RICHARD ALAN COHEN PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE MAKER

“I create photographic images to highlight my reverential relationship with the environment through which I walk daily. I take natural details like streams, waterfalls, tree stumps and plants, and put them into a new context to build conceptual landscapes. I try to make my images provide a larger perspective that emphasizes the importance of climate change to even the smallest niches within nature. I often give my images an otherworldly appearance to impart distance from the ordinary reality in which these spaces are threatened by global warming and to pay them respect as places of beauty.”

Interview by Harryet Candee Cover Photograph by Edward Acker

Harryet Candee: While you were actively involved in your biomedical research career of 40 years, what over the course of time did you find to be most interesting and challenging?

Richard Alan Cohen: Science, like art, is all about ideas. There were the challenges of working in teams of students, technicians, and colleagues, of convincing piers that the work was good enough to put federal grant dollars into it, and of the long hours required to bring an idea to fruition. But, it was the development of the concepts which drove the work, to be sure they were solid and worthy, that was the most difficult and the most rewarding.

Can you explain some key points regarding the research, goals and challenges you did over those years?

RAC: Soon after I began in vascular research the discovery was made that the lining cells of blood vessels was key to their normal function. I took that key finding and devoted my career to determining how diseases like diabetes and atherosclerosis disturbed that function and resulted in vascular disease. It turned out that the function of those lining cells was affected within hours by high sugar or cholesterol lipid levels, and the study of how to prevent and reverse that abnormal function led to current understanding and treatments for vascular disease. Many of your readers take medicines to lower blood sugar and lipids based on the many studies that showed that they prevent the dysfunction of those lining cells and the resulting long term vascular disease.

What originally drew your interest to the world of natural science?

RAC: Well, I grew up in Maine, and it was all around me. I also had great mentors in sciences. That can be very persuasive in choosing a career. Then there was the “natural wonder” that the sciences brought – but so did art!

You co-majored at Bowdoin College in art and science; that must have been like bringing chocolate and peanut butter together in one candy bar. What sort of art classes did you take?

RAC: Absolutely, and I like chocolate and peanut butter very, very much! In college, I was fascinated by draftmanship, and I still doodle alot! It has something to do with that amazing thing that happens when your brain transforms a 3D object into 2D image. I’m still fascinated by that same transformation that happens in my camera. I drew anything and everything nearby, and also developed the drawings into etchings and aquatints. One of my etchings from my senior thesis, was given first prize by a reviewer and appears somewhere in the annals of Portland Press Herald newspaper Sunday Arts section. It still hangs in our hallway. It turns out it’s archival!

Was there anything in particular that guided and trained your eye to see while on the job as a bio- medical researcher that sparked curiosity to pick up photography as a fine art?

RAC: Modern biomedical science uses all kinds of imaging technologies. Once you understand how they work and what they can do, they open up worlds of possibilities and potential understanding. That’s one of the arts in science. As you might imagine, as a photographer, I treat my camera the same way. I almost never just click the shutter. When I’m interested in something, I take many images of it, sometimes compositing them into a new thing altogether. My recent work on agaves in the high deserts of Mexico is a good example. Many of these images are each composed of 50-100 images shot of a subject during an hour or more, from different angles, or even on different days.. All the technology is not used for technology’s sake but to make me, and hopefully the viewer, feel the way I do when seeing my subject. In this case, I want to feel the “fearsome beauty” of an agave, or the “mysterious beauty” of an otherworldly landscape.

Is there an interesting story you want to share about your decision to go from science to art?

RAC: What was going on in your life at the time?

I’d spent 4 years realizing that both art and science offered stimulating ideas and challenges.

I was having a ball (weren’t we all?), but graduation was kind of D-day. Decision time came down to a choice of working in an environment with teams of people trying to benefit others or taking a more solitary route in developing my art. When my science career was winding down, it was natural for me to return to my own art. It’s a wonderful switch, because I now have all the tools with which to develop my ideas on my own.

The “Passages” series gives me a sense of balance between life and death and renewal. Tell us more about this body of work. I can relate to this series because I visited the Botanical Gardens every season growing up in the Bronx, and I know just what you mean.

