A two-person exhibition titled Unseen | Seen at Shari Brownfield Fine Art examines how two artists, specifically photographers, reveal the unseen in their work. Whether viewing a landscape immediately at their feet, or the wonder of an ephemeral moment – the artists in the exhibition showcase their reverence for Mother Nature as a place for connection, reflection and discovery. View the exhibition online.
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Analog film photographer Robert Buelteman grew up in the Bay Area, his boyhood home overlooking the thousands of acres of the San Francisco State Fish & Game Preserve. Visitors were, and still are, forbidden on the sensitive watershed property, whose landscape remains nearly unchanged for over two centuries. In the early 1980s, after three years of begging for access to photograph the untouched property, Buelteman was given a one day permit, which was extended to a month, and eventually to an entire decade.
In the exhibition Unseen | Seen, this unrelenting desire of the artist to give voice to the natural world in the absence of humanity, remains a common thread. In keeping his work black and white, Buelteman removes himself, his interpretation, his lens, from what is seen so that his subject may speak for itself. “Heaven is at our feet every single day if we are willing to take the time to perceive it” says Buelteman.
While Buelteman creates space for the unseen, longtime local photographer and painter Anne Muller inserts her translation of the unseen directly into her mixed-media photography. Through a process of digital photographic transfers on abstract paintings, the artist attempts to balance the energy of our natural world with its physicality. “I see my art as a translation of something unseen or unnamed” explains the artist, “I’m trying to speak ‘Tree’ [what the artist muses Mother Nature’s language might be called] and with each work I create, I feel the smallest bit closer to fluency.”
In Muller’s work, the artist aims to expose the hidden energy and interconnectedness of the natural world. This desire “to speak Tree” is what drives her creation, sparked since her childhood days of taking long nature walks with her grandfather. While Muller uses creative license to imbue her interpretation of ordinary perception of the landscape, Buelteman’s work is an expression of the suchness of the natural world. Through these lenses, both artists compose their own love letters to Mother Nature, as well as showcase the duty they feel as creatives to present the unseen.
The exhibition Unseen | Seen runs from April 11 to June 30, 2023. A reception to celebrate the exhibition will be held on Thursday, May 11 from 5-7pm at the project space, located at 55 South Glenwood Street.