MY DAKOTA: THREE EVENTS

©Rebecca Norris Webb, “Badlands,” from “My Dakota” exhibition at Ricco/Maresca Gallery, NYC, June 20-August 17, 2013

Please join me in congratulating Rebecca on her “My Dakota” exhibition at Ricco/Maresca Gallery, NYC, which opens on Thursday, June 20th with a reception from 6-8pm, and runs through August 17th.  There are two other related events — a joint slide talk at Aperture with me on Friday, June 21st,  from 7-8:30pm and an artist talk at the gallery on Saturday, June 22nd, from 5-6pm.  Please come and help us celebrate the work.––Alex Webb

LINKS:

“My Dakota” at Ricco/Maresca Gallery, NYC: http://www.riccomaresca.com/

“My Dakota” and “Violet Isle” at the North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks, ND: http://www.ndmoa.com/

“Together & Apart: The Photographs of Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb,” Aperture Foundation slide talk followed by Q&A led by MCNY curator Sean Corcoran and Aperture Senior Editor Denise Wolff and book signing of “The Suffering of Light” and “My Dakota”:

http://www.aperture.org/event/alex-webb-rebecca-norris-webb/

“The Geography of Loss: A Conversation with Curator Laurel Reuter and Artist Rebecca Norris Webb”:

http://www.riccomaresca.com/the-geography-of-loss/

“My Dakota” featured on Elizabeth Avedon’s blog:

http://elizabethavedon.blogspot.com/2013/06/rebecca-norris-webb-my-dakota-opens-in.html

“The Suffering of Light” Q&A with Alex Webb and Barbara Davidson of the LA Times:

http://framework.latimes.com/reframed/

©Alex Webb, “Rebecca installing the handwritten wall text in her ‘My Dakota” show at Ricco/Maresca Gallery, NYC, Wed., June 19, 2013

TWO QUESTIONS: LA Times and Ricco/Maresca

©Alex Webb, Sunday LA Times, 16 June 13

Barbara Davidson, LA Times: I look at your work and I say to myself, Alex Webb must have an insane amount of patience. Your images are so meticulously layered, rich in color, possess a wonderful visual rhythm, and amazing light. Where does this obsession come from? Can you tell me about the process of creating your images?

Alex Webb: The sculptor Henry Moore, late in life, after a long and successful career, said the following:  “The secret in life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life.  And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.”  That quote resonates with my sense of the frustrations and difficulties of street photography.  It also reminds me that my father once said — a little jokingly — to Rebecca that if there were a mythical archetype for me it would be Sisyphus, interminably rolling a boulder up a hill.

To read the full Q&A online:

http://framework.latimes.com/reframed/

 

©

North Dakota Museum of Art Curator Laurel Reuter: What did you learn from doing the project?

Rebecca Norris Webb: Looking back at My Dakota, I now realize that I was photographing this dark time in my life in order to try to absorb it, to crystallize it, and, ultimately, to let go of it. Not only did my first grief change me, but making My Dakota changed me as well, both as a human being and as an artist.

To read the full Q&A with Laurel and Rebecca:

http://www.riccomaresca.com/the-geography-of-loss/

UPCOMING EVENTS WITH ALEX WEBB AND REBECCA NORRIS WEBB:

Thursday, June 20, 6-8pm: “My Dakota” opening at Ricco/Maresca Gallery, 529 W. 20th St., 3d Floor, NYC.  Show is up until August 17, 2013.

Friday, June 21, 7-8:30pm: “Together and Apart: The Photographs of Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb,” Aperture Foundation, 547 W. 27th, NYC.  This event is followed by a Q&A led by MCNY curator Sean Corcoran and Aperture editor Denise Wolff and a book signing of the first copies of the 2nd edition of Alex’s “The Suffering of Light” and Rebecca’s “My Dakota.”  This event is free and open to the public

Saturday, June 22, 5-6pm: Gallery talk/walk through of “My Dakota” with Rebecca and Alex, Ricco/Maresca Gallery.  Some of the last copies of signed”My Dakota” book will be available.

RECENT LINKS FOR ALEX AND REBECCA:

ELIZABETH AVEDON BLOG:

http://elizabethavedon.blogspot.com/2013/06/rebecca-norris-webb-my-dakota-opens-in.html

2PARAGRAPHS:

http://2paragraphs.com/2013/05/a-landscape-of-ones-own/

MY DAKOTA @ ND Museum of Art

©Rebecca Norris Webb, “Badlands” from “My Dakota” at the North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks, ND, June 5-Aug. 6 and Ricco/Maresca Gallery, NYC, June 20-Aug. 17

North Dakota Museum of Art Curator Laurel Reuter: My Dakota is as much an elegy to a time and place as it is a memorial to your brother. It is unlike any other photo book I have seen about the Dakotas.   

While objects in the forefront seem to ground each photograph, the overall composition often suggests movement stretching far into time and space. The visual parallels the passage of your brother into the beyond just as the prairie itself stretches endlessly toward the far horizon. Is this a conscious theme or am I imagining?

Rebecca Norris Webb:  I think you’ve beautifully captured the sense of tension in the frame, between the near and the far, the tangible and the ethereal, the ground one stands on and the distant horizon, all of which may also suggest the living and the dead.  In the darkest time of grief, one feels suspended between two worlds, sometimes floating, sometimes feeling tugged in two directions at once.

For months after my brother died, it felt as if his loss was carving its own territory, a kind of borderland between memory and the badlands and prairie.

LR: Your photographs layer and dissolve. They soften, bleed, and liquefy. Could this be a conscious or unconscious metaphor for grief itself?

RNW:  An intriguing observation, and one I hadn’t thought about before.   What you’re describing suggests the transformative quality of grief.  This notion is also echoed in some of the text pieces in the book, such as —  “Does the prairie long to be an inland sea again?”

Thinking about grief and transformation also reminds me of a conversation poet Marie Howe had with another poet, Stanley Kunitz, in the months following her younger brother’s death. “I feel something has me in its mouth and is chewing me,” said Howe. “Yes, and you must wait and see who you’ll be when it’s done with you,” replied Kunitz.

To read the rest of “The Geography of Loss” conversation with NDMOA curator Laurel Reuter and Rebecca: http://www.riccomaresca.com/the-geography-of-loss/

©Alex Webb, “Rebecca installing her handwritten text pieces on the walls of her ‘My Dakota” exhibition at the North Dakota Museum of Art.