by Chas Bowie
Thursday July 30, 2009, 9:44 AM
Review: Amy Stein at Blue Sky Gallery and Catharine Stebbins at Newspace
Getting down
Silence and solitude overwhelm the low desert landscapes of Altadena, Calif., photographer Catharine Stebbins, on view at Newspace. Culled from her “Certain Places” series, the square compositions offer worm’s eye views of the land in soft, muted tones.
With her camera resting directly on the dry ground, Stebbins uses an evocatively shallow depth of field to render only a small slice of the photo in focus. In lesser hands, these would be little more than pretty nature pictures, but Stebbins works with a painterly sense of light and a poet’s sense of space and nature.
As if to argue against the majestic landscapes of fellow Californians Ansel Adams and Carleton Watkins, Stebbins’ photographs reveal very little of the land. But what she does show — the jazzy composition of a bramble patch, the bonsailike grandeur of a palm-sized stone and the dappled quality of early morning light on a cluster of sage leaves — are intimate spaces of profound and quiet beauty.
Newspace Center for Photography, 1632 S.E. 10th Ave.; 503-963-1935, www.newspacephoto.org. Hours: Monday-Thursday 10 a.m.-8 p.m., Friday-Sunday 10 a.m.-6 p.m., through Aug. 2.
© Catharine Stebbins "end no 2" 2006
Spring Arts Collective Gallery, Los Angeles CA
During the Downtown Art Walk
Opening October 9, 2008
Artist Reception 7 – 9pm
Group Show featuring the work of Amerikan Blackheart, Michael Cannon, Karen Florek, Amanda Keller-Konya, Aline Smithson, Catharine Stebbins and Kim Ye
My image “edom no 2″ has been acquired by 4Culture, a Seattle public art initiative. As part of the Portable Collection: Landscapes, it will reside along with pieces by 33 other national artists in the Harborview Medical Center’s new Norm Maleng Building.
News Release
© Catharine Stebbins "edom no 2" 2005
The Art of Photography Show 2008
April 25 – May 23, 2008
Lyceum Theatre Gallery, San Diego CA
International photography competition juried by Carol McCusker, Curator of Photography at the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego.
“cobb no 1″ 2006
PLACES show at drkrm reviewed in ARTScene
CONTINUING AND RECOMMENDED
Perhaps due to the absence of any human traces the lush color photographs by Catharine Stebbins seem somehow haunted. Without the reference to humanity, these intense images exist in a timeless place where weeds or grass or twigs or a ripple on water are the most significant things going. Addressing the overlooked within the immensity of the L. A. experience is not a new topic, but these 40″ x 40″ shallow focus images (referred to by stebbins as eco-tableau vivant and organic mise en scene) find their own elegant perspective (drkrm., Northeast Los Angeles).
ArtScene, Vol. 26, No.8, pg.50, April 2007
A solo exhibition featuring a selection of images from my series Certain Places.
March 10 – April 14, 2007
drkrm Gallery
Los Angeles CA
Artist Reception
Saturday March 10
7 – 10 pm
