small painting from “the gift closet” which I later found out was a tradition and a regular event. Andy would give out presents from “the gift closet” for his friends.

The other day I found the recordings of my phone conversations with Andy. They are sort of meaningless because Andy taped everything with his mother – but they are mine – the phone ringing at the factory, Brigid answering and Andy taking the call, long talks of our projects. He was always very, very excited with lines like "oh that is soooo greeeat."

Jean-Michel Basquiat
(Photo: Mark Sink)

Once Andy was painting with Jean-Michel [Basquiat] and I interviewed him. Dumb questions like what was Edie really like. He changed the subject and in jest started telling me a wild tale of fantasy of our relationship. We were flirting. He said to tell the story of dinner with Mick Jagger and how we crossed swords in the urinal at the Odeon and how Mick gave me his number to go bicycle riding. It reminded me of the party where the host could care less that Warhol and Mick were there and, in fact, felt that it displaced the energy of the event. At the party Mick gave me a big piece of hash in exchange for a joint that Peter and Chris had given me earlier. Someday I’ll print pictures of that evening.

10. You were also in Aspen with Warhol weren’t you? Your photograph of him during a snowmobile accident is well known.

Andy Warhol during the snowmobile accident in Aspen
(Photo: Mark Sink)

Yeah, it was in December 1983 below the Maroon Bells in Aspen. Andy said in the diaries that Jon [Gould] tried to kill him on the snow mobile. My account of the accident is much different. I had zoomed past Andy and Jon, dragging my hand in the snow. This caused snow to cover Jon’s goggles. He lost control, crashing off a cliff with Andy falling off the back with his wig out in the air. Stunned, thinking I had just killed the “Prince of Pop Art,” I ran to the edge and down in the power snow to help but ended up instead taking pictures of Andy laughing in glee. We all went back to Jane Holzer’s pad for a meal of Mexican TV dinners and ice cream on heated glazed donuts. I have all this on film.

We took Andy to the over-crowded Aspen Airport early. I then went back to Jane’s pad and had it all to myself for three days. I filled my car with hundreds of pounds of food they had left and lived off it for months back at my studio in Denver. I was crushed later in the week when Andy called me and asked if I had “borrowed” an Indian blanket while there. Andy believed me, but I could hear Rupert [Jasen Smith] saying in the background, "I know it’s him, I know it’s him." That saddened me greatly, being a suspect.

11. Were you with Andy on any trips outside of New York and Colorado?

Yeah, in L.A. in 1981. I missed my first plane but then caught a second one. Christopher, Peter Wise and Craig Scott met me at the airport. Somewhere at the point is when I found out that Craig was gay. Chris said “Oh yes, Craig is a real tiger.” I was shocked that Craig, one of my best friends was keeping such a big secret.

We stayed at the Tropicana Hotel. We had a luncheon with Andy, Fred, Bob and Chris at Christopher Isherwood’s home. We were all sitting at a long dining room table. Andy was taking lots of pictures and making notes. Then Fred and I went to find Craig where he was working. Then we went out and met Andy and we went to a cheap Mexican restaurant for dinner. Craig was talking about the Spaghetti Factory [restaurant] and the good clean food and Andy was saying, “How greeeeattt. Let’s go.” We were driving stuffed into a little yellow Toyota econo rental with an Olivia Newton John song on the radio and we were singing, screaming, and laughing and bouncing the little car back and forth in traffic. I was very happy and it was very surreal.

12. What was Andy in Los Angeles for?

Andy was in L.A. for a show and among other things taking pictures for a European magazine of the cool L.A. nightspots. So we went to Danny’s Dogs and I took pictures of Andy and the street kids there who didn’t know who he was.

We went to the China Club and I met Tommy Lasorda’s son, Tommy Jr. Fred was there and he joined us and we went to a few small clubs. By this time I was pretty liquored up and we were driving at that point in Hugh Heffner’s limo and the driver was driving around like a mad man. We asked why he was driving that way and he said it was because his kid was hurt or sick or something. Somewhere in the spin, Tommy Lasorda drove Fred and I back to where Andy and Fred were staying in the Hollywood Hills. That was a intimate night with Fred. He soon passed out very drunk. I woke up next to him and Tommy – sort of shocked I was there. Everyone was rushing to catch a plane.

They left and Fred left a beautiful scarf for me. So I slept in until the maids kicked me out and I had a horrible hangover. Back at the Tropicana Peter and Chris were worried as to where I was and were mad, but relieved, when I told them I was with Fred.

13. Tell me more about your friendship with Fred Hughes.

Fred Hughes was enamored by my 12th generation NY family line. It’s a heady crew that starts with Reverend Breese buried at Trinity Church in 1710. Notables are Samuel Finley Breese Morse. the father of American Photography and inventor of the telegraph and Morse code and NY General Potter, a civil war hero. Fred was super crazy for all this so I hung out with him and did things around town more then with Andy. Fred was my hero and mentor. He always wanted to do a movie about my great-grandfather. My great-grandfather was a notorious photographer James Lawrence Breese. Fred paid me and book binders handsomely to replicate my great-grandfather’s 1880s leather bound albums of his photography. My relatives were early NY bohemian art society that Fred was nutty for.

Once Fred picked up the phone and dialed up Diana Vreeland. "I have a young man here that has pictures of your mother dancing." She was thrilled and used them for a invitation for the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute that she was a consultant and patron for. Though I will say she directly told me on the phone what I have been learning in research - that Breese had a bad falling out with NY society when his buddy Stanford White was murdered and all the stories of their late night parties and womanizing came to light. And he was pretty much considered the one that led White down the path of "lascivious intrigue." With that and the market crash, JLB was living in his servant house on the South Hampton Breese estate the last days of his life.

14. Did Fred Hughes drink much?

Yes, I took Fred home many times drunk. There were many events and outbursts that were alcohol related. Many close to him were concerned about his drinking. When he boozed he was always pretty cantankerous even from the start. Once I remember well was at a Betsy Johnson fashion show in an old men’s club that had clay pipes hanging on the ceiling. Everyone was shushing us. 1982, I think? Another time was at the reopening of Studio 54 when we got there late. Andy, me and Chris and Peter went to a porn film before. Fred had a fit when we arrived. There were also a couple of times at the Factory at 860 Broadway. It always seemed to happen after a long vodka filled lunch. I remember one was with Bob [Colacello] about an Interview cover. Another might have been about an advertiser they lost.

A memorable outburst by Fred happened late one night at a tiny club on West 14th Street. I forget the name – maybe it was Anita Sarko’s? She was there. Nell’s. That was it. Anyway, Fred was happy to see me then weirdly turned kind of violent, grabbing and hitting me, wrestling me, screaming something nonsensical. He threw his drink on me – something about my appearing set him off. We were asked to leave. I took him home. A famous princess royal was staying at his place. I forget her name. I have images. She was really worried about him. We talked about how the MS was starting to kick in and affected him with great rage and anger. This was the later 1980s. I have seen him treat his staff horribly when he was getting really sick.

15. When was the last time you saw him?

I crashed the opening of The Warhol museum and the dinner. I was playing photographer shooting tables. I heard this screech – “MARK SINK!” It was Fred waving – shaking both fists in the air from his wheelchair looking pretty bad. We hugged. He pushed plates apart and insisted I sit at his table next to him. That was the last time I saw him. Nobody contacted me about his death or funeral arrangements.

16. Are you still friends with any of the Warhol crowd?

Yes, I am still very close with Chris Makos and Peter Wise. We talk regularly and spend time together – projects and things time to time. We were lovers in the early ‘80s. Chris is an energizer bunny fire cracker – full of fun. And nightmarish on the other side also.

I showed Gerard Malanga’s work at my gallery and we stayed loosely in touch. I did several projects with Gerard through the years. In my studio/ home on 85 Broadway he recreated a Factory scene and silk screen event for an early documentary on Andy by Chuck Workman. It’s the opening segment.

Opening segment from Chuck Workman’s documentary,
Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol
(click to play or go to http://www.veoh.com/watch/v3691214ccXgGyg)

My studio is the scene where they are pulling ink through the screen (not the camera work or burning and cleaning). The cat Rosland is there. Gerard Malanga and an unknown friend with long hair are pulling the ink, making the image. Aritst Robert Hawkins and I lived there. I have that image they screened on mylar hanging in my bedroom now.

I also stayed in touch with and was pretty close to Taylor Mead in the ‘80s and ‘90s, less in the 2000’s. I took a lot of photographs of him. I love Taylor. I spent many evenings walking, talking and feeding wild cats with him around the lower east side in New York. He deeply hates Andy. Recently we’ve lost touch. I hear he has been very ill.

I did several projects with Richard Bernstein up till his demise. I photographed him often at his crazy apartment (the old ballroom at the Hotel Chelsea). Once he took full credit for all the dozens of images I shot with Grace Jones in my studio for NY Magazine. I was so pissed off afterwards when I excitedly opened the magazine and saw that the only photo credit was for him - "photography by Richard Bernstein." He could care less. I don't think I ever talked to him after that.

17. Thanks for answering my questions Mark. Before you go, I’m curious – do you remember taking that picture of Warhol in front of the Calvin Klein poster? The one with his hand on the crotch.

Andy Warhol with Calvin Klein poster
(Photo: Mark Sink)

Yes, I remember stopping at the Calvin Klein poster so he could put his hand on the crouch of the underwear model. I often photographed his hands. I remember his hands holding money, his hands touching rare Navajo blankets or jewelry before purchase. I remember his hands holding his beloved Minox camera or his Big Shot Polaroid camera. Andy loved to hold hands. Holding his hand while walking or in a car are some of the most cherished moments I have of Andy.

[end of interview]

Celebration of Light and the rebirth of the Sun

2011-12-29T18:29:00.013-07:00

Equinox to equinox pinhole image from my front yard.

From Philippe Achard,

Celebration of Light and the rebirth of the Sun

Celebrating Winter Solstice

by Selena Fox

Winter Solstice has been celebrated in cultures the world over for
thousands of years. This start of the solar year is a celebration of
Light and the rebirth of the Sun. In old Europe, it was known as Yule,
from the Norse, Jul, meaning wheel.

Today, many people in Western-based cultures refer to this holiday as
"Christmas." Yet a look into its origins of Christmas reveals its Pagan
roots. Emperor Aurelian established December 25 as the birthday of the
"Invincible Sun" in the third century as part of the Roman Winter
Solstice celebrations. Shortly thereafter, in 273, the Christian church
selected this day to represent the birthday of Jesus, and by 336, this
Roman solar feast day was Christianized. January 6, celebrated as
Epiphany in Christendom and linked with the visit of the Magi, was
originally an Egyptian date for the Winter Solstice.

Most of the customs, lore, symbols, and rituals associated with
"Christmas" actually are linked to Winter Solstice celebrations of
ancient Pagan cultures. While Christian mythology is interwoven with
contemporary observances of this holiday time, its Pagan nature is still
strong and apparent. Pagans today can readily re-Paganize Christmastime
and the secular New Year by giving a Pagan spiritual focus to existing
holiday customs and by creating new traditions that draw on ancient
ways. Here are some ways to do this:

Adorn the home with sacred herbs and colors. Decorate your home in
Druidic holiday colors red, green, and white. Place holly, ivy,
evergreen boughs, and pine cones around your home, especially in areas
where socializing takes place. Hang a sprig of mistletoe above a major
threshold and leave it there until next Yule as a charm for good luck
throughout the year. Have family/household members join together to make
or purchase an evergreen wreath. Include holiday herbs in it and then
place it on your front door to symbolize the continuity of life and the
wheel of the year. If you choose to have a living or a harvested
evergreen tree as part of your holiday decorations, call it a Solstice
tree and decorate it with Pagan symbols.
Convey love to family, friends, and associates. At the heart of
Saturnalia was the custom of family and friends feasting together and
exchanging presents. Continue this custom by visiting, entertaining,
giving gifts, and sending greetings by mail and/or phone. Consider those
who are and/or have been important in your life and share appreciation.
Reclaim Santa Claus as a Pagan Godform. Today's Santa is a folk figure
with multicultural roots. He embodies characteristics of Saturn (Roman
agricultural god), Cronos (Greek god, also known as Father Time), the
Holly King (Celtic god of the dying year), Father Ice/Grandfather Frost
(Russian winter god), Thor (Norse sky god who rides the sky in a chariot
drawn by goats), Odin/Wotan (Scandinavian/Teutonic All-Father who rides
the sky on an eight-legged horse), Frey (Norse fertility god), and the
Tomte (a Norse Land Spirit known for giving gifts to children at this
time of year). Santa's reindeer can be viewed as forms of Herne, the
Celtic Horned God. Decorate your home with Santa images that reflect his
Pagan heritage.

Winter to Spring pinhole long exposure from my front yard.

Mr Pool

2011-12-29T15:03:00.000-07:00

Cool exhibition space, super cool people.

Recent Collodion Wet Plates and Ambrotypes

2011-12-11T20:11:00.003-07:00

Mile High and Rising at Black Book

2011-12-11T19:43:00.002-07:00

Denver, CO (December 10th, 2011) - Finishing off the year with a bang at Black Book Gallery this month, the first ever Mile High & Rising group show (on display throughout December) will bring together over twenty-five of the city’s most active creative talent, exhibiting a collection of diverse work and representing a sample of the contemporary artscape currently happening in Denver. This will be an incredible mix of artwork, not to mention a prime opportunity to pick up a few pieces- all work will be priced at $100 or less – Double score!
Encompassing a wide variety of mediums and artistic styles, the show will not only highlight each individual artist’s contribution, but also the close knit community of art contributors that live and work in Denver (which includes many others). From upcoming to established artists, from graffiti to tattoo influences, from screen printing, to paint, drawing, photography and sculpture, Mile High And Rising will truly be a landmark show, and define a new tradition in the process. Next year, the show will continue with Mile High and Rising Vol. 2.
Some of the artists featured include: John Fellows, Axel Geittmann, Sarah Ford, Ravi Zupa, Jeremy Burns, Adam Sikorski, Mike Ortiz, John Lamb, Chris Huth, Ian Millard, Lindsey Kuhn, Max Kauffman, Jeremy Pruitt (Thinkmule), Melanie Pruitt, Pedro Barrios, Rob Mack, Mike Graves, Sandi Calistro, John Cole, Joseph Martinez, Sam Turner, Mona Crowe, Mark Sink, Dan Ericson, Michael Coriano.
Be on the lookout in early 2012, as the gallery will be releasing a free ‘Black Book’ around the state of Colorado that includes over twenty pages of full color artwork as well as information on the artists involved in this first edition of Mile High & Rising. This is one opening you won’t want to miss and may we suggest getting there early, this artwork will go quick!

Mile High & Rising Black Book Gallery from Vincent Comparetto on Vimeo.

http://www.theblackbookgallery.com

2011-10-20T16:22:00.001-06:00

Business of Art Center

Low Tech/High Art
An Exhibition of Toy Camera Artists

Opening October 28th runs though December 31st.

Michelle Bates, Mary Berger, Meg Birnbaum, John Bridges, Matthew CHimelarzyk, Carol Dass, Stephnie Early, Kay Williams Johnson, Mary Ann Lynch, Anne Arden McDonald, C. Gary Moyer, Heather, Oelkaus, Victoria Rust, Jennifer Shaw, Mark Sink, Gordon Stettinius, Alexis Treulieb, Bill Vaccaro.

Organized by Carol Dass

Business of Art Center
513 Manitou Ave Manitou Spring CO. 80829
www.thebac.org

Emmanuel Gallery

2011-10-20T16:18:00.003-06:00

Emmanuel Gallery

My classmates and teachers. Its a wonderful reunion of talent.

Confluence, Returning to the Source: Celebrating 35 Years of Art and Community
Runs through: November 2, 2011

http://www.emmanuelgallery.org

This exhibition will include some 35 artists who went to one of the three schools on Auraria Campus. Confluence will celebrate Emmanuel Gallery’s 35 years of history by telling the success stories of these alumni and their continued impact on our arts community.

Gallery hours are Tuesday – Friday, 10-6 and Saturday, 11-5.

Emmanuel Gallery
Cheryl Bailey, Michelle Baldwin, Phil Bender, Loay Boggess, Karen Bozik, Carolyn Braaksma, Michael Brohman, Jim Cannata, Evan Colbert, Emmett Culligan, Martha Daniels, John Davenport, Bonnie Ferrill, Roman, Virginia Folkestad, Carlos Fresquez, Mark Friday, Diane Huntress, Peter Illig, Christopher James, Deborah Jang, Gerald Johnson, Gwen Laine, Patricia Lehman, Mona Lucero, Katharine McGuinness, Lauri Lynnxe Murphy, Merlin Madrid, Andy Miller, Robert Mangold, Dawn McFadden, Andy Miller, Ken Peterson, Dania Pettus, Lincoln Phillips, Elaine Ricklin, Craig Robb, Debra Sanders, David Seiler, Mark Sink, Jennifer Thompson, Carley Warren.

BNC REDLINE

2011-10-16T01:50:00.000-06:00

photopolus.com

2011-09-09T16:43:00.000-06:00

ArtStar Mark Sink is Going Retro While Everyone Else Goes for More MegaPixels

September 9, 2011 in Friday Art Star | Tags: ArtStar, Camera Club of New York, Collodion, Denver, friday, James L. Breese, Mark Sink, Nettie R Harris, Photography, Wet Plate | by photopolus

Mark Sink has been making a living from fine art photography since 1978. He is well known for his imagery made with a toy plastic camera; the Diana. He excels at reverse technology, using collodion wet plate photography. His personal work is in numerous museum collections as well as solo and group gallery shows in the US, South America and Europe. He is currently represented by G. Ray Hawkins in California, Robin Rice in New York and Rule Gallery in Denver. As a photographer of fine art he worked with and documented noted artists lives and their work such as Andy Warhol and Jean Michel Basquiat. Mark’s family heritage in photography runs deep and his research into his roots is ongoing . His great grandfather, photographer James L. Breese, was the founder, member and primary inspiration for the Camera Club of New York, which was one of the earliest groupings of fine art photographers in America. Even further back, Samuel Finley Breese Morse, (Breese’s uncle), was “the father of American photography” and inventor of the telegraph. It is with this legacy in mind that prompted Sink to form a monthly Salon of artists both on the Internet and in his living room.
Currently Mark serves on the exhibition committee at RedLine, a downtown city block of new gallery/multimedia studio work spaces that provides grants to selected emerging and mid career artists and exhibitions. Mr. Sink is founder and director of MOP (Month of Photography) in Denver, bi-annually coordinating all the regional galleries, museums and art spaces geared toward celebrating photography in mass.

www.gallerysink.com

When and how did you become interested in Photography?

