BY KAREN BOSSICK
How do you portray the wind?
It’s not that easy painting or photographing something that’s invisible. But photographer Rachel Cobb was so taken by the legendary wind that roars through Provence that she attempted to do just that with a series of photographs she titled “Mistral: The Legendary Wind of Provence.”
And her work is being featured through January at Gail Severn Gallery in Ketchum.
Cobb will be present for the Gallery Walk from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 28. And she will talk about her work during a free Artist Chat at 10 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 29, at the gallery. Joining her will be Judith Kindler, who will discuss her new work “Reflections on the Bears.”
Cobb’s work, which ranges from a Kosovo soldier to a papal visit to Havana, has been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Time, Rolling Stone and other publications.
“Mistral” captures a portrait of Provence seen through its legendary wind, which funnels down the Rhone Valley between the Alps and the Massif Central mountains, gaining speed as it reaches the Mediterranean.
It includes a snow-covered chair—the snow frozen as it blows away, birds flying in the mistral, an olive harvest, a spider web, horses closing their eyes to the wind and a pink lenticular cloud formed when fast-moving air meets a mountain and is forced up and over forming a lens-shaped cloud.
Cobb says she became captivated by the mistral while visiting a small Provencal village for the past 40 years because it was so often present and so much a topic of conversation.
“The mistral is not just a weather phenomenon: It is an integral part of the fabric of Provencal life,” she writes. “Nobody who lives or spends time in the region can escape it. It slams doors, lifts roof tiles from houses and tears fruit from trees. It is a gremlin wreaking havoc. It is everywhere. It is nowhere to be seen.”
Gail Severn Gallery, at 400 First Avenue North, is also featuring Judith Kindler’s latest work—“Reflections on the Bears.” They come in the form of paintings and they’re seen in sculpture form. And they underline her concern about the loss of innocence in contemporary life.
Here are some other highlights of Friday’s Gallery Walk:
- Harvey Art Projects USA, 659 Sun Valley Road, is sharing master works from Indigenous Australia in an exhibition titled “Above & Below.”
- Gilman Contemporary, 661 Sun Valley Road, is featuring Michael Massaia’s luminous black and white photographs that capture New York City in moments of quietude. Photographs that make up his “Deep in a Dream” series draw viewers into the trees, tunnels, arches and paths of Central Park. Those in his new series “Respite,” which is a continuation of “Deep in a Dream,” capture the arches and tunnels that dot Central Park.
“Those arches and tunnels have become like homes and have always given me the second wind to head back out into those late lonely nights and early mornings,” he writes.
The gallery is also exhibiting John Westmark’s mixed-media paintings, which incorporate sewing patterns to his canvas to shape his typically fearless, independent and scandalous female figures. The sewing patterns are embellished with custom text, supplementing feminist dialogue to the script.
Finally, the gallery is presenting Jefferson Hayman’s photographs, which explore themes of nostalgia, symbolism and memory. Each print has either a vintage or artist-made frame, which presents them as more of a unique art object than simply a photograph. Through quiet minimalism, he invites the viewer to partake in the narrative process in a way that is both intimate and deeply personal.
- The Environmental Resource Center, 471 Washington Ave., will celebrate the opening of local photographer R.J. Turner’s exhibit “Wild Life.” The exhibit displays a range of images from African elephants to American mustangs and includes scenes from our own private Idaho. Complimentary beverages will b served.
Turner, a Wood River Valley resident, is an award-winning wildlife and conservation photographer who combines her love for the natural world with her photography to help bring change across continents. She will be present at the event and her work will be shown at the ERC office weekdays through January.
- Kneeland Gallery, 271 First Avenue North, will “Deck the Walls” with paintings by Robert Moore, Steven Lee Adams and Mark Gibson.
Renowned Plein Air painter Robert Moore has mentored many accomplished painters, including many in the Wood River Valley. He applies a multitude of oil hues onto his canvas, then works a palette knife with both hands until his composition emerges from the apparent chaos of texture and color. Never mind that he suffers from partial color blindness!
Adams strives to offer a feeling of timelessness to broken fences, ditches, majestic mountains and other scenes and objects that might otherwise seem commonplace.
And Gibson is a native Montanan whose training in architecture has leant itself to the architectural forms of the teepees that characterize his work.
- Broschofsky Galleries, 360 East Ave., is featuring works by Russell Chatham, who captures “The Heart of Winter” in his oil on linens. Other artists lending a western flair to the canvas include Bill Barrett, Rudi Broschosky, Michael Coleman, Ewoud de Groot and Theodore Villa.
- MESH Art Gallery, 420 4th Street East, is featuring stunning landscapes taken by gallery owner Jeffery Lubeck that are contained in his new books “Touring the Valley” and “The Wild Mustangs of Idaho.”
- Wood River Fine Arts, 360 East Avenue, is featuring new works by such painters as Jill Carver, a plein air artist who has painted portraits of the Middle Fork, Glacier National Park and other familiar locales in new and different ways.
- Frederic Boloix Fine Arts, 351 Leadville Ave., is featuring works by Cuban artist Jose Bedia whose work he has featured before.
- Sun Valley Center for the Arts, Fifth and Washington streets, is showcasing its new exhibition “At the Table: Kitchen as Home,” which considers what our kitchens say about us.