CAMDEN—Page Gallery and Maine Media Workshops are pleased to host an artist talk with Brenton Hamilton about his exhibition of cyanotypes, Red Sky at Night, on Sunday, August 4, at 1:00 p.m. at Page Gallery, 23 Bay View Street in Camden. Hamilton’s work is on display from July 18 through August 9. This event is free and open to the public.
The shapes of boats, mariners, the water of the ocean and its behavior are characters from his boyhood in and near Casco Bay. In the exhibition, viewers experience a tall tale of floating clouds in a night sky and mischievous sailors. Tangles of jute rope serve as a metaphor for human experiences. Poignant clouds sit under the cover of a special blue darkness. Glinting gold leaf, at once elegant and eternal, lays a complex pattern of imagined constellations and unknown stars shimmering to light the way. Hamilton’s nighttime folly, embedded within the deepest blue you can imagine, tells of a sailor and his exploits. Hamilton reflects on his own adventures: a boyhood idyll and a space to dream.
Brenton Hamilton has shaped these unusual narratives employing the 19th century photo process cyanotype, using the sun to create the imagery. A combination of iron salts exposed to the sun creates a new compound – and a vibrant inscrutable blue. A leading educator and historian in the field of photography, teaching for 30 years at Maine Media Workshops in Rockport, Brenton’s works are in the permanent collections of the Farnsworth Art Museum, Portland Museum of Art, University of New England, and Lamar Dodd Art Centers in Georgia.
For more information visit: thepagegallery.com.