Gosh .. started as a kid, i shot more than most kids with my Kodak Instamatic…then while studying art in college, it stuck as a career.

What gear do you mainly shoot with?

1860s Voigtlander lens and view camera .. vintage Dianas..Blad.. Pinhole ..Fuji Instant films .. Nikon D3 .. iPhone

What is your #1 source of inspiration?

Beauty … Woman.
As for people that inspired me ..It changes day to day .. Andy Warhol is a constant .. and ManRay .. but recently i am heading into collage so i am getting myself up to speed studying collage artists, buying lots of books and learning where the medium is at today.

Many times photographers find themselves with a full schedule of paying gigs, ending up with little time for doing the work they truly love. Do you struggle with finding time for your personal work?

I am very lucky to make a frugal living off of my personal art work. I take on commercial jobs time to time to pay the bills. I always tell students to make money from anything but photography .. be careful as soon as you turn what you freely passionately love into commercial jobs… it will burn you and your art production out…promise.

What is your all time favorite genre to shoot?

Portraits and staged fantasy.

Do you have any upcoming shows or events you want our readers to know about?

I am doing lots of street art (wheat pasting) around town… and trading with photographers all over the world actually ..We have bill boards up in Switzerland .. i have street art work up in Russia, Japan, Germany ..on and on….its great fun.. you can check it out on my facebook page… its called the “Big Picture” and we are going to be publishing a book on it.
or click this link to the google map to find the locations of where the work is installed…
I’m crazy for street art these days. Its very exciting to see your work up around town in public places many last for years. The community really enjoys it. Its win win. I will be having a show at Robin Rice Gallery in NYC this fall/winter…
I just had a dozen or so shows come down from the Month of Photography last March .. I will be doing this again in March of 2013 and photographers should keep an eye out for this happening, because galleries go crazy looking for work ..its a great time to get your work up on some walls and shown in a gallery.

What is the one thing you feel makes your style or your work unique?

Going reverse tech when everyone is going for more mega pixels..I used only toy Diana cameras for 30 years (dreamy figure and staged fantasy) .. but now that the Lomography heads have surfaced and the Diana is very popular with Urban Outfitters and all that .. i have moved on to collodion wet plates, however, now that is becoming the rage ..so who knows… I may go further back to tracing images with a camera obscura maybe? .. I am starting to get into hand cut collage from old magazines.. it evolves.

if you could photograph anyone, (past/present/future), who would it be and why?

Rachel Ruysch (1600s) Evelyn Nesbit (1800s) …Kiki of Montparnasse ( 1920s) Marlyn Monroe (1950s ) Francesca Woodman (1970s). Today? a week with a cool happy hippie down to earth super model would be dreamy. I am inspired by the muses and strong women who have changed art history.

what’s your dream photo field trip?

Paris, London, Venice with local friends showing you hidden treasures.

what’s your post production process?

I do very little post production. I like to get it right in the camera. The more post production one does the more fake it becomes. I scan everything and store it chronologically.

if you had unlimited resources to purchase any type of camera, what would it be and why?

Probably a Nikon D3x to play with for fun and commercial and filming… For my art more 1860s Wetplate cameras and lenses..I love the old medium format Rolli’s i got from my dad .. I use my great grandfather’s cameras everyday.. I have enough cameras and equipment to hand down to my children’s children’s children. Which by the way none of the beautiful timeless equipment that lasts forever will be digital… digital equipment has a very very short life span, one will not hand down digital cameras … but I believe that the camera really doesn’t matter because it’s the concept that counts..

who are your favorite photographers and why?

ManRay .. Warhol, John Baldessari, Rodchenko..Josef Sudek… they were fine artists.

what has been the shining moment of your career thus far? (or, describe your “big break”)

Probably meeting Warhol. Or getting my first show in NYC gave me belief in myself and work.

do you have any tips/tricks or advice for amateur photo nerds who are looking to shoot full time or students who are just starting out?

Get involved with a photography community. Start a Salon. Enter competitions like critical mass… The things closest to you are the most rewarding. Shoot every day ..shoot everything..make a piece of art with idle hands ..think of everything you do as art …think of a painter who works on his canvas every day work on your images passionately like that . Most importantly do it for the love of doing it first not for the money. Always have a generous heart. I believe in karma payback.

what’s the soundtrack to your life and/or your favorite music to listen to while editing?

Right now i am listening to Paper Bird..we have been photographing them. I’ll usually shuffle a wide range from death metal to juno… i love female vocalists.

what’s your favorite hang (when shooting or not)?

In my everything bed/office/dinner table/tv /love making/work station (bedroom)…. where i am typing now with my puppy, kitties and girlfriend around me.

best chow (meal/snack) to get you ready for a shoot? or best way to celebrate a brilliant capture?

Z Cuisine is a French bistro on the corner that trades me amazing organic meals for art… or my favorite amazing Mexican taco stand where you have to speak Spanish to order.

will you share with us one of your favorite shots? why is this your fave?

Nymphs #1 Nudes stacked, Limited edition Silver Print Made with the Diana Camera, Created 1998,Modified, 1/17/06 Negative drum scanned , Photoshop CS Denver Co. US

Nymphs of the Danube (it started my Greek tragedy staged series) and recent Ambrotype images on blue glass.
Maria (below) I shot yesterday.

Maria blue glass ©MarkSink

your favorite photo by another photographer?

Hmmm that’s so difficult.. it changes day to day … hour by hour .. minute by minute.
Today we found out model Nettie R Harris is coming to visit and she was just photographed by Ryan McGinley – I love the image of Nettie with the hawk.

Nettie ©Ryan Mcginley

Probably my more long term fave is Gertrude Käsebier’s photo of Evelyn Nesbit…

Nesbit ©Kasebier

…next minute it will be another. It all depends on the mood I’m in.

has your passion for photography changed at all since turning “pro”?

I am happy to say my passion and search is still high. I gauge it by the dancing in the darkroom. The excitement that rushes over you when a great image appears… i start dancing and singing.

do you have a favorite / lucky item of clothing, outfit or uniform that you like to wear when shooting an important assignment or project?

My comfy Clark shoes.. with wetplate i have a rubber glove on all the time. The neighbors wonder whats going on.

are you a photography nerd or a camera gangsta?

photo nerd …gangsta when i get a few drinks in me.

what’s your sign? (we’re conducting a poll)

Aquarius on the cusp with Capricorn

who would you like to see interviewed by photopolus next?

Someone on the other side of the world.

Shannon above Lani Nymph Series 1998 Denver, CO. USA

©MarkSink If you are a photographer and would like to be featured as a future/potential Art Star on our blog, email us!
info@photopolus.com or ange@angefitzgerald.com, subject: Art Star.
*please include your website and examples of your work
____

BNC Wine Tasting with Paper Bird

2011-05-14T00:15:00.004-06:00

| community | collaboration | creation | enriching lives through innovation in dance

http://www.bncdance.com

Westword RedLine MoP review

2011-04-20T22:34:00.000-06:00

Three RedLine shows make up the Month of Photography's halo event

By Michael Paglia Tuesday, Apr 19 2011

Denver photographer Mark Sink has often worn more than one hat. In addition to taking pictures, he's built a reputation as a first-rate photo curator and ran his own exhibition venue, Gallery Sink, for many years. He also served as the interim director of MCA Denver in the '90s, and I can still remember the enormous over-the-top photo show he mounted in the old fish market where the museum was formerly housed.

But Sink is also the principal impresario behind the Month of Photography, which runs each year from mid-March to mid-April. Given his involvement with RedLine (2350 Arapahoe Street, 303-296-4448, www.redlineart.org), Sink made that venue the nerve center for the photo festivities that have taken place all over town. And he was intimately involved with the three RedLine shows that could collectively be regarded as MOP's halo event.
First is Thought Objects: New Ideas in Photography, for which Sink brought together photographers from Denver and across the country who do experimental work. Among the invitees are Sabine Aell, Justin Beard, Sterling Crispin, Conor King and Steven Read.
This leads directly into the impressive Discoveries of the Houston FotoFest, a traveling show that highlights ten invited artists, with the work of each being seen in some depth. The participants are from all over the country and were chosen by a jury at last year's FotoFest.
Finally, in the RedLine Project Room, is the other Sink-curated show, Modern Uses of Alternative Processes, which surveys contemporary photographers who employ archaic production methods and materials, as Sink himself has done. On view are handsome works by the likes of Kristen Hatgi ("Megan," pictured), Kevin O'Connell and Mario Zoots.
These museum-quality shows, each of which has been intelligently and expertly installed, run through April 26 and make it clear that when it comes to photo exhibits, Sink is one of the state's best organizers.

Illiterate Magazine

2011-04-01T10:35:00.001-06:00

http://www.illiteratemedia.com

Interview conducted by Adam Gildar

Meghan | collodion wetplate

For those people who aren't yet familiar with you and your work, could you introduce yourself and a bit about your background...

My name is Mark Sink ... my bla bla bio paragraph goes like this....

Denver native Mark Sink, photographer, curator and teacher, has been and making a living from fine art photography since 1978. He is well known for his imagery made with the toy plastic camera the Diana. Currently, also a reverse technology, he is producing collodion wet plate photographs. His personal work is in numerous museum collections as well as gallery solo and group shows in the US, South America and Europe. He is currently represented by G. Ray Hawkins in CA. Robin Rice in NY, Paul Cava in Philadelphia Rule Gallery in Denver. As a photographer of fine art he worked with and documented noted artists lives and their work such as Andy Warhol and Jean Michel Basquiat and Rene Ricard.

Leah | collodion wetplate

You come from a family with a creative history. Was there any sort of artistic torch passing that occurred between generations?

Not on purpose .. but it is natural when you grow up in and around art studios, paint stained smocks and go to art openings as family time outings. I grew up with art as a part of life.. only later did i find out that 98% rest of the world was not much into fine art and were basically afraid of any kind of contemporary art.

Kristen with Fern | collodion wetplate

To me your photographs all seem to incorporate a certain appreciation for form, be it a glass bottle or a human body. How do you feel form inhabits your work?

I have always made work more for the heart than the head. I am a romantic and find shape and sensuousness in sand dunes as much as a nude. Its is shallow and not going to make any impact in art history but I greatly enjoy universal timeless gushy beauty. It makes me very happy making it so i don't question it. I have been doing it for over 30 years and I still get those shivers or weak knees..dizzy .. In that time my refinements are very subtle.. walking a fine line making something that could easily be super corny but instead... something that is honest coming through?.. that reads in a successful sitting with someone.

Dunes | Diana Camera

You've described an interest in self staged fantasy when it comes to artwork. What is it about the fake that attracts you?

Well staged is a bit more about telling a story... being allegorical in themes like sensuality and death.

[I have] many influences from the family of staged photographers. Francesca Woodman , Witkin .. haha but now I look at him differently now that I am a Tintypist , photographing using the collodion wet plate process. The fake thing is haunting me with Peter Joel Witkin's work. A large amount of the work is just for effect faking the collodion plate process.. it's trompe l'oeil.

Fake is another subject I have been interested in recently more as a curator with others' work. We live more and more in a totally fake world. Houses made from fake materials ( fake brick and stone) fake cars and houses and credit cards that fake wealth that we don't really have the means for or can sustain. It spreads everywhere. In photography it's fake silver prints or platinum prints done by inkjet... in relationships its online. I just found these giant conventions of woman tens of thousands strong that have hyper realistic new born babies they take everywhere, and no one knows. And of course the now super realistic blow up dolls that one company was celebrating its 5 millionth sale. It goes on and on.

Julie Rising | Diana Camera

You often shoot naked women in provocative poses. How do you avoid cliche with such a universally explored and exploited subject matter?

I walk a fine line there. It's my subtlety that is hard to explain. Making it accepted with academic feminists and curators and upper tier institutions. What is it.. is it being true?.. kind of pure.. .. not faked. A lot of times I find not having eye contact helps dealing with the issue of sexual objectification. But over all being a man photographing a woman naked I am in dangerous waters. Now a woman photographing a woman naked for some reason is less exploitative and more acceptable.

Shannon above Lani | Diana Camera

Your photographs are all created with antiquated technology, and it seems that as you've moved forward in your career, the farther back in photographic technique you've gone. What is it about the methods of the past that attract you? Do you think you'll continue to regress as you progress?

Your right, I have always been into reverse technology in photography starting with pinhole and toy cameras, and now going back to when photography was 10 years old with wet plate collodion. I like the idea that light strikes the film plate and makes an image directly on that surface. Its very pure. Its like a Polaroid -- Direct and capturing fact. Fact is getting very slippery these days with digital, and more importantly how we perceive it as fact or fiction. In many and increasing cases digital photography is not allowed in the court of law as evidence anymore. It's back to my fake thing--.we live in a world of fake -- just look at every magazine cover on the news stand, all heavily touched up creating a hyper reality, a false reality.

Careful preparation of materials, equipment and models combined with a certain spontaneity seem inherent in your process. What exactly goes into creating a photograph for you?

I use lots of reference materials .. a image or painting will strike me deeply and I will pin it up on the fridge. Kristen [Hatgi] will maybe sew something, or I will find an accessory that fits. I often bring home a big bag of near expired flowers from our friend the florist. Our models in many cases are our friends, we hang out and talk. A new model pretty quickly will see we are focused on artistic concepts rather then a carnal pursuit.

Gargoyles | Diana Camera

You've worked as both a commercial and fine art photographer. What are your thoughts on the difference between the two and the overlap?

I have always hated Anne Lebowitz or Herb Ritz kind of cross overs. Photogs could do it in the 50's, 60's and 70's ..Penn, Avedon, Helmut Newton that crew could do it. Then there was Warhol and the pop artists that were wonderful mirrors of our society. Today maybe David La Chapell -- I was freinds with him by the way -- we sat on the bench together to show our portfolio to the art director of Interview magazine Mark Ballet. Another cross over I was friends with was Nan Golden---I have lots of sick stories of her-- she was around in the art scene in the 80s in NYC. " A Ballad of Sexual Dependency", she alone was the start of heroin sheik in advertising. That became the coolest thing in the ad world for awhile .. today it is Terry Richardson and or the 20phile Ryan McGinnley..

Andy 1b

I know you've discussed your time in New York with Andy Warhol and the Factory at length. So we'll skip the general story. But is there any particular experience from that time that stands out to you as indicative?

Holding his hand. Having him review my work and him remembering and asking detailed questions about that series years later. Giving him ideas that he used in his work.

Andy 11

You're one of the few people I know interested in and able to interact and connect people from a range of social ranks, from members of high society to young artists out on the edge. What do you think the different groups of people have to offer each other?

One foot in the gutter and one foot in royalty is the way to go in my book. I feel the great parties are the ones mixed with street and high society. Both will criticize and make fun of each other in their own circles, but I believe that each end has a craving to be accepted in each others' world. Young and Old ..Young learning from the old and old learning from the young I think is one of the most important things in your time line of life. Society tends to be so compartmentalized. In general we dump old people in homes and shrug off young people till they have some kind of stupid certificate. I have always liked things at the beginning, getting things started. I like having influence and setting things into motion. That all happens with young people... and its much much harder with older people. I am really amazed at how I am accepted by many young people. I feel genuinely welcomed in arts events and social gatherings.

Grace Jones | Polaroid

Speaking of people you know. You've come into contact with and studied so many different artists that I'm sure it's difficult to name everyone that has informed your work. But if you had to narrow it down to an intimate dinner party, who would you invite?

That's a cool way to put that question.. Most are dead... Dash Snow, Andy of course.. Man Ray ... John Balldessari... I'd have Terry Richardson there taking pictures and introducing us to hot models.. and powerful art directors.

Uma Thurman | Polaroid

Ok, the dinner party is over, who are the young artists you'll be looking to run wild with after the establishment goes home?

I'd take Sylvie Tillman and Dash snow and several of the crew from the New Museum's "Younger then Jesus show" to come see Illiterate and Rinoceropolis. Just like how I brought the Dutch film crew that was looking for the new bohemians in Denver.

In general, I have a long list of new hot talent I found at Houston Fotofest who I will be showing around in Denver...Lucas Folgia .. Chris Simms .. My newest find is an internet artist prankster dude, Pavel Matela, in Prague that pushed all my buttons with photo/Internet mischievousness. He fits my fake/false reality thing. There are several interesting photojournalists are driving around .. they pick interesting people to follow..live with them fully close day in and day out. Gretta Pratt's Liberty series and the Lincoln series stand out. Alli Richards too. Check out the California forest fire series. " Jesusita Summerland "

Any last words?

Try and be truthful... and pure. follow your passions.

Leo Castelli | Polaroid

Westword Best of Denver Awards

2011-03-30T21:24:00.002-06:00

The Big Picture

Perhaps because Denver is not particularly known for its street art, let alone its rich cache of artists and photographers, Month of Photography promoter Mark Sink and Illiterate Gallery decided to do something to help change the way the nation — make that the world — views us. And how. Together, they masterminded and provided the local manpower for a global exchange of photographic images, collectively titled The Big Picture, that have been blown up, Xeroxed and wheat-pasted on walls and billboards not just across Denver, but in some international locations. Photos by our local artists now grace billboards in Switzerland, while works by foreign photographers are all over our town. And lucky us: We get to find — by chance or with the Google map provided — amazing images in the most unexpected places.

Google Map

Toy Camera Work Shop

2011-03-27T21:35:00.002-06:00

TOY CAMERA WORKSHOP – Illiterate Gallery mark sink speaks….

