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A moment in place: February 18, 2012
by Anne Pyburn Craig
Sense of place is a curious thing. Reading an article in a reference source, you may get a list of great restaurants and a raft of statistics but be left with no feeling at all of what it would actually be like to be standing on a street corner there on a random afternoon. Short of actually visiting a place yourself, true understanding can only be reached with an artist as interpreter and guide.
Glen River's Portraits of Place series is just such a mediating force, revealing the essences of his subjects- River summarizes it as “the myth of the moment”- with accuracy and affection but no affectation. Starting with a photo and then working up a piece with a variety of media, he immortalizes scenes from memorable towns such as Manhattan and Woodstock, New York that are colorful, vivid and entrancing in their conveyance of everyday life.
“I take as many photos as I can,” he explains, “when I've got a view I like. When I look through them and choose, often I find that the shot I thought was the best isn't as good as one I caught by accident. A good beginning for a painting is often not the same as a great photograph; I look for something, maybe a gesture, that captures the feeling of place. I know I am going to mess with it a lot.”
What River summarizes as “messing with” is actually the application of decades of study and practice. “I started as a kid, around 1959. I had an uncle who was an artist and he lived on the Lower East Side and I used to tag along with him with a sketchbook, then work up a painting that night. I got into the habit of grabbing images.”
After a sojourn in Cleveland, where he found himself drawn to music and civil rights action, and some time wandering the U.S. on a motorcycle, River decided “school was the gig for me. So I got into the School of Visual Arts, and then went to Silvermine.”
“I've been blessed to know some amazing people,” he says. “Bob Grey, the man who ran Silvermine, he was an intellectual dynamo, always experimenting with pushing people out of their comfort zone and he did it very well. Nobody was comfortable at that place! But it was great.” Journeys to Greece, the south of France, and England would follow.
In the early 1980s, with the advent of computer technology, River expanded his comfort zone into the realm of digital imaging. “It was akin to what happened in music when multi-track recording came in- all of a sudden there were new ways to manipulate images, and I started experimenting and playing with those, layering painting and printmaking and photography and assimilating what the computer could do into my lexicon of image-making. Gradually I became more fluid with it- the methods meld into your consciousness and you stop having to struggle so much.”
The subjects in River's found images are candid and immediate. In his “Manhattan” series, people struggle with heavy packages, fumble with clothing, talk on cellphones. Heavy equipment blocks traffic. And somehow, it is all beautiful. Other series evoke essential qualities of Woodstock, Rosendale and New Paltz- three towns in New York's Ulster County where River has lived and worked- and Connecticut, where he now resides.
River is currently running a Kickstarter drive to fund production of a limited edition book of his Manhattan works, which are being exhibited through February at the Stone River Grill in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.
------------------ ALSO ------------------
Hanging in the Balance
Posted on November 16, 2011
A conversation with artist Glen River
by Sean Ryan 2011
New Prints
Posted on November 24, 2011
Movie:
Biography
Art:
Portraits Of Place:
Portraits Of Place
(Back Story)
Sandy Hook And Newtown
(Back Story)
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The descriptions in each Art Book release are almost identical. This is because they are all part of the "Portraits Of Place" series.
Campus Portraits Of Yale
HTML 1 Sheet
Mystic Seaport
HTML 1 Sheet
Manhattan Portraits
HTML 1 Sheet
Woodstock
HTML 1 Sheet
Rosendale & New Paltz
HTML 1 Sheet
Sandy Hook & Newtown
HTML 1 Sheet
Westport
HTML 1 Sheet
Harvard
HTML 1 Sheet
Provincetown
HTML 1 Sheet
Chapbook Review Words Alone ( Text )
Zen Process DYNAMICA ( Text )
DYNAMICA SYNOPSIS ( Text )
Art & Artist ( Text )
Brief Biography ( Text )
Producers Notes( Text )
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© 2008 Glen River, all rights reserved (Permission for use granted to all press services and publications.)
Real Audio Clips currently available:
Who Is Glen River Interview by Irene McGarrity
art_interview_1-22-04 Interview by Irene McGarrity
music_interview_1-22-04 Interview by Irene McGarrity
poetry_interview-1-27-04 Interview by Irene McGarrity
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