Picture the Mad River Valley this time of year, and you probably think white: sparkling slopes and sprays of powder. At Mad River Valley Arts in Waitsfield, however, color explodes right out of the gate.
Three photographers — Lisa Dimondstein, Julie Parker and Sandra Shenk — present their collaborative project “Abstract2” through February 28. Thirty of their images, printed on a large-format inkjet printer, hang unframed from rails. They are all, as the title indicates, abstract. Swaths, slashes, ribbons and carefully delineated shapes of color interrupt and fall into one another, repeat, overlap, clash.
All three artists belong to f/7, a monthly photo group. That’s where they started experimenting with a multiple-exposure technique that allows them to combine up to nine frames directly in the camera, applying different settings between exposures to arrive at a unique composite. Each used the technique on visits to Cold Hollow Sculpture Park in Enosburg Falls, where they photographed steel sculptures by David Stromeyer.
When the park is open in the summer, visitors can explore more than 70 of Stromeyer’s large-scale steel creations from the past 50 years. Many feature wild geometry; their finishes range from rust to shining stainless to slick surfaces in primary colors. Looking at Stromeyer’s work, Dimondstein wrote in an email, “We were inspired to create abstract photos from what are already abstract forms.”
The resulting images seem more like paintings or prints than photographs. Shenk’s “Three Sailboats Off the Sahara” — a wink at her past photos of sand dunes — features broad blocks of yellow and red that look like a misregistered silk screen print, the edges repeated and offset from each other. Striations on the surface read as mirage lines on the horizon.
Many of the images in the show radiate color like paintings. The way the ink sits on the surface of the paper, more apparent because the prints are unframed, gives them the physical presence they need to project intense hues. That’s especially true of works such as Parker’s 32-by-48-inch “Peek-a-Boo,” in which overlapping pale blue, lavender and lime green are interrupted by a deep indigo square, or her aptly titled “Orange!”
The artists sometimes deliver photographic transparency, as in Dimondstein’s “Icarus.” Her composition centers on a join between two flat pieces of dark steel, behind which circular holes in the sculpture create a fiery red-and-orange geometry. The black areas dissolve into purple like the sky after sunset. It’s a readable, physical space from a distance, but seen close up, the elements alternately move forward and recede.
“Spiral Dance,” also by Dimondstein, might offer the most clues about what the viewer is looking at. In it, ribbons of steel swirl, shining marks on their surfaces creating dimension through colored reflections. Because the scale is unclear, and the double-exposure technique layers the images, the photo becomes a whorl of transparencies — it could just as easily be a delicate coil of snakeskin as a giant sculpture.
It’s easy to lose yourself in these images, whether you see them as pure, immersive color or as glimpses of where you might be months from now: wandering through a forest of bright geometry, warm sunlight bouncing off every surface.
“Abstract2,” on view through February 28 at Mad River Valley Arts in Waitsfield. An artist talk is on Saturday, February 22, 3-5 p.m. madrivervalleyarts.org
This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2025.
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