Posted in FINE ART on March 16, 2011 by shannonmcasey

Well known photographer, Mark Sink spoke at Illiterate Gallery – located on 82 South Broadway in Denver, Colorado. There is too much to say about his career and artworld. In a nutshell…..Mark is a well respected photographer, both in the fine art and commercial industry – locally and world wide. He is also a respected curator and highly responisble for Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Lately, he’s been working especially hard on pushing the photography sceen in Colorado. He has a big hand in the photography buzzing around Denver this month.
It was a crisp overcast March afternoon. We all sat around the table as Mark pulled out loads of assorted toy cameras, which were carefully protected in bubble wrap. It was entertaining. What’s a toy camera you ask? Well….we looked at equipment, ranging from a 1901 Kodak Brownie (that’s not actually a toy but an old film camera), to a late 1980′s fisher price children’s camera that spits out fax paper with a photograph. I held a $1200 market value bugs bunny camera…. “what’s up doc”, and looked at various polariod cameras. Of course, Mark brought his infamous Diana camera. Mark and Diana go way back in time. He has his own chapter of photographs in the Diana Camera book. If you purchase a modern day Diana it comes with a nice little book with a display of impressive photography from photographers who have used the Diana. Of course, we were introduced to the slightly hilarious bioncular style Andy Warhol polaroid camera, (which everyone should own, just for party conversation) – the list of cameras went on and on. Mark has a history working with Andy Warhol, and we enjoyed some stories about that as well. His excitement about photography is wicked contagious. Everyone got to tinker with the cameras and take photos. We are all anxious to meet again and see what we’ve photographed. Selected images will be blown up and wheat pasted to an approved outdoor location. There are already photographs wheat pasted all over the Denver metro area. Wheat pasting is a process of adhering paper to buildings and other surfaces, and it’s being used in The Big Picture Show. The photographs are submitted in grayscale and then blown up on an architectural copier. After that, they are adhered to approved locations with the wheat paste, like buildings and walls. One location is the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art’s building. This process is not only happening in Denver, but also locations across the world, including Jamaica, France, Italy, Mexico, Switzerland, Netherlands. +more. There is fantastic photography to be seen in this show and it’s so different. You should not miss it. Every copy of the photographs are sold for $50, so people can afford to buy some really excellent art. Mark says that he’s seeing young kids purchase art and this is very exciting. Let the BIG PICTURE roll!
There is a lot of talk about what is photography anymore. Is digital a sham? Is it not valid? I don’t have the answer to that. I value photography’s ability to create “traces” and “memories”, rather than getting caught up on the medium.
Alternative processes like polariod transfers, cyanotypes, playing on xerox copiers, and just tinkering around with creating images is all photography as well. I believe I was provoked by my instructor, Craig Coleman to think about photography outside the box of pretty pictures. Anyone I went to school with loved Craig’s classes.
I’m going to bore you for a second here with a defination about photography.
The word photography is based on the Greek φῶς (photos) “light” and γραφή (graphé) “representation by means of lines” or “drawing”, together meaning “drawing with light”.
What does that mean?
First of all, it reverts back to the fact that the main element needed for photography is light, it doesn’t say anything about film or digital, but light and lines. hmmmmm… Secondly, you can’t honestly be a photographer if you aren’t keenly interested in light. Moreover, you can’t get serious about taking photographs without considering the light source. Photographers chase light, they study it, they know where it will be during different seasons and times. We genuinely think about light. Often noticing it’s beauty and making a mental note of the time of day. We bounce it around, turn it into colors, and eventually learn how to use strobes, and flash, and bounce natural light. This is true about photography. Lights and cameras go together like peas and carrots (it can be natural light too). There isn’t that old expression “Lights, cameras, action” for nothing ya know? This holds true to film and digital. Here’s the biggest common factor about film and digital cameras. A camera will screw you without notice, without an explaination or apology, and if you looooove photography, you’ll always forgive her. It’s like this sick relationship you’ll never end. haha I am being funny. In my opinion, all photography processes have an element of chance. I have a love and respect for film and darkroom. Anyone who’s worked with film knows it’s magical. Film has a fablous soul all of it’s own. In my fast paced mommy life, I enjoy my full frame digital though. Now I sit in my laundry room and flip loads of laundry while editing my photographs. I like it. I also print on awesome fine art papers at home, and then cover them with resin coating. My iphone has around 10,000 high resolution jpegs, which I carry in my pocket, carry in my purse, use to ring my husband….whatever. I continue to take photos everyday of random moments – driving my family crazy. Mostly of my kids, and stuff I would otherwise never catch. I miss working in a darkroom….it’s true, and I feel like a cheap digital tramp around my fine art friends (they’d laugh), but honestly, film and digital are each fascinating in their own ways.
MONTH OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Denver Post

2011-03-22T09:50:00.002-06:00

arts and entertainment

A very big month for Colorado photography

Three galleries put focus on Colorado artists' work

By Kyle MacMillan
Denver Post Fine Arts Critic

Posted: 03/21/2011 07:54:14 PM MDT

Updated: 03/22/2011 06:16:50 AM MDT

Kristen Hatgi's "Kelsea" is a wet-plate collodian print on display in Flash Gallery's "Feminine Influence" show. (Provided by Flash Gallery )

Heavy-hitters, up-and-comers and unknowns.
They can all be seen during Denver's Month of Photography, which incorporates more than 100 exhibitions in art spaces across the region.
While dozens of the photographers featured are from other states and abroad, offerings at three of Denver's smaller galleries — each with its own intriguing tack — put the spotlight primarily on Colorado artists.
If you're trying to sort out which shows are worth a stop, the three that follow deserve a look.
Among the most engaging is Flash Gallery's "Feminine Influence," which features 28 artists — all but two from the state. In a twist, they were each asked to name one or more women who have had an impact on

Ian Fisher's charcoal on paper, above, "Donovan Landreth #4" (2008 , 21 by 18 inches) is based on a family photograph of his grandfather. It is part of "Double Diptych" at Vertigo Art Space. (Provided by Colorado Photographic Arts Center)

their work. The answers — some just a listing of a name and others longer reflections — range from widely known artists such as Yoko Ono and Vija Celmins, to less familiar ones like Sarah-Jane Lynagh, an up-and-coming Irish photographer and video artist.
To curate this show, the gallery turned to the well-connected Denver artist Katie Taft. She first chose participants whose work she already knew and respected, but she also took recommendations from those initial artists.
As its name implies, Flash normally shows only photography. But it made an exception in allowing Taft to include a small portion of artists who work in painting, video and installation.
That exception allowed her to include two small, hushed gems by fast-rising painter Nathan Abels, including "Drift," depicting a partially shrouded parachutist dropping through the clouds.
Also on view are Kay Tuttle's mixed-media homages to Hannah Höch, book artist Alicia Bailey's jigsaw-puzzle-like constructions, Greg Cradick's humorous imaginings of a "maculist" movement and Cornelia Peterson's black-and- white print, "Nameless and Uncomfortable, She Tried to Exist," with its unsettling echoes of Ralph Eugene Meatyard.

David Sharpe's pinhole photograph, "Eastern Phenomena #12," is included in "Traditionally Unconventional" at Edge Gallery. (Provided by Edge Gallery)

In a Colorado Photographic Arts Center show running through April 15 at the Vertigo Art Space, curator Rupert Jenkins asked eight Colorado artists, who all work with photography to each create two diptychs for the show.
Monique Crine, who has just won a prestigious grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, fashions fastidiously realized oil paintings obviously based on photographs. One pairing consists of a striking backlit photo of a boy in his bedroom, "Zach, Hiding Face" and a related painting, "Zach, With Light," with the same kid's face awash in light, and light dots visible in the background.
Ian Fisher creates dynamic drawings of figures that are reminiscent of Robert Longo's windblown business people from the

"The Rabbit Died" is part of a new series by University of Denver associate professor Carol Golemboski. (Provided by Edge Gallery)

1980s. One such drawing, "Donovan Landreth #4," (2008), is paired as a diptych with the accompanying photograph on which it was based — a 1950s-era image of the artist's grandfather. In "Traditionally Unconventional," an exhibition running through Sunday at the Edge Gallery, curators Jessica Ellis and John Davenport put the accent on photographers who employ traditional processes and historical techniques in new ways.
Examples of the latter include David Zimmer's "The Letter," side- by-side images viewed through an antique stereoscope; Kristen Hatgi's revival of the wet-plate collodian process and Dave Seiler's fastidiously crafted updates on the mutoscope, an early cinematic device.
Other highlights include

Monique Crine's oil painting "Zach, With Light," above, is paired with the photo "Zach, Hiding Face," below, as part of a diptych project by the Colorado Photographic Arts Center at Vertigo gallery. (Provided by Vertigo Art Space)

two recent black-and-white photographs by the ever-enigmatic Carol Golemboski and recent examples of David Sharpe's pinhole images, including the striking "Eastern Phenomena No. 12," depicting a stop sign lined with flashing red lights. Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com

Three exhibitions as part of Denver's Month of Photography

"feminine influence." Mixed media. Flash Gallery, 445 S. Saulsbury St., Lakewood. Katie Taft invited 28 artists — all but two from Colorado — to take part in this primarily photo-based exhibition. Participants were asked to name women who have had an impact on their work in some way. Through April

(Provided by Vertigo Art Space)

23. Noon to 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and noon to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Free. 303-837-1341 or workingwithartists.org "double diptych." Mixed media. Vertigo Art Space, 960 Santa Fe Drive. Curator Rupert Jenkins invited eight Denver-area artists, who all use photography in one way or another in their work, to each present two diptychs. Included are Monque Crine, John Davenport, Ian Fisher, Cinthea Fiss, Greg Friedler, Conor King, Kate Levy and Edie Winograde. Through April 15. 2 to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays and 1 to 4 p.m. Saturdays. Free. 303-573-8378 or vertigoartspace.com
"traditionally unconventional." Photography. Curators Jessica Ellis and John Davenport invited 18 artists to participate in this show, which examines contemporary takes on traditional photographic processes and techniques. Through Sunday. 7 to 10 p.m. Friday and 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Free. 720-939-4107 or edgeart.org

Read more: A very big month for Colorado photography - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/art/ci_17667670#ixzz1HLNxD9lK
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse

Denver Voice

2011-03-07T07:58:00.000-07:00

Thursday

Mar032011

A Month of Photography with Mark Sink

Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 11:13AM

By Anne Arden McDonaldInterview & Text by Travis Egedy
Mark Sink is kind of a big deal. I have known him for years, and outside of being a good friend, he has always been a supporter and champion of the underground art community. As a young emerging artist in a city that sometimes chooses not to care about such things, Mark has always been there getting people to pay attention. He is actually one of the reasons that the term “Denver art community” is even something to be written about. He is directly responsible for Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and is basically behind or involved somehow in most of our cities coolest and more progressive art happenings, most notably the “Month of Photography,” taking place throughout Denver this month and into April.
During the Month of Photography (or MOP), over one hundred galleries, concert venues, warehouses and museum spaces will be filled with photographs from hundreds of artists both from Denver and all over the world. The idea is to create dialogue between the city and the art scene and to celebrate the medium he loves, all the while allowing scores of relatively unknown photographers a chance to have their work recognized and seen. This can only be positive, and Mark speaks of his wish that MOP will be able to transform Denver’s urban landscape into a canvas that can be beautified.
I spoke with Mark in his kitchen over some tea about MOP and the beautification of Denver.
By Curtis Wehrfritz

TE: To me, you are someone who is a very important fixture in the Denver art community, even a legend of sorts, but for the readers who maybe don’t know, can you tell me a little bit about who you are and what you do here in Denver?

MS: I am a photographer, curator, art activist. I get myself involved with many art related projects, like getting the Museum of Contemporary Art going. I co-founded it.

You started that in the 90’s right?

Yeah, the early 90’s. Some of the very first board meetings took place in my back yard. Our very first “action item” was to make a bumper sticker that said “wanted: a Contemporary Art Museum.” After that people really stepped up to bat and started supporting us … the main one was Sue Cannon. She paid the paychecks, so our pistons started firing. I was director for a year, and it was a great year. It turned into a photography museum basically; I showed three big nature photography shows.

How did you get started in photography and what is your main interest in it?

Photography started at Metro. I was in printmaking and painting...

This was way back?

(laughs) This was WAY back, this was in the 70’s baby. Bellbottoms. Boy if we could have some of our clothes now that we wore then... anyways, I had always loved photography, but what was the big breakthrough was to go to a class that said you could make ART with your camera. That idea hadn’t really dawned on me. Photography as fine art was not being taught in the schools at that time. Fine art photography as a medium to make artwork did not exist. I had a wonderful teacher that said the camera didn’t matter, so I found a little plastic Diana camera from my childhood that had a roll of film in it that I ended up developing. It was pictures of my mother that I had taken from knee height as a tiny little kid. It blew my mind. To see the optics of this tiny plastic toy camera, that was my golden door. Most of my career was that Diana camera. After school I moved to New York, and I was lucky enough my work started to get recognized. I was doing commercial work. I shot bands and basically anything that moved. In the early 80’s of course, a big bubble change was meeting Andy Warhol; that busted this sad little art student kid right out of the universe.

So let’s talk about the Month of Photography. March in Denver is known as the Month of Photography, or MOP, and that is your brainchild, you started it. What is it exactly?

MOP is stirring up all of the art galleries and art institutions to celebrate photography for a month or more. I am a big believer in power in numbers. It’s just very interesting when you send these tops spinning; they create their own media. The next thing you know you have a whole bag of people spinning, and the talk is around the town. It gains its own momentum.

We started off thinking it would be about 50 galleries, and then the galleries grew up to 80 galleries, then we celebrated when there was 100 galleries.

By Mark Sink

I didn’t even know there were 100 galleries in town!
Well it’s all down the front-range. There [are] 20 venues in Boulder, a handful in Fort Collins. There is something like 120 events going on.

What are some of the exhibitions you are most excited about?
Well of course the one we are doing at Redline, but the big banger, top job one is our “Big Picture” show. It is catching on worldwide. We have work coming from Shanghai, Paris, several from Russia, all over. We are going to post it all over Denver, and we are sending work from Denver out to all these places.

What do you mean post it all over Denver?
We are wheat-pasting in approved sites, and it is going to be in the Illiterate gallery and in the Theory and Practice gallery. We are printing two of each piece so that it might be in a gallery and on the side of a building at the same time. We have the side of Crema coffee, the Hi Dive, all different places.

By Tina Kazakhishvili

Is this the first year it has been really international like this?
Yes. We proposed the show at Illiterate and I said, let’s do big Xeroxes. Let’s get people from other countries! We did an international calling …We have people flying in from all over the place.

It’s exciting, but there are issues of course. It brings up the issue that Denver is basically street art free. It’s because of this mob boss style graffiti task force program, who keep presenting harsher and harsher bills for mandatory jail times and felonies. Grand larceny! not just larceny, but grand larceny, like robbing a bank with a gun, and that is messed up. Any other city in the world has beautiful street art programs. Everyone is kind of nervous.

By David Tippit

Do you think that all the wheat pasting you will be doing has the potential to hopefully change Denver’s opinion on street art? I mean, think about how beautiful it will be to be seeing these huge photographs on the sides of buildings!
Or dumpsters!

I know, it’s a freaking dumpster, why not have an image on it?
Well that’s my point. This is my first time as seeing through the eyes of a tagger. It’s addicting, finding those grey zones. Those closed buildings, the boarded up buildings, abandoned places. I don’t really consider this “street art;” that is a whole canon. The canon of street art is radicalism that is in your face, almost as a “fuck you” kind of thing. I am more interested in beautification. I am more romantic about it; it is an art beautification project.

So this is a big part of the Month of Photography—this aspect of it being beyond the gallery walls?
Well the idea is to bring people and the world closer together through photography, and the street project really hits that on the head. So much is going on throughout the month. The Denver Art Museum will be having a great show, Museo de las Americas will have one of the best shows in the city—it’s just killer. It is of female Mexican photographers. It is a must see show. The pieces are priceless and took a lot to get out of museum collections and stuff to even be here. There are two Warhol shows going on.

It seems MOP gives a chance to a lot of photographers to be seen who otherwise wouldn’t be. Photography shows seem rare in Denver, and I know a lot of photographers have a hard time showing their work. Was this one of the reasons you started MOP? To allow these artists to be seen?

Oh, totally. It is an incredible opportunity for photographers to be able to submit their work to the best galleries in Denver. One of the big parts of MOP is the portfolio review. Painters and sculptors don’t have this opportunity to sit down for a half an hour to show your work to directors of museums, curators, and art dealers, not only just for advice but you get a chance to break into that world. You can be discovered. You can enter to do that on our website. In Houston, this same portfolio review costs $1,200; in Denver we are doing it for $30 bucks—it’s amazing.

It is a celebration of photography, and it brings dialogue on photography, and like this street art dialogue. It is a good thing. We are getting press inquiries from magazines all over the world asking us “What is up with Denver?” everyone is really interested in it. It is an important thing for the city.

For any and all information about MOP visit: http://monthofphotography.blogspot.com/

Anne Arden McDonald, Curtis Wehrfritz, David Tippit, Mark Sink, Month of Photography, Tina Kazakhishvili, Travis Egedy

As We See Them Opens in KI Gallery

2011-02-17T12:04:00.000-07:00

Home » Winter 2011 » As We See Them Opens in KI Gallery

As We See Them Opens in KI Gallery

Charles West
KWRV2 #1, 2007.
Cyanotype.

Organized by guest curators Herbert Ascherman, Jr. and Jeannette Palsa, As We See Them presents the work of eleven artists who are using some of the earliest photographic processes to create contemporary images dealing with sexuality and the human figure. This diverse group of photographers has put aside digital technology to explore the possibilities of these 19th-century processes.
Featured works include cyanotypes by Patrick Alt and Charles West, platinum-palladium prints by Herbert Ascherman, Jr. and Jeannette Palsa, gum bichromate prints by Laurent Benaïm, photogravures by Constantine Gedal, tintypes by Cynthia Greig, ambrotypes by Ed Ross, daguerreotypes by Charlie Schreiner, and aluminum-types by Mark Sink and Kristen Hatgi.
On Thursday, February 3rd, noted photographer and guest curator Herbert Ascherman, Jr. presented a public lecture on the history of the nude in photography in France, England and the United States from photography's inception in 1839 to the turn of the last century, using examples from The Kinsey Institute collection and the current show, As We See Them.

Photographer and guest curator Herbert Ascherman Jr.

