Starting as a farm kid in a 4H photography class, Ansel Adams was one of my photo heroes. I wanted to make images that sang like his did. I’d like to think that as a photographer, I have my own voice now and my prints sing their own song, but the fact that they can sing at all, I owe to the inspiration of Ansel’s work.
Thank you MFA Boston for the honor. https://www.instagram.com/p/BtQ1WuxFSH1/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet
Lee Decker @leedecker97 Chess player, summa cum laude graduate from Truman University, and part-time exorcist (reasonable prices, results not guaranteed). Lee’s chess set is modeled after medieval pieces discovered on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland. One of the things I like about Lee’s portrait is that it simultaneously reminds me of the Muppet Christmas Carol, Shakespeare’s As You Like It, and the French Revolution. The chess pieces on and off the board being the Elect and Preterite with Lee himself being the “Hoity-toity Mr. Godlike Smarty-pants” omniscient storyteller.
Ben Parks – Kansas City based artist (@brancesoftree) and musician (@oftree). To say that Ben does large scale portraits and figurative work doesn’t really do justice to his art. You need more words like “amazing” and “soulful” which can also be applied to the music that he and Laurel (@fiddlemaiden) create. The loop, almost butterfly, light in this portrait comes from a gridded beauty dish – something Ben found to be highly amusing.
Monday Memories – Brent Pulsipher, 1979/80, Graceland College, Lamoni IA. 4×5 Kodak VPS in a Burke and James 5×7 view camera. A LDS instructor at a RLDS school, I don’t think he got anyone to drop the R in RLDS, or what the administration thought of him, but I remember him as one of the most interesting instructors at the school. A few years later when I was a traveler in a aging 63 Chevy with money for gas, but not for hotels, he opened his house to me, and was the kindest host I have ever met.