Photography by Ruth Nelson
Exhibit: April 4 - 30, 2016
Reception: April 4, 2016, 6-8pm
Artist’s Statement:
Many years ago, after a meditation retreat, I went out on a magical spring day with my camera, and I reflected on a teaching of the Buddha: in the seeing, there is just that which is seen. The eye sees color and form. The rest comes from our minds, which create reactions, meaning, emotions, and stories. I realized then that this is even truer of the camera. My photography became more of a conscious evocation of experience rather than an attempt to capture it literally.
I take the pictures as I find them, without rearranging or manipulation. When I process the images later, I can investigate, reinforce or even change the feeling of the piece by cropping, by manipulating the color and lighting, and even by turning the picture upside-down or sideways.
This collection of images focuses on texture, using pattern and color as the visual base. The prints themselves are flat and matte. They are single images from my camera, not digital collages. I have also included some of the unaltered images, showing the difference between what the camera saw and what I found later using my computer.
Biography:
Ruth Nelson is a Watertown artist, meditation coach, and weight-lifter who came to Massachusetts to study mathematics at MIT. Art and science have always been important in Ruth’s life; she finds that they open pathways for looking at, understanding, and representing reality. Her career was in computer network security research, with a particular emphasis on understanding the usefulness and limitations of models. This work, along with her mathematics education and her years of meditation practice, leads her to embrace alternative ways of seeing the world.
When Ruth goes to unfamiliar places, she uses photography to help understand, document, interpret and communicate her experience. She also applies that same process to her local environment, attempting to see familiar things with a traveler’s eye.
Ruth’s travel has included trips with Heifer International to visit their projects in Southeast Asia and South America. One of her Thailand pictures, of a Buddhist ordination ceremony, was featured in a calendar by the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of Wisconsin.
Ruth has studied with a number of photography teachers, including Melinda Bruno and David Lang. Both Melinda and David have encouraged her love for abstraction and detail. She also took collage classes with Sally Santuososso at the DeCordova Museum and was a member of the Studio7 collaborative started by Sally and her students. Both her collage and her photography appeared in many Studio7 shows, including one at the DeCordova Museum.
Ruth’s work has been shown in a number of venues, including Concord Art, Arsenal Center for the Arts, and Fitness Together Belmont. She participated in a small-group, juried show, “Perceptions of Self,” at Arsenal Center for the Arts and she had her first solo show in 2015 at the Faneuil branch of the Boston Public Library.