The history of the nude in photography is the history of the development of photography itself. Following in the footsteps of the Renaissance painters, it was only natural that the earliest 19th century photographers turned to the human form for inspiration and titillation. Ascherman explored the development of the daguerreotype, tintype, and other photographic processes in the 19th century, and also discussed the censorship of erotic imagery in photographs in Europe and the United States.
The exhibit is showing from January 21 - April 1, 2011 at the Kinsey Institute Gallery.
The Kinsey Institute Gallery is open 1:30 pm to 5:00 pm weekdays or by appointment. Admission is free. Visitors should be 18 years of age or older, unless accompanied by a parent or guardian. The Kinsey Institute Gallery is located in Indiana University’s Morrison Hall, 1165 E. Third Street (behind Memorial Hall), Bloomington, IN. 812-855-7686.

Warhol in Colorado: Mark Sink's 15 Minutes of Fame

2011-01-31T04:10:00.000-07:00

Art

Warhol in Colorado: Mark Sink's 15 Minutes of Fame

By Susan Froyd, Fri., Jan. 21 2011 @ 1:12PM

Mark Sink: "Andy Warhol, Mountain Man," Colorado, 1982.

When the exhibit Warhol in Colorado opens for public viewing today at DU's Myhren Gallery, one of the show's major components will include photos taken of Warhol by Colorado photographers in the early '80s, when the pop artist visited Fort Collins amid much hoopla for a major exhibition of his works, assembled by noted collectors Jon and Kimiko Powers, at the Colorado State University campus. Mark Sink was both a bicycle racer and an aspiring photographer when Andy Warhol came to Fort Collins, in town himself for a bike race (during which he crashed near finish line, resulting in a bad case of road rash). When he heard that Andy Warhol was in town, he jumped at the chance to meet the pop-art icon.
"I went on a mission to find Andy. I kept asking people, 'Have you seen Andy?' And they would say, 'Oh, I saw him here, I saw him there.' So I kept looking, opening and closing doors, and then I opened a door, and there was Andy sitting there signing posters by himself. He was super happy to see me, so I sat down with him. I got to tell him how much I loved Interview and how I was an aspiring photographer, and by the next month my name was on the masthead of Interview.

Mark Sink: "Portrait of Andy Warhol" (detail), 1982.

"He loved to have fresh, young, bushy-tailed kids at his side, and he said, 'Come with me. Let's go find the others,' so we walked onto campus. I was so naive, but when I saw the guys he was with, I realized, 'Oh, he's like a giant queen!' But we all hung out on the campus lawn, and we lit up some joints, and I took pictures. And then he said, 'You're welcome to come back to our funny little motel.' So I jumped in my Volkswagen and was racing to the motel, and I got pulled over by the police. But they let me go when I explained what was going on; they were really sweet about it. So I go there, and Andy asks me, 'Can I take pictures of your scrapes?' And I said, 'Of course.'" At which point Sink obediently dropped trou in front of the motel room while Warhol took this now-infamous shot of the fit and tan young bike racer's road rash and skivvies.

Andy Warhol: Mark Sink, September 1981, outside Andy Warhol's motel room, Fort Collins, CO.

Sink also stood in the legendary two-mile line to get Warhol's autograph, but it was worth the wait: "He signed every page of my portrait book. I brought anything I had that had to do with Andy, and he signed every single thing. He even drew me a penis with a money sign on it. Andy had a little bit of a crush on me."

Mark Sink: "Crash (Don Helping Smiling Andy Up)," Colorado, 1982.

And of his own photographs of Warhol, of which there are many, Sink says: "I never considered these fine art or celebrity art. I consider most of them lucky-to-be-there snapshots. I liked getting him smiling and out of his persona, instead of that empty gaze he did, just to show that he had a great sense of humor. He was actually really fun, especially after a couple vodka tonics. He was very knowledgeable in art history, and he collected Navajo rugs and and turquoise and silver. My mom grew up in Santa Fe, so when he'd go there on shopping trips, he'd say, 'Tell me about this, tell me about that.' The main thing is that he was just a sponge of art and history. He was always asking questions."

Tags:

Andy Warhol, John and Kimiko Powers, Mark Sink, Myhren Gallery, Warhol in Colorado

Fetes welcome "Warhol in Colorado" show

2011-01-31T03:58:00.002-07:00

Fetes welcome "Warhol in Colorado" show

By Joanne Davidson
Denver Post Society Columnist

Posted: 01/27/2011 01:00:00 AM MST

Decor at the Cable Center. "The Happening," the opening of the "Warhol in... (Steve Peterson)

Philae Dominick in front of the Chairman Mao prints that she lent to the exhibit. ( Photos by Steve Peterson, Special to The Denver Post )

Aside from the Campbell's Soup cans and famous faces that defined his iconic art, Andy Warhol is most famous for having said, in 1968, that "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes."

So of course we're thinking that it would have been pretty cool if the opening party for "Warhol in Colorado" had lasted only 15 minutes.
Maybe not.
As it was, the two hours set aside for Thursday's VIP preview was barely long enough for 300 fans of the Master of Pop Art to absorb and enjoy 100 original works — and assorted memorabilia — that will be at the University of Denver's Victoria H. Myhren Gallery through March 13.
It was important to keep track of the time, though, because the evening had a Part II: A 1960s, New York club scene-influenced Warhol Happening at the neighboring Cable Center.
There, guests could enjoy deejay music and a Gourmet Fine Catering buffet that was a throwback to the days when pigs in a blanket were a cocktail-hour staple and a stiff martini or scotch on the rocks was a beverage of choice.
So how did a Warhol exhibit end up at DU and why was a venue as high- tech as the Cable Center chosen for the party? "Although thinly documented until now, Warhol visited Colorado approximately a half-dozen times in the late 1970s and early '80s," explains gallery director Dan Jacobs, who curated the exhibit with Rupert Jenkins, president of the Colorado Photographic Arts Center. "Our goal is to recapture the significance of his impact on the regional art scene by reaching out to numerous organizations, individuals and philanthropists who have connections (of varying degrees) to him."
Denver resident Philae Dominick, for example, lent her set of 10 original, hand-finished silkscreen prints of Chairman Mao. Valere Harris Shane, also of Denver, worked for Interview, the magazine Warhol co-founded, and provided contact sheets and black-and- white prints that

Valere Shane and daughter, Bayley, stand beside images she took of Warhol when she worked for Interview magazine.

she shot of him with supermodel Cheryl Tiegs, gossip columnist Liz Smith and others. Photographers John Bonath and Mark Sink chronicled Warhol's visits to Aspen, and many of those images are included in the exhibit, as is a poster that gallery namesake Victoria Myhren had Warhol autograph when she shared an elevator ride with him at the Denver Art Museum.
Warhol, who died after gallbladder surgery in 1987, also experimented with computer imaging and cable-television programming, which inspired Myhren and her opening night co-chairs Lauren Cannon Davis and Alexis Hart to keep the Cable Center's multiscreen video tower filled with snippets from the artist's jet-setting life.

Lauren Cannon Davis, left, and Alexis Hart, co-chairs of the Warhol opening party.

Myrhen and her husband, Trygve, are principal sponsors of "Warhol in Colorado," along with Trish and Ralph Nagel, J.P. Morgan, the Cable Center and the University of Denver, whose chancellor, Robert Coombe, was at the opening with his wife, Julanna Gilbert.Christopher Hill, who became dean of DU's Josef Korbel School of International Studies after serving as U.S. ambasssador to Iraq, was there with his wife, Julie, as were Denver Art Museum president Cathey Finlon and her husband, Dick; Vance Kirkland Museum founder Hugh Grant and his wife, Merle Chambers; Tom Whitten and his wife, Michelle, with her parents, John and Anna Sie; Jane Hamilton; Bob and

The DU gallery is named after Vicki Myhren, with her husband, Trygve Myhren; and Lisza Gulyas, an event sponsor. (Steve Peterson)

Judi Newman; Michele Mosko Fine Art owner Michele Mosko; Clara Villarosa; Dr. Kelly McAleese; Gail Berliner; Linda Bowen Scott; Thom Wise; Stevie and Dr. Art Strasburger; Will Joseph; Pam Hill and Dr. John Grossman; George Ann and Buzz Victor; Dianne Eddolls and Glenn Jones; Janis Hampton; Barry and Arlene Hirschfeld; Sue McFarlane; Roselyn Saunders and Dan Sharp; Layne and Craig Fleishman; and Lisza Gulyas, whose VuConcepts was one of the evening's sponsors. The Victoria H. Myhren Gallery, 2121 E. Asbury Ave., is open daily from noon to 6 p.m. Admission is free.

More online
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Andy Warhol in Colorado

2011-01-31T03:53:00.000-07:00

"Andy Warhol in Colorado" exhibit at DU's Myhren Gallery an ambitious offering

Mass-media visionary's art feels brand new at DU

By Kyle MacMillan
Denver Post Fine Arts Critic

Posted: 01/28/2011 01:00:00 AM MST

In this 1981 photo by John Bonath, a tired-looking Andy Warhol stretches out on his hotel bed after spending hours signing autographs during an appearance at Colorado State University. (Collection of the artist )

In a time when pop culture reigns supreme, Andy Warhol still counts among its royalty.
The art world's answer to Marshall McLuhan, he grasped the converging power of mass media and mass marketing in the 1960s and '70s and cannily prefigured today's instant communication and social networking.
Drawing inspiration from advertising, celebrity culture and anything underground or outre, Warhol made low art the new high art and set the stage for much of what was to come in the following decades.
That the famed pop artist's work remains as contemporary and relevant as ever, nearly a quarter-century after his death, goes far in explaining the local buzz around a newly opened exhibition at the University of Denver's Myhren

Warhol's manipulated, pop-influenced style can be seen in "Mao 3," part of a 1972 suite of screen-prints depicting Mao Tse-tung. ( Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ Artists Rights Society, New York )

Gallery — "Warhol in Colorado."

Although hardly a full-fledged retrospective and lacking much in the way of major works by the artist, it is nonetheless an ambitious offering, complete with an accompanying 68-page, magazine-style catalog.
The show, co-curated by Myhren director Dan Jacobs and Rupert Jenkins, contains more than 100 objects — photographs, original prints, graphics and assorted other works by Warhol, as well as images and memorabilia related to him.
Its springboard was a 2008 gift of 158 Warhol photographs — Polaroids and silver prints — from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in a bid to boost the display and study of this area of his artistry.
Beginning in 2007, the foundation distributed more than 28,000 of the artist's photos (still just a fraction of the estimated 100,000-150,000 images that exist) to 183 university galleries and museums across the United States, including three in Colorado.
The undertaking was a brilliant win-win for everyone. It kept these works from languishing unseen in storage, and it gave institutions, which could otherwise afford to acquire little if anything by this artist, a substantive body of his work.
Among the DU images are Polaroid snapshots, which Warhol used as the basis for his portraits, and images that served as a kind of photographic diary of his expansive, celebrity-driven social milieu.
The Myhren Gallery could have simply exhibited a portion of the donation, and that probably would have been interesting enough. But to their credit, Jacobs and Jenkins greatly expanded the show's scope, borrowing supplementary objects from nearly 20 private and public collections.
Several of these loans, such as "Golden Mushroom," a 1969 silk-screen from the Campbell's Soup II series, and the "Campbell's Souper Dress" (1967-68), both quintessential examples of Warhol's famous appropriations of the iconic soup can, provide a telling introduction to his work.
Also highly representative is a 1972 set of eight silk-screened portraits of Mao Tse-tung, (another of Warhol's favorite subjects), created in the artist's trademark manipulated, pop-influenced style with eye- catching, saturated colors.
A fascinating subset in the show is a group of more than a dozen of Warhol's less widely known album covers, including a contact- sheet-like look for "This Is John Wallowitch" (1964) and the Rolling Stones' "Sticky Fingers (1971), with an actual zipper built into the design.
In a catalog essay on the covers, Darrin Alfred, AIGA associate curator of graphic design, wrote that these undertakings were the artist's "most constant vehicle of production" from 1949 until his death in 1987.
As suggested by the title, part of the exhibition is devoted to documenting Warhol's trips to Colorado, including a visit to Fort Collins in 1981 for an an exhibition of his work at Colorado State University.
In images such as "Warhol Signing at CSU Fort Collins," depicting eager autograph-seekers, photographer John Bonath, then on the school's faculty, captured the sensation that the artist's appearance obviously sparked.
There are several memorable portraits taken during his time in the state, including the whimsically titled "Andy Warhol, Mountain Man, Colorado" (1982), by Denver photographer Mark Sink, who met the artist at CSU and became part of his circle in New York City.
Also notable is "Portrait of Andy Warhol at the Denver Art Museum" (1977) by Lloyd Rule, then the museum's staff photographer. The unusual four-way image shows the artist seated in the corner of a Larry Bell glass sculpture, contemplating his reflections.
Warhol was an artistic bellwether of his time, and his pop-tinged vision still sharply resonates today.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com

"WARHOL IN COLORADO."

Art. Myhren Gallery, University of Denver, Shwayder Art Building, 2121 E. Asbury Ave. Photographs, original prints and other works by Andy Warhol are on view along with photographs of Warhol and memorabilia related to him and his visits to Colorado. In all more than 100 objects are included from DU's holdings and nearly 20 other public and private collections. Noon to 6 p.m. daily. Free. 303- 871-3716 or du.edu/art/myhrengallery.html.

"WARHOL + 1."

Film series. Denver FilmCenter/Colfax, 2510 E. Colfax Ave. The Denver Film Society is presenting a series of four films exploring key figures in Andy Warhol's life: artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, socialite Edie Sedgwick, filmmaker Danny Williams and actress Candy Darling. 7 p.m. Tuesdays in Febuary. 303-595-3456 or denverfilm.org.

Related --

Fetes welcome "Warhol in Colorado" show

Dale Chisman

2011-01-13T09:54:00.001-07:00

REDLINE is opening the retrospective of one of my most cherished friends Dale Chisman. He inspired countless including co-founding MCA Denver.. He is one of the most amazing honest and pure abstract painters Colorado has ever produced. His passing has been a giant hole our art community and my life. I hope you come and celebrate the life of this great artist.

The Kinsey Institute Show

2011-01-10T09:58:00.002-07:00

As We See Them:

Exotic and Erotic Images from

Contemporary Alternative Process Photographers

New Exhibition in The Kinsey Institute Gallery

January 21 through April 1, 2011

Morrison Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington

As We See Them presents the work of eleven international photographic artists who are using 19th century Alternative Processes to create contemporary photographs which image sexuality and the human figure. Featured works include cyanotypes by Patrick Alt and Charles West, platinum-palladium prints by Herbert Ascherman Jr. and Jeannette Palsa, gum bichromate prints by Laurent Benaïm, photogravures by Constantine Gedal, tintypes by Cynthia Greig, ambrotypes by Ed Ross, daguerreotypes by Charlie Schreiner, and aluminum-types by Mark Sink and Kristen Hatgi.

Opening reception: Friday, January 21, 5:00 - 7:00 pm, The Kinsey Institute Gallery, Morrison Hall (second floor).

This event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be provided.

Mark and Meghan summer 2010

Marcy and Apple blossoms spring 2010

Leah Summer 2010 - Kinsey Collection -

Lauren and chastity belt summer 2010

Warhol in Colorado

2010-12-20T18:43:00.000-07:00

‘Warhol in Colorado’–Memories and Memorabilia

December 20, 2010

Andy Warhol: Mark Sink, Fort Collins, September, 1981. Gelatin silver print. 8 3/4 x 6 in. image size. © 2010 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. University of Denver Art Collections.

Mark Sink had been among several cyclists at the head of the pack in a 1981 Colorado state championship in Fort Collins. The trio somehow got tangled and crashed, and Sink got “road rash,” scrapes and bruises, up and down his legs and arms.
Recovering, Sink, a photographer, heard from a friend that Andy Warhol was in town for an exhibit of his work assembled by local pop-art collectors John and Kimiko Powers. Sink roamed around the Colorado State University campus asking people, “Have you seen Andy?” and opening the doors of classrooms. Finally, in one, there was Warhol, sitting by himself signing posters.
Warhol’s handlers had run off to get him something to eat, says Sink, and “he was thrilled to see me.” Sink told Warhol how much he loved Interview magazine, sat with Warhol and a few members of his entourage on the campus lawn, then headed to Warhol’s motel so that the famed artist could grab a nap before the opening.
Sink told Warhol about the bike crash, and Warhol wanted, per his custom, to take pictures of the wounds. “Click click click click click,” is how Sink describes Warhol’s modus operandi. And thus it was that Sink was trousers down outside a motel having his picture taken by Andy Warhol (just as John Powers and a college president happened to be walking near).
Like a number of moments snapped by Warhol or Sink, that one will be included in an exhibit at the University of Denver’s Myhren Gallery from January 20 through March 13, 2011. “Warhol in Colorado” is structured around 158 Warhol Polaroids and silver prints given to the University of Denver in 2008 by the Warhol Foundation. About two-thirds of the exhibit consists of Warhol’s work, and the other third comprising photos of Warhol and ephemera from Warhol’s trips West.
Warhol’s 1981 visit was one of about a half-dozen to Colorado in the 70s and 80s, says Dan Jacobs, director of the Myhren Gallery and co-curator of the exhibit. The Warhol Foundation gave gifts of the artist’s work to some 180 museums and galleries, so Jacobs asked himself how he could put together a Warhol show in a way that “would be relevant and interesting but not trying to compete with the truly major exhibits.”
Warhol’s time in Colorado seemed like a good theme. And just as Warhol’s visits pulled the Colorado Rockies art community together three decades ago, the new exhibit, Jacobs says, pools items drawn from the University of Denver, Colorado State University in Fort Collins, and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Tied in, Jacobs says, will be a gala sponsored by the Cable Center, four nights of Warhol-related films shown by the Denver Film Society, and a lecture at the Denver Art Museum.
Jacobs says that before the phrase developed its Web resonance, social networking was “part of [Warhol's] artistic practice,” and Jacobs sees the exhibit and related events as a chance to “reactivate a lot of those connections.”

Mark Sink: Andy Warhol in cabin doorway, Colorado, 1982. 10 x 8 in., gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the artist.