RAC: In many of my series, life, death, and renewal are themes. Clean boat hulls, fresh plants, and healthy trees are lovely, but the real character in life comes with aging, resilience, and persistence! I appreciate this theme more and more! And where there is aging, there is always regeneration. The agaves and rotting tree trunks in my images are always thriving with new growth. This theme is also, of course, the title of Passage. Plants, trees and flowers, often in their last stages are shown against the background of worn and distressed textures of boat hulls to emphasize the aging pro- cess. In all my series, though, I also emphasize that aging and life’s end can be beautiful. of Photography, and, Bill Morse, a master printer, introduced me to Photoshop and showed me how best to present my work. I’ve also been supported by a wonderful photography critique group led by Emily Belz. I owe them a lot for getting me to see that I could make the transition successfully. And lastly, my wife is my first and best instantaneous critic. Luckily, we have a strong relationship!

It must have felt exhilarating to see the flow of your work take shape and present itself on walls in public spaces. To see your work in galleries, such as Kingman Gallery, Maine; Davis-Orton Gallery, NY; Sohn Fine Art, MA., to receive first prize in a show by an art museum director, and to have collectors want to purchase your work, and more! How much work did it all take you to get to this level? Did you do it alone?

RAC: The desire to show my work to others, and exhibiting it in galleries really comes naturally to me, again because of my earlier career. I presented my scientific work in many national and international meetings, and published hundreds of papers to represent the work produced by my team. Being invited to share my artwork in shows and galleries, or when it has been purchased by experienced collectors is similarly rewarding. It indicates to me that the idea being represented is done so clearly and, I hope, beautifully. In my art career as in my scientific career, I have been blessed by wonderful mentors. When I was thinking of making the switch, I took a semester long seminar and critique course at the Griffin Museum Continued on next page...

I recently showed six-year-old Jaxson your photograph, Moonlit -1. Do you know what he immediately asked me in response? “Did you actually go there?” “Can I go there too?” What responses do you hear from viewers, and why those ones that are repeatedly asked?

RAC: Jaxson wins an artist proof! I wish to take all the viewers of my images to places they’ve never been before. Many of my series of images are “hyper-realistic”. They look real, but they may be actually more “surreal”. A tree stump becomes a mountain or a fortress (Moonlight burning-1). A small rivulet becomes a grand landscape (Discovered World-1). I hope that my images are surprising. I can’t get a better compliment from a viewer than one who says, “what the hell is that?”. “That” is something I’ve never seen before! For me, it’s a wonderful process to transform images to make a new place or thing.

Taking walks in nature must be very inspiring for you. Is there a better time you like to walk, daytime, evening? Why?

Nature is experienced best when it’s quiet, and colors are vibrant when the light is dimmed. So early in the morning is one of my favorite times. Most of the images in my recent Silver Light series were taken early in the morning, and I’ve been able to capture the light by printing the series on vellum and recreating the glowing morning light by adhering reflective silver foil on the back side (Silver Light-5).

Who in your life has been a mentor for you, and help you unravel the mysteries of whatever fascinates you the most?

Many, many people have helped. It started with my parents. My mother was an art teacher and painted huge canvases. My father designed and built houses, and had great maker’s hands. My parents gave me the building blocks, and both introduced me to that 3D to 2D transformation that I mentioned earlier. A college art professor, Thomas Cornell, a student of Leonard Baskin, was an incredible draftsman. He made a wrong turn in my opinion and became a painter. I spent a lot of my high school and college summers working one on one with mentors in labs, making notes on how they thought and accomplished things.

Mixing music and work can be often necessary. Is true for you as well? What sort of music do you lean towards when creating your art?

I’ve listened to jazz forever while I work. Because I’m currently trying to reactivate my French, I listen to tsf-jazz, a wonderful streaming station in Paris. Vocals disturb my thinking, but jazz, particularly solo piano jazz stimulates ideas. I was so honored to have Wayne Alpern, ask me to provide the artwork for his recent album, The Shape of Strings, based on my abstract series of boat hull drains. I was also asked by the drummer of Megadeth, Dirk Verbeuren, to use one of my images for an album. To me it means that an image of mine hits a more universal sensory nerve beyond light and color. The shows and galleries that I have been in that I most appreciate are those that involve interdisciplinary arts, because it’s an honor to share insights from different artistic points of view.

