WMA teacher to exhibit ‘Vortex’ series at Binney Art Gallery
Date: 9/12/2011
Sept. 12, 2011WILBRAHAM — Last winter, the Advanced Placement Studio Art students at Wilbraham & Monson Academy (WMA) visited the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The museum’s spiral design has always impressed with its architecture, and Paul Bloomfield, chair of the Fine & Performing Arts Department at WMA, left there inspired to create the Vortex series.
The Vortex series is on display Sept. 15 to Oct. 16 at Binney Art Gallery at WMA from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. An opening reception will take place on Sept. 19 from 7 to 8 p.m.
Shortly after Bloomfield’s trip to the Guggenheim, news stories about increasingly devastating tornadoes in the midwest appeared, and the association of a larger, more significant meaning to the Vortex imagery became evident to Bloomfield. This summer Wilbraham and surrounding areas experienced a tornado and a second powerful “micro-burst,” which destroyed homes and drastically altered the landscape. The power and fury of this environmental phenomenon compelled Bloomfield to continue working with this imagery.
He was fascinated by the variety of forms, shapes, and sizes possible, as well as the unity of the insect species. They all share the same or similar physical characteristics. He soon found himself substituting human, or animal limbs for those of insects into the emerging hybrid forms.
The Vortex series is derived from a combination of drawing and traditional darkroom procedures. Instead of using a camera to obtain a negative, Bloomfield drew directly on plastic film and projected the image onto photographic paper. From that point he played with the chemistry to permit parts to develop or not. Though these can be seen as a series, each image contains variation. More of his work can be seen at his Web site located at
http://paulbloomfield.artspan.com.