Warhol’s longest Colorado stays were a little more than a week, Jacobs says. In addition to schmoozing with collectors, curators, and artists, he went to Aspen to learn how to ski, “wearing a huge fur hat that took the place of his wig.”
And he snowmobiled, too—once to his great peril, says Sink. Warhol’s friend John was piloting their snowmobile behind Sink, who had a hand in the snow, jetting the snow up in a little blinding spray over John’s goggles. Sink looked back to see Warhol’s snowmobile flying off a little cliff. “I’ve killed the Prince of Pop!” was Sink’s first thought. “We all gasped and got up,” went to look, and Warhol “was laughing and rolling in the snow. I have pictures of it all. Some of my favorite pictures of him are of him breaking up laughing. I have hundreds and hundreds of contact sheets that have never been published.
“Eventually that might be my retirement pay, Andy reaching up out of his grave, saying ‘Here you go, Mark!’”
The snowmobile day ended fine. “We went down and had Mexican TV dinners with ice cream on glazed donuts,” Sink recalls. Then a private jet became available and they drove Warhol to the airport.
The artist invited Sink to come to New York, and Sink lived there for about a decade, with one foot in the art scene—Warhol’s Factory, Sink’s own studio in Chelsea, taking portrait shots of Jean-Michel Basquiat and other contemporary-art luminaries—and the other foot making ends meet by photo-editing for a heavy-metal rock magazine, Circus, and for MGF. (“Sadly, I don’t like heavy metal,” says Sink, who also tried introducing artsier fair to turn MGF into kind of a Self for guys, but “the stupider we made it, the better it sold . . . ’10 Ways to Build Your Pecs’ … ‘Best Pickup Lines’ …”
The Factory gang was cliquish and didn’t like Sink, he says. But Warhol did, and he grooved on Sink’ Polaroids and portraits, though less so on the “super-romantic” old-fashioned shots Sink took with his little Diana toy camera. More recently, Sink, who comes from an illustrious New York photo lineage, has extensively explored 19th-century wet-plate work.
Sink says he has never really taken to the Annie Liebovitz-style celebrity portrait and says, “I never considered these pictures of Andy art.” Asked if it was, to a degree, both blessing and curse that his career became intertwined with Warhol’s, the celebrity sun maybe blinding viewers to Sink’s own long, wide-ranging career, Sink replies good-naturedly, “I’ll take it.” He notes how lucky he’s been to make a living as a freelance photographer, photo editor, photo curator, and sometime photo teacher. “I’m a survivor from the 80s.”
“Photograph anything and everything around you,” is the Warhol lesson that’s stuck with Sink the most, he says. “That had a great influence on me.”
Click click click click click.

—Alexander C. Kafka

Mark's stream of thought on Dance and Photography.

2010-10-31T13:26:00.000-06:00

How can i explain this rush? .. this purity
this is living instrument of art
dance is the most elementary of the arts
pure and honest to the medium
it is a connection with man and childs deepest past
it confirms a immortality of arts bringing pure wine from an ancient vineyard, it makes me high
the dancers of BNC make me cry its soooo beautiful.
there is a spirit connection with the past
i am a gushy romantic
there is magic made by impressions of the body movement and music
imprints of gesture of love and passion
beauty supreme beauty chasing beauty
desire ... ahhh desire
our sin and our soul
romanticism love and death
eroticism and death
little deaths
pushing away
returning
making the soul remember
beauty of the body and nature stirred to ecstasy we dance
subtle gesture and movement passed to and into the viewer

"the slender infragible thread of the eternal tradition of beauty" -Shaemas O Sheel- said in the 1901 Book of Dance.

Lovers of dance have shared with me a leaf slowly falling in the wind.. or dancing across the ground.
It can make my day seeing that leaf fall in perfict form and beauty passing through light and time .. it touches deep inside like i have seen magic.

Sitting watching these dancers this same feeling rushes over me.
It is a timeless magic in motion. It touches your soul.
it taps into something that words or pictures just fail .. is it in my DNA ? is it my genes tapping into a spirit of the past?
It makes me weak and i just weep.

Listening to Alex talk to the dancers about dust gently landing on your arm or quoting Proust and studies in visual emotional transfer to one human to the next how that was writen hundreds of years ago and now science is proving it with electronics that monitor the brain.
He spoke how just the littlest gesture of the splay of the tips of your fingers will carry directly into and felt by your viewer.
This spoke directly to me.
This is what i work with ..emotional transference in photography.
I conceptualize the image in my mind, I pose myself i play the part i feel the part and demonstrate this to the model with theatrical projection to demonstrate the mood. I then step behind to black curtain to look at it on glass. An experienced model will understand and feel the story being told and project this knowing her lines of beauty and mixing that with my vision and story.
It is glorious when the two meet. This shares with a corriographer and dance.

I find many parallels to 19th century staged photography and dance.. I make wetplate photographs because they are true to the medium and very pure.They are a direct link to the past. They take no electricity no mechanics other then a simple box with a hundred sixty year old glass lens to focus light on to a plate of silver to where shadows are fixed forever. It is magic , objects made immortal.
But i struggle with stopping motion in dance ..motion cut into pieces arrested it doesn't work. Its like showing a musician playing music with no sound .. its empty.
So this is a challenge.. and i respectfully bow my head that the medium i work with cannot document this art work and it is rude to try.
But i share feelings of passion that staging a creation a fantasy does share a common goal and it can touch the soul when is it honest and pure. Artists know when they have made this almost divine connection.
Like a dream finding that point a timeless moment of love ...a connection ..just a simple gaze upon beauty.
For me ..A face, Two bodies meeting ..that fluid connection of wrapping together and stopping for a moment of connection... there ..there is a blink of a chance.
A face piercing through the camera lens straight into your soul.

Long exposure showing movement has different story to tell. light is sliding along the body like water. It tell of the movement passing like a spirit passing.
Its not reality but its a document of the motion passed. Here thier is magic in the abstraction of movement. Letting go to chance and allowing movement to paint a picture never seen before.
Time and light as a river together. Its something we are all passing through together, our bodies and life in constant motion. Dance turns this ride into breath taking beauty. The lines created in the long exposures are gestures of this time and form passing by.

Photographers are documenters and collectors. Painters, sculptor's and choreographers/ dancers work with passion and love and total devotion to the craft to make this creation like a child, then hand it off rarely or never to be seen again in that original form.
This is a gift to us of something pure so beautiful. Its given to you for but a brief fleeting moment .. it touches your heart then is gone.

Mark Sink

Chasing the Sublime

2010-10-26T00:14:00.000-06:00

Visual Artists + Choreographers
Chasing the Sublime
a shared experience in art
November 5-14
Three choreographers pair with three visual artists to apply their skills and imaginations in a pursuit of the horizon. Chasing the Sublime is BNC's first co-production with Lakewood Cultural Center. The project will open with a ga...llery exhibit at the Cultural Center, continue with a public discussion, and culminate with three world premiere ballets in November.

www.bncdance.com

www.Lakewood.org/CulturalCenter

Lakewood Cultural Center
470 S. Allison Parkway, Lakewood, CO 80226

Friday, November 5 – 8pm
Saturday, November 6 – 8pm
Sunday, November 7 – 2pm

Performing Arts Complex at PCS
1001 W. 84th Avenue, Denver, CO 80260

Friday, November 12 – 8pmSaturday, November 13 – 8pmSunday, November 14 – 2pm

Visual Artists + Choreographers

Mark Sink +Kristen Hatgi + Alex Ketley
www.kristenhatgi.com
www.gallerysink.com
www.alexketley.com

Laura Merage + Sarah Tallman
www.lauramerage.combncdance.com/stallman

Mark Allen Henderson + Garrett Ammon
www.markallenhenderson.combncdance.com/gammon

Denver Post Review

2010-10-01T09:11:00.000-06:00

Showing of Mark Sink's photos just scratches surface

By Kyle MacMillan
Denver Post Fine Arts Critic

Posted: 10/01/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT

Sink, who was briefly part of Andy Warhol's circle in New York City, took many photographs of the artist, including this one, "Andy in L.A.," 1981, silver print. (Photo courtesy of Byers-Evans House Gallery)

Mark Sink maintains such a ubiquitous presence in the Denver photography scene as a curator, dealer and all-around promoter that it's sometimes easy to forget that he is a significant artist in his own right.
Indeed, a strong argument can be made that at 52, he is the city's most accomplished photographer of his generation.
Unfortunately, a survey of his 35-year career on display at the Byers-Evans House Gallery does not fully back such an assertion. But that has more to do with the organization of the exhibition than the substance of his work.
Sink, in conjunction with staff members at the museum, chose to present highlights of his career, offering snatches from 12 series within his work ranging from revivals of vintage techniques like the cyanotype to pioneering experiments with early digital photography.
This approach makes clear the innovative and stylistic breadth of his work, but it shortchanges the depth of his artistry and supplies little in the way of curatorial judgment about the strengths and weaknesses within his output.
It is easy to imagine an entire exhibition devoted to Sink's insider looks at Andy Warhol and the heady New York scene that surrounded the artist-provocateur in the 1980s. Sink met the artist during a visit to Fort Collins in 1981 and briefly became a part of his circle.
Some of these Warhol-related pieces, which have been shown in recent years at the Colorado State University Art Museum and Rule Gallery, have a snapshot immediacy to them while Sink inbued others, such as "Andy in L.A." (1981), with a more formal look.
Especially noteworthy within this body of work is what he calls his "Polaroid Famous Face Series" — informal portraits of New York celebrities that have a paparazzo spontaneity that still seems very contemporary.
A dozen of these Polaroids are on view, but, again, it is easy to envision a whole gallery devoted just to the series, along with more recent

A survey of Mark Sink's career at the Byers-Evans House Gallery offers works from 12 series within his output, including "Her Body Within 1," 1979, from a group of open-shutter works he calls "Painting With Light." (Photo courtesy of Byers-Evans House Gallery)

ones that Sink has taken of Denver art-world notables. A 20-year constant in Sink's work has been his use of Dianas — cheap, plastic cameras that produce a kind of soft, Pictorialist effect that the photographer has long fancied.
Included are 10 Diana-produced black-and-white images, including moody views of Central Park, Gramercy Park and the Brooklyn Bridge from the 1980s and '90s.
It is disappointing that the show includes just two examples of Sink's photograms, which are among the most striking subgroups within his output. These images are created by placing objects directly on photographic paper and exposing them to light, an approach popularized by Man Ray and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy early in the 20th century.
He used different kinds of bottles and glasses for a number of these images, such as "Wine Glass" (1996), creating an otherworldly, glowing effect. And in others, such as "Stars No. 1" (1996), he sprinkled flour, baking powder, salt and dust on the photographic paper, resulting in images that look stunningly celestial.
Despite whatever shortcomings this show might have, it does provide a quick, useful overview of Sink's work to date and, equally important, it whets the appetite for more.
Perhaps it will spur another institution, such as the Denver Art Museum, with its new photography department, to undertake a more considered look at an essential figure in Denver's contemporary photography scene.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com

"mark sink photographs 1975-2010: encounters with the past."

Photography. Byers-Evans House Gallery, 1310 Bannock St. On view are nearly 50 black-and-white and color images spanning the noted Denver photographer's 35-year career and highlighting the diverse techniques and approaches with which he has worked. Through Oct. 31. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. Free. 303-620-4933 or historycolorado.org/be.

mark sink gallery talk.

11 a.m. Saturday. Free.

wet-plate collodion photography demonstration with sink and kristen hatgi.

Noon to 3 p.m. Oct. 16. Free. 303-620-4933 or historycolorado.org/be.

Byers-Evans House Gallery presents “Mark Sink Photographs 1975- 2010: Encounters with the Past

2010-08-28T13:10:00.000-06:00

Byers-Evans House Gallery presents “Mark Sink Photographs 1975- 2010: Encounters with the Past

DENVER—Mark Sink Photographs 1975-2010: Encounters with the Past, will be on view in the Byers-Evans House Gallery, located at 1310 Bannock Street in Denver, September 3 through October 31. A free opening evening reception from 5 – 9 p.m. on Friday, September 3, will be held in the gallery in conjunction with the Golden Triangle Museum District’s First Friday Art Walk.

The Byers-Evans House Gallery is pleased to present this sampling of photographs representing Sink’s 35-year career in Denver. Born in 1958, Sink’s photographic destiny was partly shaped by his family history. From a long family line of artists, Sink’s great-great-uncle was Samuel Finley Breese Morse, who is known as America’s “Father of Photography” and introduced the daguerreotype to this country in the 1850s. Sink’s great-grandfather was James L. Breese, a famous photographer who made waves in turn of the century New York. His mother is Denver painter Ann White and Sink’s father is a well known Denver architect.

Sink says when he received his first Diana camera as a child, his future was clear. After art school, the 1980s found Sink in the heady boom days of the New York art scene, experimenting with plastic toy cameras, working professionally as both a commercial and fine art photographer, and hanging out in Andy Warhol’s famous Factory scene. In the early 1990s, Sink returned to his hometown of Denver, where he worked with early digital cameras and created a series of still life photographs inspired by Old Master Dutch paintings.

The latter half of the decade brought Sink into museum administration, as he was co-founder of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver and formed his own community based art center, Gallery Sink. Inspired by the pictorialist traditions of his great grandfather, Sink made traditional landscapes and cyanotypes, as well as camera-less photograms. Photograms are made by laying objects directly on photographic paper and exposing it to sunlight.

With the closing of Gallery Sink, the artist returned to making photography full time in the new century. Sink embarked on a new series with his partner, Kristen Hatgi, using a 150 year old lens to create dreamy collodion wet plates with the technology of the 1860s. All of these chapters will be on view in the Gallery with techniques ranging from photo silkscreen, Polaroid’s, cyanotypes, silver prints, gravure, collodion wet plate and digital.

In Mark Sink Photographs 1975-2010: Encounters with the Past, the diverse techniques, eras and experiments come together under Sink’s unifying vision of beauty. “I am a gushy romantic,” Sink says. “The theme of this survey is to show my obsession and passion for capturing beauty.”
Sink’s work is in numerous museum collections as well as gallery solo and group shows in the US, South America and Europe. He is currently represented by G. Ray Hawkins in California, Robin Rice in New York, and Rule Gallery in Denver.
_______________________________________________________________________

What: Mark Sink Photographs 1975- 2010: Encounters with the Past
Opens: September 3rd, 5-9pm

Where: The Byers-Evans House Gallery, 1310 Bannock Street, Denver
When: Sept. 3 – Oct. 31. Gallery open daily, Mon.–Sat., 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Closed Sundays.
Special events: Evening receptions during the Golden Triangle Museum District’s First Friday Art Walks, Sept. 3 and Oct. 1 from 5 to 9 p.m.
Informal gallery talk on Photography Today, Oct. 2, at 11 a.m., Sink will use his own photographic timeline and provide insight into the techniques and stories displayed in the exhibition.
Cost: Gallery admission and all special events are Free!

Byers-Evans House Museum
Open daily, Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Closed Sundays.
Guided house tours 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Admission charged.
For further information, visit www.historycolorado.org/be or call (303) 620-4933.

History Colorado, the Colorado Historical Society, engages people in our State’s heritage through collecting, preserving, and discovering the past and providing perspectives for the future. Established in 1879, History Colorado is headquartered at the Colorado History Museum in Denver. This educational institution contains statewide historical museums and sites, educational programs, volunteer and membership opportunities, the Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, the Stephen H. Hart Research Library, and administers the State Historical Fund—a preservation-based grants program funded by limited stakes gaming tax revenues. Visit www.coloradohistory.org or call (303) 866-3682.

BECOMING VISIBLE

2010-05-28T14:36:00.001-06:00

May 28th, 2010

HINTERLAND
3254 Walnut St.
Denver CO, 80205
720.309.1764
contact@hinterlandartspace.com

http://www.hinterlandartspace.com/html/2010_becoming_visible.html

BECOMING VISIBLE
there are many pathways to the garden Photography/Sculpture

Opening and closing included dreamland tonal ambience by Roger Green, and a theme based poetry reading by Carson Reed.

Nine subversive photographic artists form this incarnation of Heads of Hydra, and each Head creates new work.

Hanging sculpture brought to the show by Randy Rushton ties together the work of the different artists and carries the mysticism of ancient cedar and the eros of nature through the pathway into the garden.

The Heads of Hydra are:

David Zimmer
Cornelia Peterson
Mark Sink
Christopher R. Perez
Richard Peterson
John Babcock
Sabin Aell
Katie Taft
Norman Broomhall

Byers Evans House Gallery talk March 13th

2010-03-04T19:23:00.002-07:00

Kristen Hatgi and Mark Sink , 2009 Lewis Emory Walker, 1865

Lincoln in Focus:

Original Photographs of the President and the Civil War

March 13 from 12 to 2p.m. – Mark Sink and Kristen Hatgi
Historic Photography Demonstration and Talk

The majority of the prints in Lincoln in Focus are albumen prints created using the wet-plate

collodion process invented in 1851 by Frederick Scott Archer. Contemporary Denver artists

Mark Sink and Kristen Hatgi will bring their 1860s vintage camera to the Byers-Evans House

Gallery to demonstrate how artists like Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner made their

photographs. The program will include a talk on the history of photography and a discussion

of how Sink and Hatgi use this historic technique in their own art.

Program 12 to 2 pm. Free admission.

February 5 through March 31, 2010

Byers-Evans House Gallery

Open Monday through Saturday, 10 am to 4 pm

1310 Bannock Street / Denver, CO / 303.620.4933

www.coloradohistory.org/be

www.kristenhatgi.com

www.gallerysink.com

VERTIGO Art Space opening friday March 19th 2010

2010-02-25T03:24:00.000-07:00

VERTIGO Art Space

http://www.vertigoartspace.com

Opening Reception: Third Friday, March 19th 2010, 6p–10p

A Something Or Other That Has No Name In Any Language
Heads of Hydra, a photographers' collective. Curated by Richard Peterson.

Exhibition Dates: 5 March–30 April 2010
Opening Reception: Third Friday, 19 March 2010, 6p–10p
Closing Reception: Third Friday, 16 April 2010, 6p–10p

In pursuit of Unknown Pleasures,
Heads of Hydra is:

    ▪    John Babcock
    ▪    David Zimmer
    ▪    Mark Sink
    ▪    Cornelia Peterson
    ▪    Sabin Aell
    ▪    Richard Peterson
    ▪    Carson Reed (writer)

...the sudden onset of vertigo in the midst of a dream...