I like your Waterlines series. I am convinced I see very strong horizontals and verticals working with each other, creating water and earth landscapes. Continued on next page...

Can you explain what we are seeing in this series?

RAC: As a kid, I spent a lot of time in Maine boatyards, in part painting the bottom of boat hulls. Not using art paints, but the antifouling kind of paint used on boat hulls. I’d start by cleaning all the rust and debris accumulated during the past season from the waterline – that horizontal painted line on the exterior of the boat hull that usually rides a few inches above the water. When I went back years later, I realized that our visual brains recognize a horizontal line as an horizon. Add the patterns of the crud left by dirty water, barnacles, and sea grass and, voila, you have a landscape image (Waterline-11).

Returning from your visit to SMA, Central Mexico, is there anything you like to tell us about that was interesting? Did you take photographs?

RAC: I have always enjoyed taking photographs of the Indigenous people, though they never wanted to be photographed. The churches hold much history, and the vegetation and fauna, heated cenotes, and underwater life are miraculous and need better care. Open for discussion? ( I do like Agave in Turmoil) Mexico has an amazing people and culture. At the beginning of our six seasons spent there so far, I picked out the agave plant to focus on, because it has such a rich association with Mexican culture. Particularly the magueys, the giant agaves of which the blue agave is one, are incredibly imposing plants. Their fronds are often 6 feet long and it’s easy to get stuck with their six-inch long spines. I want my hyper-realistic agave images to not only engender respect for this plant that has endured years of adversity in the desert, but also to show it aging and dying in grace and regenerating in the wild (Agave Portrait-X). I also have several series of abstract images taken from agave fronds, that like my boathull series also appear to be landscapes (Agave in Turmoil-14).

I travel every day up the wooded path and see my favorite tree stump, old and growing moss, home to many creatures, allowing my imagination to run away with visions of cities and worlds within worlds, the life of a tree stump. I refuse ever to get it removed! It is a sanctuary. Funny, you have found the “…craggy, peak-like structures on stumps” that are “magnified into mountains.” Tell me about your experimentations with different imaging techniques that create large panoramic portraits of these voluptuous natural creations. RAC: I love tree trunks and I have made several series of images from them, often hyper-realistic (Moonlit, Moonlight Burning). First, I’ve learned to get down to the level of the earth. That’s the key to changing the perspective to the one I want where I’m looking up at what looks like a mountain. Then I often isolate the tree trunk from its surroundings, instead perhaps substituting fire, smoke, or starry sky. This takes the tree trunk out of its original environment. In the process, I hope to put it into an even better one, one in which it enjoys a better environment.

Have you visited the Redwoods? Or the caves in Tangiers?

RAC: Sadly, no. One of my habits is to find the subjects of my images nearby. No Antarctica for me. All my series are based on subjects within 1520 minutes of my home, at most an hour. This allows me to return repeatedly to study and work on obtaining the raw images that I use to create my images.

Telescopes come in handy for us night sky watchers. But what you use is far more advanced, maybe more like microscopes and a NASA HUBBLE SPACE telescope that lies behind the scenes of your photo shoot process. Some artists keep their technique mysterious; the less they know, the better. But in your case, what do you say?

RAC: Many of my image series look like they were taken through a telescope or microscope. Using one is a wondrous experience. Why not use this experience to enhance ones art work? One of my themes is to emphasize the effect of climate change on even the smallest spots that I see during my woodland hikes. In World Views, I took these small natural niches and gave them a global perspective by putting them into the center of a world, ambiguously constructed to appear like a planet or microscope view. www.richardalancohen.com

Are you a believer in Astrology readings? What part about astrology do you believe is science and not myth?