Hours: Wednesday–Friday, 2–6 pm; Saturday, 1–4 pm (other days by appointment)
Also open on First and Third Fridays, 6–9 pm

Address: 960 Santa Fe Drive, Denver CO 80204
Phone: 303-573-VERT (8378)

Second Degree of Separation at Redline

2010-02-25T02:55:00.001-07:00

Second Degree of Separation

An exhibition honoring artist connections

RedLine Community Space

March 1- 25, 2010

Opening reception, March 5th, 7-11 pm, with videos and performances starting at 7

Gallery hours: mon-fri, 9am-5pm, sat and sun: 11 am- 5 pm

2350 Arapahoe Street, Denver, Colorado 80205

303.296.4448

www.redlineart.org

Viviane Le Courtois - Heather Bussey Patterson - Meredith Nemirov

John Grant - Steve Altman - Shannon Kelly

Bob Koons - Ivy Walker - Deborah J. Haynes

Rupert Jenkins - Jessie Paige - Carol Golemboski

Terry Campbell - Chrissy Espinoza -Holly Johnson

Gretchen Shaefer- Eric Portis - Ryan McRyhew

Sterling Crispin- Liz Holloway - Adam Holloway

Conor King - Mia Semingson - Maria Lawson

Margaret Newman - Paul Gillis - Andy Libertone

Linda Campbell - Michael Gadlin - Homare Ikeda

Bruce Price - Michael Chavez - Matt Rich

Rori Knudtson - Matthew Jenkins - Phillip Faulkner

Mark Sink - Jason Appleton - Luzia Ornelas

Jeff Page - Katie Watson - Katie Taft

Jennifer Miller - Anne Thulson - Mark Penner Howell

303 Magazine Interview

2010-02-20T13:37:00.000-07:00

Mark Sink, a Leader in the Emerging Denver Art Scene

February 16th, 2010Andrew Hoffman 303 Magazine

Mark Sink in his gallery
Mark Sink is a true leader in the emerging Denver art scene, that he coincidentally helped create. Sink co-founded MCA | Denver literally in his backyard, he also established his own gallery, Gallery Sink, and currently sits on the board for Illiterate. Sink also curates shows regularly for galleries and venues such as Redline.

As an artist, he is well known for his imagery made with the toy plastic camera, the Diana. Currently, also a reverse technology, he is producing collodion wet plate photographs. His personal work is in numerous museum collections as well as gallery solo and group shows around the world. He is currently represented by G. Ray Hawkins in CA, Robin Rice in NY, and Rule Gallery in Denver.

The prolific photographer is no stranger to Denver, he was born here, went through the public school system, and graduated from Metro State. He is also no stranger to the infamous New York art scene in the 80s. He rubbed elbows with Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Rene Ricard while living in NYC during the 80s.

I recently sat down with Mark and asked him a few questions:

Where are you from?

I grew up in Denver, went to school at Metro State, then I met Warhol and moved to NYC for the 1980s. Moved back in the early 90s and co-founded MCA | Denver in my back yard. I also started my own gallery and a photography salon, The Denver Salon.

What is your art background/training?

Artist parents and art photography classes at Metro.

How long have you be doing art?

All my life. And made a living from it all my life.

How did you get involved with Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and “The Factory”?

Andy Warhol portrait by Mark Sink
I met Andy in Ft. Collins at CSU. I tracked him down and found him alone signing posters, we became friends and he hired me to work for Interview magazine. It was a dream come true.

I met Jean-Michel in New York and we photographed his work. I also spent quite a lot of time with him leading up to shows. It was very surreal-the drugs and money. I was pretty convinced that the market was going to fall out, that Warhol and Jean-Michel were over-hyped, over-producing, and over-pricing. I pulled back from being a “factory kid” after a couple of years. Andy never paid me anything, but I wanted to have him to promote me as an artist. Many of my favorite stories of that time are of a critic who I spent a lot of time with, during the art boom of the 80’s, Rene Ricard. He made and was the court critic for Julian Schnabel, Francesco Clemente, Keith Haring and others. He brought Basquiat into instant fame, single-handedly. I have a lot of shocking stories of how and why people were found. I’m still basically in stunned amazement of the power of the pen and how it forms our thought process about something or someone. I am very press dependent with my gallery and my Internet projects.

Briefly describe your style:

Living life on the edge. Never growing up. Not settling down. Most of my friends are half my age. A bit reckless. I speak critically and truthfully about things sometimes shocking, which is distressing for some people. I don’t play games…just like to tell it like it is. That causes a lot of problems. It gives you a reputation of being a loose gun.

Briefly describe you philosophy:

Got to let yourself go to chance, let chance happen. Follow your heart not money. Less is more in design, food and finding happiness.

Jean-Michel Basquait by Mark Sink
Having lived and worked in New York City during the 80’s, what are your perceptions of being a photographer in both cities?

Well, New York is, of course, a very exciting place to be during your twenties and thirties. It was where I went to grad school and more. I miss it greatly. I wore many hats to survive as a working photographer and made vast amounts of money in the commercial world. But, creatively, I was very empty. Therefore, I concisely started to immerse myself into the gallery world, cataloguing artwork rather than clothing. I also started doing my personal art again. I bloomed, was very happy-and very broke. Also, it was very surreal being around the superstar art world, seeing fortunes trading hands for the flavor of the month. There seemed to be a very big gap between the haves and the have-nots. Denver began to look better and better with every visit. I had established a few galleries and agents, so I decided to move where there would be a higher quality lifestyle for the money. I purchased a 19th Century house in a bad neighborhood (the ethnic diversity felt most like New York City) and started my life here. The house jumped in value as the neighborhood gentrified, which allowed me to purchase my gallery building. I was very lucky that I wasn’t pushed out of the neighborhood, like most of the other artists living there. In general, the old line, “it’s easier to be a big fish in a small pond,” was true for me, in Denver. For example, starting a contemporary art museum. That would have been a joke to try in New York City.

Lina by Mark Sink
What are your feelings towards the Denver art scene?

Denver is kind of like Prague, not east coast, not west coast. Denver is germinating it’s own wonderful scene here in the middle. Great talented young artists are constantly coming up with fresh new spaces and multimedia art venues, like Illiterate, Rhinoceropolis and Hinterland. We have great new museums and giant new spaces everywhere; Redline, Dry Ice Factory, and dozens more – all new within this last couple years. I find that very exciting.

When is your next show?

I have a show up now at Theory and Practice gallery and one at CORE gallery, both venues are located on Santa Fe in the art district. I am currently working on curating shows at Redline, and also working on a giant photo project for March 2011 called MOP (Month of Photography) / Denver. I get all the galleries and museums and art venues to do photo related projects, I love to stir the pot and get momentum of everyone together to celebrate photography. It will have lectures, portfolio reviews and fun parties!

Any comments or words of wisdom for a young artist?

The greatest artists never sold work when they started, in my opinion money wrecks art and the art creation process. One has to follow their passion and heart and make work with reckless abandon and not even consider if it will sell or not. That is when great work is made.

Nicole by Mark Sink

Byers-Evans House Gallery talk

2010-02-20T13:21:00.000-07:00

Mark Sink and Kristen Hatgi , 2009 Lewis Emory Walker, 1865

Lincoln in Focus:

Original Photographs of the President and the Civil War

March 13 from 12-2p.m. – Mark Sink and Kristen Hatgi Historic

Photography Demonstration and Talk

The majority of the prints in Lincoln in Focus are albumen prints created using the

wet-plate collodion process invented in 1851 by Frederick Scott Archer. Contemporary

Denver artists Mark Sink and Kristen Hatgi will bring their 1860s vintage camera to the

Byers-Evans House Gallery to demonstrate how artists like Mathew Brady and Alexander

Gardner made their photographs. The program will include a talk on the history of

photography and a discussion of how Sink and Hatgi use this historic technique in

their own art. Program 12 to 2 pm. Free admission.

February 5 through March 31, 2010

Byers-Evans House Gallery

Open Monday through Saturday, 10 am to 4 pm

1310 Bannock Street / Denver, CO / 303.620.4933

2010-01-12T00:26:00.000-07:00

Theory and Practice Gallery
Erotic Art Show
Opens February 5th 2010
738 Santa Fe Drive

Damn Fine Art provided by:
Mark Sink
Kristen Hatgi
Rafa Jenn
Julia Sanders
Nikki Pike
Darrin Harris Frisby
Eric Batliner
Mad King

Super Sexy Techno by:
Brandon Brown
Echtoplasm
Papyrus
Sunshine Panda

Aphrodisiacs and Olfactory Installation provided by Soapy

My friend Dale

2010-01-11T23:59:00.000-07:00

Please join us for an opening reception on January 15th from 6—9pm for "Remembering Dale Chisman."

Exhibition runs through February 27, 2010.

We are located one building east of z|modern at 1136 North Speer Blvd.
Gallery hours are Thurs–Sunday 11am–6pm.
303.298.8432

http://www.zmodern.com/

2010-01-07T23:22:00.000-07:00

“ Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui."

~ Emile M. Cioran'

de·lir·i·um (n)

1. A disordered state of the mental faculties resulting from disturbance of the functions of the brain, and characterized by incoherent speech, hallucinations, restlessness, and frenzied or maniacal excitement.

2. Uncontrollable excitement or emotion, as of a delirious person; frenzied rapture; wildly absurd thought or speech.

3. An Illiterate art exhibit from the wild mind and private collection of one of Denver's most celebrated photographer's, Mark Sink; featuring works by mentors, colleagues, friends, disciples and himself.

From Mark Sink:

I've been in a state of Delirium since I received a phone call while on location in New York in mid November ago, from Illiterate asking if I would create a show at their gallery in Denver two weeks later in on December 04.

Returning to Denver, I looked around my home and thought about the selected works I've collected over the course of my life that I still keep close around me. I saw a commonality among these selected images — an excited and sexually distraught staged fantasy. I found in the artists, a group of people who push the boundaries in visual stimulation and sexual stimulation, particularly through the lense of self analysis. It became lucidly clear that I'm attracted to artists who speak through their work with a unique voice, a voice which communicates a strong identity, or at least a strong desire for one. To me, it's work with a personality recognizable even at a glimpse, across a chaotic room, or in some cases, a chaotic mind.

The process of elimination in chosing a body of work from my collection became a hunt for this state of Delirium. The resulting work exhibits a variety of media and processes both contemporary and vintage. The group of artists who make up the Delirium collection consist of my colleagues, mentors and emerging minds.

I hope that something somewhere in these odd photographs touches others like they continue to touch me, right down the center of the spine, with a tingling shudder of exctatic distortion. It's like that moment when you finish taking a pee.

Deliriously,

~Mark

The first wave of Delirium opens Dec. 4 at Illiterate (82 S. Broadway, Denver, CO). The second wave hits on January 8.

Featuring works by:
Sabin Aell, Jason Appelton, Anne Arden McDonald, Cheryl Bailey, Eric Havelock Bailie, Mike Berg, Bryan Boettiger, David Brady, Don Carleno, Zabo Chabiland, Joe Clower, Clare Cornell, Scott Covert, Joel Dallenbach, Damaris Drummond, Michael Ensminger, Linda Elvira Piedra, Susan Evans, Radek Grosman, John Hallin, Allison Harvard, Kristen Hatgi, Brian Henderson, Susanne Junker, Wes Kennedy, Agnes Kunz, Lori Nix, Tamaki Obuchi, Jesus Polanco, Ron Pollard, Winter Prather, Mathew Rose, Mark Sink, Mindy Sink, Jeff Starr, Gary Sweeney, William Stockman, Katie Taft, Ruth Thorne Thomsen, Sylvie Tillmann, Harry Walters, Wesley Willis, David Zimmer

São Paulo – Brazil - A Book About Death

2010-01-07T02:10:00.000-07:00

http://umlivrosobreamorte.blogspot.com/

http://abookaboutdeath.blogspot.com/

A Book of Death exhibitions :

MUBE – Museu Brasileiro da Escultura São Paulo – Brasil

Queens Museum of Art, A Book About Death, Queens, NY, USA
Otis College of Art and Design, A Book About Death, Los Angeles, USA
Mobius - A Book About Death, Boston, USA
The Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery: A Book about Death, New York City, New York, USA

A Book About Death that includes my work is now in the collections of:

MUBE – Museu Brasileiro da Escultura São Paulo – Brasil
MOMA - The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA
LA County Museum of Art Research Library, Los Angeles, CA, USA

A review of Delirium

2009-12-19T06:10:00.000-07:00

A review of Delirium, curated by Mark Sink. Illiterate Gallery

Delirium is aptly named, not simply as a way to describe the fantastic and diverse collection of artists that Mark Sink has collected for the show at Illiterate, but as a testament to the state of mind of the artists as well.

de·lir·i·um (n)

1. A disordered state of the mental faculties resulting from disturbance of the functions of the brain, and characterized by incoherent speech, hallucinations, restlessness, and frenzied or maniacal excitement.

You really can’t go wrong with the phrase “maniacal excitement”.

When Mark Sink was asked to curate a show for Illiterate they did not ask him to do anything in particular and he hadn’t a clue what he was going to do. What came out was a show highlighting some of Mark’s favorite works. In his curatorial “howdy” speech he references having works in the show that he keeps around the house. That is to say this show is more like an intimate collection show than a typical group show.

This does beg the question what the role of curator is in this day and age. We recently had Eric Paddock, photography curator for the Denver Art Museum, speak at one of WWA’s fundraisers and he boiled down the role of curator quite nicely- that of the sifter. The one who sifts through all of it- the good, the bad and the ugly- to come out with what should be considered iconic and relevant. Quite a task actually, but then again so is doing the dishes- and we created a machine for that too, the dishwasher. Curators then can be considered the greatest in task saving appliances for the arts. Don’t have time to look at all of the art in the world? No problem, have a curator do it. Of all of the art appliances in the world, I would like to be on the record saying that I think curators are the most valuable.

Mark Sink in particular is Denver’s most undervalued art resource. He has been continuously been holding the IV bag of life saving fluids for our art scene for decades. He is the Cheshire cat of every art opening worth being at. Madly holding a cigarette, smiling a crooked smile a little too broadly for any environment he seems to find himself. Mark is a rare breed, a blend of celebrity art icon and street vagabond. He is the modern day high flying Nadar, but with street cred.

In Delirium he invites us into his living room to peruse through his personal collection. As you will hear in any lecture about modern or post modern art, buy what you like, you will figure out what it means (and if it was worth it!) later. Now we get to see what Mark Sink likes, a peek at the creept collection of persoanl loves. It is important to note that this show was not juried per say, in other words, not a “best of what we could get in a month or two” kind of show- but a glimpse into the collection of an artist and curator who has been collecting art for three decades, or since the Family Ties original first season on NBC.

So, the show. It is centered around Sylvie Tillman’s five foot grid of nine close up black and white anus images that are graphically nailed to the wall with larger than necessary tenpenny nails. Close-ups of what I imagine to be both men and women’s anuses, but honestly it’s hard to tell. The oddly disquieting part of these non-erotic sexual images is their, well, beauty. We are drawn to inspect parts of the human anatomy that most of us have never even glanced at to this degree. The sphincter in all its glory. Even as I write the word sphincter I see how it may be hard for some of you to see how there could be beauty here, but trust me it is. And this push and pull of subject matter versus aesthetic seems to be the glue that binds the images of this show. A seemingly irreverent subject matter couched in staggeringly simple, quietly beautiful images.

There is an aesthetic quality to these images that out shine the subjects themselves. That is to say the importance of craftsmanship is apparent in all of these pieces in this show. The images, like Mark’s own “medicine bottle” photogram, seem from another world in their stark beauty. The velvet like black tones wrought from the silver gelatin paper are a gorgeous backdrop for the sparse knifelike glowing whites that spring from the paper to express the contours of the bottle. The subject matter, again, rendered irrelevant in the face of such beauty.

The curatorial hang of this show is nicely developed, there is a series of three images on the wall; Zimmer’s Michelle, Wes Kennedy’s The Uberman, and an unknown photographer’s Victorian era ménage-a trios - really highlight the importance of the curator’s perspective. With these images grouped together we interpret one image based on the previous subject, much like a book. So, after seeing the Victorian taboo sex scene, we are set up to interpret the images to follow with same eyes, regardless of the intent of these image makers. So that Zimmer and Kennedy images are both imbued with an open sexuality that would not be present if it were not fore the brazen threesome that oh so recently just saw. Mark uses this to his advantage, playing images off of one another like the director of a mad improv dark comedy musical.

In fact the entire room is filled with an exciting sexual energy that seeps in to each and every image on the wall. I am not sure if this based on the images and proximity to one another, or simply the fact that we feel as though we are peering into Mark's bedroom.

The weakest pieces in this collection are the Harry Walters mixed media pieces. They feel quite disconnected from the rest of the show. In fact I thought they were part of a different show entirely, not part of Delirium. Part of this is that they make up 20% of the wall space, whereas the rest of Mark’s collection is made up of predominantly each artist being represented by one or two pieces. Coupled with the fact that the method of art making is so completely divergent from the rest of the show - it easily feels like something leftover from last month. Unfortunately, I want to like Walter’s pieces- it’s just that they are done in such a way that just seems clever without any real substance.

Delirium is a show that should not be missed. You will have to go soon to check it out though, on January 8 it will change. Rumors are that it will change into a virtual recreation of Mark’s living room. So something akin to cracked glass, dying plants, an 11x14 view camera or two and more gut wrenchingly beautiful art than you can throw a dart at will be on view until February.

Illiterate : : 82 S. Broadway : : Den, CO : : 303-709-5292 : : Thurs-Sun 11a-7p

Yours,
greg

Delirium at Illiterate

2009-12-04T01:01:00.001-07:00

Don Carleno, Jason Appelton, Anne Arden McDonald, Cheryl Bailey, Havelock Bailie, Mike Berg, Bryan Boettiger, David Brady, Zabo Chabiland, Clare Cornell, Scott Covert, Joel Dallenbach, Michael Ensminger, Susan Evans, Radek Grosman, John Hallin, Allison Harvard, Kristen Hatgi, Susanne Junker, Wes Kennedy, Agnes Kunz, Lori Nix, Ron Pollard, Winter Prather, Mark Sink, Mindy Sink, Jeff Starr, William Stockman, Katie Taft, Ruth Thorne Thomsen, Sylvie Tillmann, Harry Walters, Wesley Willis, David Zimmer

de·lir·i·um (n)

1. A disordered state of the mental faculties resulting from disturbance of the functions of the brain, and characterized by incoherent speech, hallucinations, restlessness, and frenzied or maniacal excitement.

2. fig. Uncontrollable excitement or emotion, as of a delirious person; frenzied rapture; wildly absurd thought or speech.

"life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui."

~ Emile M. Cioran'

One of Denver's most celebrated photographer's, Mark Sink, opens his mind and private collection to the public, in an exhibition of works by mentors, colleagues, friends, disciples and himself.

From Mark Sink:

I've been in a state of Delirium since I received a phone call 14 days ago while in New York from Illiterate asking if I would create a show at their gallery.

Returning to Denver, I looked around my home and thought about the selected works I've collected over the course of my life that I still keep close around me. I saw a commonality among these selected images — an excited and sexually distraught staged fantasy. I found in the artists, a group of people who push the boundaries in visual stimulation and sexual stimulation, particularly through the lense of self analysis. It became lucidly clear that I'm attracted to artists who speak through their work with a unique voice, a voice which communicates a strong identity, or at least a strong desire for one. To me, it's work with a personality recognizable even at a glimpse, across a chaotic room, or in some cases, a chaotic mind.

The process of elimination in chosing a body of work from my collection became a hunt for this state of Delirium. The resulting work exhibits a variety of media and processes both contemporary and vintage. The group of artists who make up the Delirium collection consist of my colleagues, mentors and emerging minds.

I hope that something somewhere in these odd photographs touches others like they continue to touch me, right down the center of the spine, with a tingling shudder of exctatic distortion. It's like that moment when you finish taking a pee.

Deliriously,

~Mark

The first wave of Delirium opens Dec. 4 at Illiterate (82 S. Broadway, Denver, CO). The second wave hits on January 8.

Chelsea Hotel

2009-11-29T01:13:00.000-07:00

Robin Rice Gallery

2009-10-21T15:26:00.001-06:00




	The Robin Rice Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition of photography by Mark Sink & Kristen Hatgi. For the last two years Mark and Kristen have collaborated using one of the earliest photographic methods, collodion wet plate to create ambrotypes on glass and tintypes on aluminum. They use a 1860 style view camera to create one-of-a-kind images, which become windows into an intimate, romantic, and beautiful world of faces, still lives, nudes, and landscapes. In this demanding process, the collodion coated tin or glass plates are immersed in a silver nitrate solution, and then they must be exposed in the camera and developed while still wet. Serendipitous flaws and beautiful imperfections are an inevitable part of this imprecise hands-on process. This show includes a combination of 24 tintypes and ambrotypes, which are 8x10 and smaller in size. Their intimate sizes ask the viewers to look closer and spend more time with these photographs to fully appreciate their power. — A welcome antidote to today's nonstop, ¬instantaneous imagery. Paradoxically, this intersection of past and present gives these pieces an unmistakably contemporary feel. The two collaborators deliberately play up the ambiguity of time. The nudes (some recalling E.J. Bellocq's alluring portraits of New Orleans prostitutes in 1912) are suffused with freshness and sensuality, even eroticism at times, with nearly all of them coming off as refined rather than crass. Fredrick Scott Archer developed the collodion process in 1851. Artists such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Lewis Carroll, William Henry Jackson and Civil War photographer Mathew Brady used the process, due to its cost and versatility advantages. In addition Sink and Hatgi’s work can also be seen revived in contemporary artists work such as Sally Mann, Jody Ake, and Scully & Osterman. Mark Sink, photographer, curator and teacher, has been making a living from fine art photography since 1978. His personal work is in numerous museum collections along with solo and group shows throughout the US, South America, and Europe. Kristen Hatgi received her BFA from the Art Institute of Boston in 2008. She has exhibited her photography in Boston, Washington, DC, and Denver. For more information please contact Robin Rice at 212-366-6660 or email info@robinricegallery.com. www.robinricegallery.com

SHOW IMAGES click here

Kristen

2009-10-15T02:16:00.000-06:00

ROBIN RICE NYC

2009-10-04T12:02:00.000-06:00

Mark Sink & Kristen Hatgi
November 11th through December 20th, 2009
Opening Reception: Wednesday, November, 11th, 5:30-8:30 p.m.

325 West 11th St. NYC NY

Wednesday - Sunday 12-7pm

www.robinricegallery.com

Wet Plates Summer 2009

2009-09-11T18:03:00.001-06:00

Mr. Pool

2009-08-27T10:28:00.000-06:00

Friday August 28th 2009
Giant Wet Plate blow ups
Mr. Pool
Boulder CO.

2009-07-28T15:42:00.001-06:00

Rebecca DiDomenico on pure pleasure

2009-07-19T08:00:00.000-06:00

The Pleasure of….
The pleasure of just right words,
the pleasure of a face lit up from within,
the pleasure of green, green moss as far as the eye can see,
the pleasure in the fragrance of a blooming rose,
the sensual pleasure in the mystery of the human body,
the mystical pleasure of intimacy, of baring one’s soul to another,
the simple pleasure of a bird song,
the pleasure of discovery, of travel to diverse, cultural destinations,
the pleasure of living with concern for the earth,
the pleasure of suspense, of anticipation,
the pleasure of hearing a story, of reading a story,
the pleasure of resonating sounds, of mind expanding music.
The pleasure of children’s pure beings, unabashed and unselfconscious,
The all too important pleasure of water, and the decadence of hot water,
the pleasure of stars sparkling in the dark blue, night sky,
the pleasure of touching an animal,
the pleasure of inventing a searchlight that moves from wonder to wonder, basking everything in it’s light,
The pleasure of work, of finding an impossible task and trying to tackle it.
the pleasure of unpretentious, unsensored creations.
The random pleasure of discovery, of research and information,
the pleasures of creating something out of nothing ,
the pleasure of creating similarities between seemingly disparate concepts,
the pleasure in experiencing seamless connection,
the pleasure of harmonies that make no sense, but are perfect anyway,
the pleasure of no time, just pure space,
the pure pleasure of enjoyment without too many preconceived notions.
The pleasure of deep, internal satisfaction from real accomplishments,
the pleasure of addictions, of going further than you know you should, or are supposed to go,
the pleasure of obsessive conviction,
the pleasure of breakthroughs,
the pleasure of no interruptions,
the pleasure in the freedom to run wild, to make up your own definitions,
the pleasure to express all emotion, good or bad, with no judgment,
The pleasures of shiny, glimmering situations, illuminating events like stars that connect in the heavens.
the pleasure to be under a spell , happy to be strangely affected,
the pleasure to be a genuine soul learning as you go,
the pleasure of a soul, who takes her shadow for a walk, her libido for a romp, her umbrellas for a procession ,
The pleasure of taste buds in contact with a bursting blueberry,
The pleasure of a dog leaping, ears caught in mid air.
The pleasure of snuggling, of warm, fluffy blankets,
the pleasure of making a secret fort,
The pleasure of a having a shelter at all,
The pleasure of ridiculous jokes and off color thoughts,
the pleasure of things that don’t quite fit, things that work even though they don’t make sense.
The pleasure of seeing and being seen,
the pleasure of complete relaxation,
the pleasure of solutions that rise up like miracles when you least expect them.
The pleasure of exploding color, the pleasure of texture, the pleasure of a new taste, the pleasure of a smell that sets off a memory, the pleasure of a familiar sound, the pleasure center of the heart where the senses are mixed together like a massive interconnected communication center, lines all touching with a universal language,
the pleasure in a child’s beautiful mistakes.
the pleasure of pure unadulterated joy,
The pleasure of risky business, of not knowing but jumping into the fire anyway,
The pleasure of aching desire, of unrequited love,
The pleasure of multiples, and the pleasure of one of a kinds.
The pleasure of continual striving,
the pleasure of evolution, of movement towards something.
The pleasure of waves, lulling sounds repeating over and over,
the pleasure of a million little strings attached to all sources at the same time.
The pleasure of following your fate,
the pleasure of being real,
the altruistic pleasure of understanding and compassion for all.
The pleasure of not pretending, of not holding stuff inside,
the pleasure in creative work , of never ending ideas,
The pleasure of true recognition,
the pleasure of familiar comfort,
the pleasure of listening deeply,
the pleasure of out of control, hysterical laughter,
the pleasure of being overcome by instinct ,
The pleasure of acute awareness,
the pleasure of acceptance,
the spontaneous pleasures of play,
the pleasure of loving and being loved, with your whole self.
and finally, the complete pleasure of being enveloped in a joyous exuberance for life!
Rebecca DiDomenico

Pure Pleasure in Boulder

2009-06-27T08:20:00.000-06:00

BOULDER MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

GRAND RE-OPENING EXHIBITION

PURE PLEASURE

June 5th - September 6th 2009

BMOCA.com

Nofound

2009-05-13T13:42:00.000-06:00

Nofound is a blog-project where contemporary photographers are invited to show fragments of their diary.

Beginning in december 2007.
« Someone once told me 'ok, so what you like about photography is : sex, drugs and rock and roll!'. I don't like rock and roll ! With 'nofound', I chose to open a space for contemporary photographers to show fragments of their intimate diaries. Go and find the moment wether it was intentional or not. Who cares ? I don't... The look through the eye of the storm, the one picture that will bring out memories, the universal image allowing us to say 'me too'. The one showing us our one humanity through a presence, a glimpse of happiness, a violence, or an absence. This isn't a photo lesson, I wouldn't dare, just a try to search, universes. That's why, 'nofound'. » Emeric Glayse

« One of the best things about the internet - in fact one of the few saving graces of the internet - is the abundance of great little projects : online galleries and portfolios one stumbles across while playing link tag from one website to the next. Often I find myself spending an afternoon indulging in the digital equivalent of 'six degrees of Kevin Bacon.' I discovered 'nofound' on one such afternoon. The brainchild of Emeric Glayse, a French-born connoisseur of beautiful contemporary photography, 'nofound' excels in the unknown, both in terms of content - dark brooding nudity and blurry intimacy blend seamlessly with ghostly landscapes and private moments - and contributors. Emeric Glayse likes the underdogs, the newcomers, and those fresh on the heels of established photographers ; he's created not only a platform for these whippersnappers, but also a community. Names both familiar and soon-to-be-familiar link, discuss, and exhibit together on a regular basis. Ryan Foerster, Olivia Malone, Brad Tromel, Lina Scheynius (who shot a fashion story for our upcoming issue), Sean Orena, Jonnie Craig and Dana Goldstein will all make regular appearances both in your book collection and your bookmarks folder before too long. Spend a few minutes wandering through 'nofound', and you'll understand why Emeric Glayse chose his contributors and confidants ; spend an hour longer and your fingers will be sore from all the googling, url-ing, and picture saving. » Philip Watts for Dossier Journal

Produce by nofoundproject (http://www.nofoundproject.com)

Email:
Website:	http://nofound.tumblr.com/
Location:	Paris, France

Recent Beauty

2009-05-02T13:39:00.000-06:00

Beautiful

2009-04-13T22:10:00.000-06:00

Lina Kristen Jenny

2009-03-18T17:51:00.000-06:00

Jack Kerouac and friends in NYC

2009-03-17T11:00:00.000-06:00

Silent footage of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, and others in New York, Summer 1959. The location is in and around the Harmony Bar & Restaurant at E 9th St. and 3rd Ave. Others seen are Mary Frank (wife of film-maker Robert Frank) and children Pablo and Andrea, as well as Lucien's wife Francesca Carr and their three sons, Simon, Caleb and Ethan. Does anyone recognise any of the others?

Crushed Fireflies and white lead.

2009-03-11T10:15:00.000-06:00

CARAVAGGIO USED 'PHOTOGRAPHY' TO CREATE DRAMATIC MASTERPIECES

Renaissance artist Caravaggio used an early form of photography to project images of his subjects onto a canvas using a noxious concoction of crushed fireflies and white lead.

By Nick Squires in Rome

10 Mar 2009

The 16th century master used modern darkroom techniques to create his masterpieces, more than 200 years before the invention of the camera.

Italian researchers claim the technique explained why many of his subjects were left-handed - the image projected onto the canvas had been reversed.

Art historian Roberta Lapucci said Caravaggio's dramatic 'chiaroscuro' style of light and shadow was based on "a whole set of techniques that are the basis of photography".

Art history scholars have long known that Caravaggio worked in a sort of darkroom, illuminating his subjects through a hole in the ceiling and projecting the image onto a canvas using a lens and a mirror.

But Mrs Lapucci is the first researcher to suggest that he treated the canvas with light-sensitive substances, including a luminescent powder made from crushed fireflies, in order to "fix" the image as 19th century photographers later would.

He then used white lead mixed with chemicals such as mercury, to outline the image in greater clarity, she believes.

Mrs Lapucci, who teaches at an arts institute in Florence, the Studio Art Centers International, based her hypothesis on research by British artist David Hockney, who wrote in his 2001 book "Secret Knowledge" that many old masters used optical instruments to compose their paintings.

"There is lots of proof, notably the fact that Caravaggio never made preliminary sketches," said Mrs Lapucci.

An "abnormal number" of Caravaggio's subjects are left-handed. "That could be explained by the fact that the image projected on the canvas was backwards," she said.

Caravaggio's use of mercury might explain his violent temper - prolonged exposure to the chemical can affect the central nervous system.

Caravaggio was notorious during his lifetime for becoming involved in brawls, one of which ended in the death in 1606 of a young adversary, which forced the artist to flee from Rome to Malta.

Dr John Spike, a Caravaggio expert based in Florence, said that to prove the thesis that the Baroque master used chemicals to "fix" projected images, the paint in the pictures would have to be subjected to laboratory testing.

"If evidence was found, that would be amazing. But it would involve taking samples from some of the world's greatest masterpieces, which is not ideal.

"We know that he worked in a dark room and that he was fascinated by mirrors, and he was living in Rome at a time when it was a hotbed of scientific inquiry. "Might he have used this technique? It's possible - his protector, Cardinal Del Monte, was also the protector of Galileo, and they were all fascinated by optics and the new physics."

Leonardo da Vinci, who lived in the century before Caravaggio, was familiar with the principles of the "camera obscura" but Mrs Lapucci believes Caravaggio was the first to use it in paintings.

Roberta Lapucci: Mrs Lapucci is the first researcher to suggest that Caravaggio treated the canvas with light-sensitive substances <http://tinyurl.com/d8con2>

Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus <http://tinyurl.com/dmshs6>

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2009

Illiterate Magazine at Redline

2009-02-12T08:55:00.000-07:00

This will be a wild party.

Red at RULE

2009-02-12T08:53:00.000-07:00

Denver Post review

2008-12-26T00:54:00.000-07:00

Arts and Entertainment

New photos, vintage process
By Kyle MacMillan
Denver Post Fine Arts Critic
12/26/2008

The imperfections inherent in the 19th-century wet collodion process only enhance the mystery and timelessness of "Kristen Floating," a unique 4" -by-5" -inch print by Mark Sink and Kristen Hatgi. (Images from Rule Gallery )
* Andy Warhol pictures that you haven't seen

For centuries, artists have turned to the past to inspire the new.

So it is with Denver photographers Mark Sink and Kristen Hatgi, who collaborated earlier this year on a series of 79 spellbinding, anachronistic-seeming images on view through Jan. 17 at the Rule Gallery.

The two have revived the nearly forgotten wet-plate collodion process, which replaced the daguerrotype in the mid-1850s but was itself supplanted by less laborious dry-plate techniques a few decades later.

In the demanding collodion process, tin or glass plates are immersed in a silver nitrate solution, and then they must be exposed in the camera and developed in minutes while still wet. The negative images appear as positives when mounted on dark paper.
Figurative images, including "Charlotte in Bow," dominate the 79 wet collodion photographs on view at Rule Gallery.

Using a vintage 1850s camera, Sink and Hatgi traveled back into photographic history for this ambitious project, mastering the intricacies of the venerable technique while simultaneously updating and revitalizing it.

The enticingly dark-hued images that resulted — most 4 1/2 by 5 1/2 inches — have a sometimes murky, sometimes shadowy look, with serendipitous flaws and imperfections that are an inevitable part of this imprecise process.

Their intimate size and inherent inexactitude mean that viewers have to look more closely and spend more time with these photographs to fully appreciate their power — a welcome antidote to today's nonstop, instantaneous imagery.

Because viewers cannot help but associate the antique appearance of these photographs with some bygone era, the subject matter, however modern it might be, is inevitably refracted via the past. And, paradoxically, this intersection of past and present gives these pieces an unmistakably contemporary feel.

In many of these works, the two collaborators deliberately play up the ambiguity of time. Selections, such as "Rose in Water," possess a vaguely and probably deliberate Victorian flavor.

In addition, some of the apparel worn by the
A graceful quietude pervades Sink and Hatgi's "Datura in Hand." 5.5 X 4.5 inches
women, such as big, flowing skirts, also suggests the past, as do some of the accompanying props, such as the ungainly, old-fashioned brace in "Lauren With Leg Brace."

While these pieces cover an impressively broad range of subject matter, including still lifes and stunning landscapes such as "Small Aspens," most are devoted to portraits (including some self-portraits) and nudes.

The nudes (some recalling E.J. Bellocq's alluring portraits of New Orleans prostitutes in 1912) are suffused with freshness and sensuality, even eroticism at times, with nearly all of them coming off as refined rather than crass.

These figurative images are obviously staged, some with intriguing props, such as the odd, open hoop in "Sascha in Hoop Skirt," that add a kind of enigmatic air. Most are successful, but a few, such as "Mark and Kristen" go too far, becoming stagey and forced.

Sink, by far the better known of the two photographers, has been such a ubiquitous presence on the Denver scene for some three decades that it is easy to take him for granted.

It doesn't help that he is so prolific that much of what he does gets exhibited little if at all. The result is that viewers see a tree here and there, but never the full forest that is his extensive oeuvre.

This exhibition, along with a smaller, accompanying look at his portraits of Andy Warhol from the early 1980s, provide a strong reminder that it is time for a local institution to undertake a mid-career survey of his work.

Meanwhile, photography cognoscenti and people who simply enjoy intriguing, unusual imagery can bask in this compelling show.

"Light and Time: Wet Plate Collodion Photographs"

Photography. Rule Gallery, 227 Broadway. An exhibition of 79 collaborative images by Denver photographers Mark Sink and Kristen Hatgi that make use of an obsolete yet still viable 19th-century process. Extended through Jan. 17. Noon to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Free. 303-777-9473 or rulegallery.com.