RAC: What’s wrong with myth? All the world’s religions are based on myths. Thousands of years ago, mythology was part and parcel to the beginnings of science, so it deserves a lot of respect. Now, it depends on what questions one asks of mythology or science, and what answers one expects and trusts.

What would you find entertaining to leave readers with as we close this interview? Food for thought? A secret? A line from a song? … a fresh image of the sky?

RAC: Life is a series of influential experiences. One of my formative experiences in art was matting and framing art work as a student in the Bowdoin College Art Museum. I’ve touched hundreds of master drawings including by Peter Paul Rubens, Raphael, Rembrandt, John Ruskin, Henri Matisse, Picasso, and Albrecht Durer. That was quite an education! One thing it taught me is that these guys were human, too, and made art the old fashioned way!

Thank you, Richard.

Instagram: @richardalancohen

Sharon Guy Luminous Landscapes

I am inspired by scenic areas with beautiful light, especially early morning and later in the evening before dark. Once I find a place that inspires me, I visit often and make small plein air studies, sketches, and reference photos. Some of my outdoor paintings are finished works, and some will be used as studies for my studio paintings. My technique involves using a personal, expressive style with vibrant colors and some abstraction. I look for big shapes and patterns in nature and try not to cover them up with too many small details.

My nature art helps me feel more balanced and less stressed. There is something very healing about going out into the woods or walking barefoot on the beach. The paintings from these experiences give my collectors a sense of serenity and help them remember their favorite outdoor places. I like to use my art to bring the beaches, mountains, and forests into people’s homes and offices.

Sharon Guy - sharonguyart@gmail.com; 941-321-1218; https://www.sharonguyart.com

Close Encounters With Music

Close Encounters With Music presents The Escher String Quartet — Tchaikovsky, Ravel, Ruth Crawford Seeger on Sunday, May 21, 4 PM at the Mahaiwe, Great Barrington.

The “Souvenir de Florence” String Sextet takes us on a musical excursion to Italy, where Tchaikovsky spent some of his happiest times—reflected in the unforgettable tunes and warm catabile style. Assessments of the work’s national style 00 Italianate or inescapably Russian — differ, but the sextet is quintessential Tchaikovsky, suffused with his characteristic longing and incomparable melodies. Ravel’s Quartet in F Major is decidedly impressionistic and non-European, with exotic modes and mysterious, ethereal beauty. Listening to it is almost akin to exploring a foreign planet. The “1931” Quartet by Ruth Crawford Seeger, the first woman composer to be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, is a tour-deforce for string ensemble.

Close Encounters With Music artistic director Yehuda Hanani and violist Daniel Panner join the Escher in a sparkling program of classical greats.

Close Encounters With Music – visit https://cewm.org for ticket information.

Don Longo

When I begin a new painting, my end result would be one where there is texture, atmosphere, and feeling. Many are based on my background of growing up in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts where the natural beauty of the land and the serenity of quiet places gave me the daily energy I loved.

A Walk to the Lake:“As a kid, I would walk to Laurel Lake from my house on South Prospect Street, up W. Park Street, over Spring Road past St. Mary's Cemetary to Summer St. up to Highlawn Farm and through the fields to Lee Beach. Even though the walk was far, I had no time restraints, took my lunch and enjoyed the beauty of the solitude it brought me till I got there.”

My first paintings started with a more realistic design. I wanted to capture the light and the quietness of the environments, such as walking to the lake through pastureland, dreaming of my future, or driving the backroads by myself, looking for that solitary area to listen to the sounds of the wind, the leaves, birds and babbling streams.

Today, I concentrate more on semi-abstract versions of those places with some similarity of realism. I use colors of the season I want to represent with smooth and rough textures. I sometimes use close-up images to bring you into the painting, then make you travel around the scenery just like I did as a young man being there. Other times I like the viewer to be far away, looking at the solitude of the distant landscape.

Once I decide my viewpoint, I begin manipulating the canvas with textural pastes, acrylic paint, oil stains, water, mineral spirits, and spray paint until I get the final desired result.

I loved to explore as a kid, and I now continue to explore as an adult. But now I do it on my canvases.

Don Longo - www.donlongoart.com