Mary Voelz Chandler, Rocky Mountain News

2008-12-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

Images reflect bygone process in photography
By Mary Voelz Chandler, Rocky Mountain News
Published December 18, 2008

Dawn Curls, a collodion wet plate image by Mark Sink and Kristen Hatgi.

More than a search for comfort steers photographers back in time to work in archival methods when the rest of reality is navigating a high-tech future at warp speed.

The need to experiment and understand unusual photographic techniques keeps things interesting, for one thing, and offers a reminder of the way in which humans have captured images since the 1830s.

That's the intellectual takeaway from "Light and Time," a generous selection of glass-plate images on view at Rule Gallery.

Area photographer and arts advocate Mark Sink and partner and photographer Kristen Hatgi have stepped back into the 1850s to work in the exacting - i.e., unforgiving - process in which a piece of glass is coated with the chemical stew called collodion, dipped in silver nitrate, put in the camera, then exposed as a photograph was shot. This needed to be done quickly, while the plate was still wet.

Sink and Hatgi have a knack for innovation and a penchant for the romantic side of photography, and here have parlayed that into a beautiful exhibition.

Part of that derives from the plates themselves: almost 80 small, blue or black glass objects displaying nudes, fanciful scenes, dreamy landscapes (lots of ethereal aspen here), and the skillful use of props and costuming. These shimmering works are displayed on shelves, lined up in a fashion that plays up the historical nature of the work on view. It has the air of a photography museum, exploring a process that had its day in the sun and is back for a brief reappearance.

That's the other element that adds to the appeal of "Light and Time." Gallery owner Robin Rule again has capitalized on the long, narrow confines of her space to install this show, and two others, to good advantage.

Behind the wet plate imagery she installed "The Untold Story," a small show of photographs by Sink from his days in 1980s New York. These are predominantly candid silver prints and chromogenic prints of Andy Warhol in a range of situations, at work and at play - another recollection of a decade in which the creation of art and the spirit of the time was different from today.

The standout image, though, is the 1988 photograph Man Dies, a shot of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat standing near a work bearing those words. Sink notes that he took the photo shortly before Basquiat's death, at a show at the gallery run by Vrej Baghoomian.

There is a sweetness to this piece, countered by the shock of realizing that the artist - so young, provocative and influential - was coming to the end of his very short life.

Mark Sink's Man Dies, an image of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, taken at his last show a few days before his death in 1988.
---------------------------------------------------

Light and Time/The Untold Story

* What: Wet plate collodion photographs by Mark Sink and Kristen Hatgi, with 1980s portraits by Sink of Andy Warhol and others in the New York art scene.

* Where and when: Rule Gallery, 227 Broadway; through Jan. 10

* Information: 303-777-9473; rulegallery.com

Bettie Page 1923 - 2008

2008-12-13T13:33:00.000-07:00

1950s pinup model Bettie Page dies in LA at 85

LOS ANGELES – Bettie Page, the 1950s secretary-turned-model whose controversial photographs in skimpy attire or none at all helped set the stage for the 1960s sexual revolution, died Thursday Dec. 1tth . She was 85.

Great Debate

2008-12-13T13:29:00.001-07:00

Blue Glass

2008-12-11T11:54:00.000-07:00

Denver Connects Review

2008-12-10T20:14:00.000-07:00

Warhol, wetplates at Rule Gallery

Walking into Rule Gallery this month, it appears as if someone has raided a museum and put all the beautiful, antique glass photo plates on display. It is surprisng, then, to notice one of the models standing in modern clothes at the other end of the gallery, chatting away with friends.

Indeed, photographers Mark Sink and Kristen Hatgi harkened back to the early photographic method of wet plate collodion to capture scenes that are both antique and modern all at once.

A popular technique for photography in the 1800s, wetplate collodion creates an image that is almost ghostlike on the glass plate, and the images at Rule sparkle as if lit from some mysterious source.

On the other end of the gallery, Mark Sink’s photographs of Andy Warhol fill the walls for the show Untold Story. Smiling, laughing, and posing, Warhol looks amazing and real in these photos, giving viewers who are just crazy about the man (like your truly!) a feeling of being right there with the famed artist.

The shows run at Rule through Jan. 10th and are definitely something to see.

Westword Review .. yayee

2008-12-10T14:34:00.000-07:00

Light and Time at Rule Gallery

By Michael Paglia

Published on December 10, 2008 at 11:17am

Light and Time, in the front of Rule Gallery (227 Broadway, 303-777-9473, www.rulegallery.com) consists of small, wet-plate Collodion print photographs by Mark Sink and Kristen Hatgi that have been propped against the walls. The Collodion process is an early photographic method used by Civil War documentarian Matthew Brady.

Mark Sink, Kristen Hatgi, Rule Gallery

In a jointly written artist statement, Sink and Hatgi observe that archaic chemical processes — including the Collodion procedure — that fell by the wayside in the late 19th century are making something of a comeback at the beginning of the 21st. This is no doubt a reaction to the digital revolution, of which these methods are decidedly not a part.

The diminutive photos on glass or tin depict men, women, landscapes and still-life scenes; they are very beautiful, if more than a little creepy. Many feature self-portraits of Sink and Hatgi, sometimes together and sometimes alone. The most striking are printed on blue sheets of glass that have been sprinkled throughout the display. The entire presentation is very engaging.

In the middle part of the gallery, in the exhibit The Untold Story, are some remarkable candid shots of Andy Warhol (and one of Jean-Michel Basquiat) that were taken by Sink during his youthful sojourn to New York a couple of decades ago. Sink has long talked about his close relationship with Warhol, and these intimate photos of the artist's private life prove that he wasn't just whistling Dixie. I have to admit, I was one of those who doubted him, but I guess I was wrong. The color photos show Warhol as he was in his everyday life not long before he died.

The festivities are finished off by Stills, which comprises edgy and awkward representational paintings done by emerging Denver artist Nathan Abels. Though technically not photo-realist in style, these paintings make wonderful companions for the photos from the other two shows.

All three exhibits close January 10.

http://www.westword.com/2008-12-11/culture/light-and-time-at-the-rule-gallery/

RULE E-Card

2008-11-14T18:35:00.000-07:00

Rule Show November 14th

2008-11-14T11:47:00.000-07:00

MARK SINK & KRISTEN HATGI

"At the turn of the century, the beautiful process of chemical photography was left behind. It's funny to think that we are already experiencing it's revival. In this new age of digital inkjet reproduction it is very refreshing and special to make a one of a kind art piece that was made by light striking it directly."-Sink and Hatgi

Mark Sink and Kristen Hatgi collaborated over the summer of 2008 to create images using one of the earliest photographic methods, wet plate collodion. Their romantic mix of still lifes, portraits, nudes and landscapes are a mix of modern and antique elements. Frederick Scott Archer developed the wet plate collodion process in 1851. Collodion on glass is known as an ambrotype, while the same process on tin is called a ferrotype. Collodion positives were extremely popular from 1852 to the mid 1860's. The photograph is created by pouring a thin layer of collodion on a glass plate before sensitizing it in a silver nitrate solution. The plate must then be exposed and developed while it is still wet. Sink and Hatgi use this historic process and an antique camera to create their modern ambrotypes. The revival of this photographic method once used by William Henry Jackson and Civil War photographer Matthew Brady, can also be seen in the work of contemporary artists, Sally Mann and Scully & Osterman.

Kristen Hatgi received her BFA from the Art Institute of Boston in 2008. She has exhibited her photography in the Denver Public Library, FLASH Gallery in Belmar, Gallery Sink, and the Art Institute of Boston. She was inspired a decade ago by the local teacher and collector Paul Harbaugh and later she came to work for Mark and Gallery Sink.

For more of Kristen Hatgi's work visit:

http://kristenhatgi.blogspot.com

Todd's Press Release

2008-11-13T20:24:00.000-07:00

Well. Mark has started doing wet plate collodion process photos (think 18880's or jacksons wardrobe) .Then then in your mind think of all the cute watresses in town naked and walla. Then as an added boner Mark blew up extra big some of the photos he took of warhol also in 1880.These are a must see. Affordable if you have a job.

Kristen Hatgi . com

2008-11-12T23:30:00.000-07:00

New Site
Self Made

http://www.kristenhatgi.com

TWILIGHT OF THE COLOR PHOTO

2008-11-09T08:17:00.000-07:00

TWILIGHT OF THE COLOR PHOTO

As printed snapshots vanish, we're losing more than shoe boxes full of mementos

By Dushko Petrovich

One hundred years ago, one of Paris's richest men had a quixotic dream. Returning from a personal trip to China and Japan, the banker Albert Kahn decided to build a huge visual archive of the planet. Kahn believed that mutual misunderstanding was the source of world conflict, so in 1909, he began funding scores of photographers as they set out across five continents. By the time the Great Depression finally bankrupted him 22 years later, Kahn's intrepid operateurs had managed to document almost 50 countries, returning to France with 120 hours of film footage and 4,000 black-and-white pictures. This alone would have been a remarkable legacy, but the real jewels of the collection were printed on glass, in a full spectrum the world had never seen. The recently invented technique of the autochrome - which made portable color photography possible - meant that Kahn's emissaries could also amass a staggering total of 72,000 color plates.

Today, Kahn's project - still housed in a suburb west of Paris - is a stirring and underappreciated monument: the first great work of color photography. Princeton University Press is marking this centennial with a beautifully illustrated book. "The Dawn of the Color Photograph" is a handsome document full of lush and memorable images. Most of us still picture 1909 exclusively in black and white, so it's a revelation to peer back 100 years and see such eerily bright hues. French soldiers - dressed inadvisably in red, white, and blue - carve trenches through the verdant countryside; members of the Indian aristocracy, though recently stripped of power, still gather for a portrait wrapped in a defiant regalia of lavender, gold, maroon, and orange. Back in its heyday, the Moulin Rouge is pictured truly red. The most poignant autochromes - the really haunting ones - are those where the richness of color fixes people whose ways of life are unwittingly on the verge of extinction: Farmers, shepherds, and weavers all stand still as their tools and costumes enter the afterlife through a revolutionary new medium.

In the years since Kahn sent his crews out with thousands of pounds of coated glass, the color print has evolved from an expensive novelty into an affordable, nearly ubiquitous object. What used to take specialists many painstaking hours can now be done by machine in a matter of seconds; 30 cents now buys an accurate, glossy color the likes of which the wealthy Kahn could only have dreamed of. As an object, the color print has finally been perfected. And yet, the 100th anniversary of Kahn's project isn't so much a triumphant moment as an elegiac one. Like the shepherds, the color print has nearly vanished. Today, you get some glossies sent out as holiday cards, and some lucky ones get matted and framed, but the vast majority of color photographs now taken - and there are countless millions of them - pass before us, just briefly, on a screen.

Our rituals have already shifted. We no longer hand vacation photos around patiently at dinner parties. If we do reach for our photo albums, the collections start to thin out around 2006. Family pictures migrated from our desktop to our "desktop," and showing off a wallet photo is suddenly very rare. Instead, we flip open to the snap on our cellphones, where our beloved's low-res face competes brightly with the time, date, and number of bars. (Many of our friends are smiling away inside that camera phone.)

Printing is still just as easy and cheap as it ever was, but given the option, we now prefer to save - or upload - instead. That tells us something about our appetite for convenience, but even more about what we want from photographs in the first place. The object itself, no matter how crisp and permanent, how lush or mysterious, turns out to matter less than our ability to capture, store, and share an image. Without the print, photography's magical power - to freeze a moment in time - is still ours. In fact, although we continue to think of the photograph as a physical thing, we are finding out that it better serves our needs without being printed.

But as with each of our advances, something else is being lost. It is easy to think of the print and the digital image as the same thing, but they're actually very different. Even as cameras tout their ever-increasing megapixels, nearly everything we view is projected out at 72 dots per inch, the standard resolution of a monitor. The resulting pictures are back-lit, vivid, and very easy to scan, so we hardly notice how hard it is to look into them. Your eyes move side to side, and you can easily gather all the information, but if you linger for a minute - an actual minute - you'll notice that the screen doesn't quite accept your gaze. A printed photograph, however - even when small, or blurry - has a way of letting you in. The paper surface is less aggressive than the liquid crystal one, so your eyes can roam around. The brightness of the pixel has a price: The illusory space of the photo is subtly reduced, along with its invitation to wander - or simply rest - inside it.

Of course, the real space photographs take up is also reduced. Like most technology, the color print seemed ever so sleek . . . until we saw the upgrade. A laptop effortlessly holds what hundreds of shoe boxes could not; we now send 50 pictures with a click. Still, the actual third dimension is an important aspect of the supposedly 2D print; the physical contact establishes a certain intimacy. Who has not held a photograph and wept? Who hasn't felt their nostalgia settle for an instant on the thinness of a print? To hold a photo is to hold a person, or even a place, in your hand - a momentary illusion that has no parallel on a monitor.

The digital gems we hoard can number in the thousands, or even in the tens of thousands. Of course, the idea is that any and all of them could be printed, if an occasion were to arise. But what would that special day be like? Years pass, and it never comes. The prospect of printing them all out becomes unthinkable. The reason they never turn into objects is precisely because these photos have already served their purpose: At the party, which we wished would go on forever, we posed and we clicked. Then we showed each other the little LCD screen, and we were satisfied - the moment would last. (A little while later, we repeated the ritual.)

But just as the paperless format erases one kind of closeness, it can open entirely new realms of intimacy - the minute you hit "upload." While our stored photos are shy (you have to search for them) and a little vulnerable (they can all disappear with a hard drive), the ones we put on the Web are gregarious and immortal. Never before has the photo been so emphatically public, announcing our achievements and pleasures with a swiftness we never dreamed of. So even when these disseminated images come to haunt us, it's not in the manner of the print - which conjured private sentiments, like longing or regret - but with rather more civic feelings, like shame and embarrassment. Usually these unnerving photos are the ones other people have posted (and "tagged"), but what's really irksome is that other people are seeing them, and that these other people can even copy them and distribute them, if they so choose. The old idea of "destroy the negatives" sounds pretty quaint in a world of endlessly reproducible jpegs, as does the notion of asking to take someone's picture. We're all celebrities now! But it is the photographs, not their subjects, that are godlike in their movements.

The lowly print, meanwhile, can only exist in one place at a time. It's easily damaged, or hidden, or lost. In these weaknesses, however, lies a particular charm. Only a few years have passed, and we already wax nostalgic about the old processes. Remember when you used to have to wait? The premeditation is gone, as well as the anticipation, investment, and surprise. The photograph is less of an occasion. Don't worry, we can take another one! In the era of prints, the image was just part of the photograph. The carefully avoided thumbprints, the unfortunate creases, the ugly red digital date stamps - we will come to miss these subtle markings. Hold them by the edges! But the new images don't even have edges - they're all front. It has become common for critics and artists to mourn the passing of particular formats - the Polaroid, the Lomo, or the Kodachrome - but these eulogies only scratch the proverbial surface. What we will really miss is the print itself.

It seems strange that this long-awaited miracle - this icon of modern life - would even have a life span. But after a century of printing full color images of our lives, the habit is quietly dying out. Of course, hobbyists and art schools will keep the techniques alive. Liberated from utility, the photograph is already following other antiquated printing processes - like engraving and lithography - into the domain of craft and fine art. And old-fashioned photos will probably still be employed, like wax seals and letter-press invitations, to commemorate special occasions.

But Kahn's haunting autochromes - which are cracked and worn, imperfect, fragile, and well traveled - should remind us that there is magic when the object itself, not just the occasion, is special. Whether they have crossed continents, or just sat in somebody's pocket, even the flimsiest photographic prints take on a certain weight. As they fade from use, we can start to sense what these objects really did: They carried feelings their images didn't intend, feelings that mattered more than anyone knew at the time.

Pics

books

Dushko Petrovich, a painter and critic, is the resident fellow in painting at Boston University and the founding editor of Paper Monument.

The Boston Globe
January 4, 2009

WWA and The Lab

2008-11-07T17:29:00.001-07:00

Join us as we celebrate a year of success!
Good food, community & photography!

WWA FUNDRAISING DINNER
Sunday, November 16th, 6-8pm
at The Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar

with special guest speaker, Evan Anderman
Member of the Photography Curator Selection Committee for the DAM

plus a special conversation with Mark Sink on his great grandfathers' collection of Orientalist Photography | on display now at The Lab

$65 person | $95 couple
$55 | $75 WWA Members
Advance Reservation necessary
Seating very limited

Call 303.837.1341 to purchase tickets

The Lab is located at 404 S. Upham Street, Lakewood CO

Lina

2008-10-29T16:39:00.000-06:00

News Flash

2008-10-29T00:51:00.000-06:00

Rule Gallery updates Mark Sink on website.

Click here : Mark Sink's page

Stay tuned for up coming show.

World of the Nude Art Photography- Mark Sink- “If you have a great concept the camera really should not matter that much.”

2008-10-29T00:43:00.000-06:00

Interview

K in swim cap

2008-10-21T11:10:00.000-06:00

SALON du MUSÉE NOVEMBER 14th

2008-10-15T17:18:00.000-06:00

SALON du MUSÉE

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14th, 2008

5:00pm Patron Champagne Reception and Discussion with Guest Curator Dr. Christoph Heinrich

6:30pm Salon du Musée Soirée & Fine Art Sale
Live & Silent Auction

Gallery 1261 | 1261 Delaware Street | Denver

Cocktail Attire | INFORMATION: www.salon-d-arts.org | 303.494.0180 |
musee@comcast.net

Mark Sink, Private Photo Session. Mark Sink’s passion is beauty, resulting in unique and engaging images. His work is in numerous museum collections, notably the Denver Art Museum, and he exhibits in solo and group shows worldwide. The successful bidder on this auction package will enjoy the discreet and compelling talent of one of the country’s leading photographers. Session date to be decided upon mutually between successful bidder and Mark Sink. Value: $1,000

Wet plate summer and fall

2008-10-13T17:52:00.000-06:00

Art Miami

2008-10-09T11:05:00.000-06:00

K & Charolette

2008-10-09T00:12:00.000-06:00

Stephine meets Kristen and Mark

2008-09-27T15:29:00.001-06:00