Light Cache Exhibit
December 3, 2011—February 11 , 2012 Craven Allen Gallery / Durham NC
“With the moon as her muse and mid-century large-format bellows film cameras as machine, she creates imagery not possible with modern digital equipment. She quite literally awakens the night and makes the darkness sing. Light Cache is a unique body of work. MJ joins other Triangle artists like Beverly McIver, Patrick Dougherty, and Heather Gordon who are reaching a national and international audience with singular breakthrough work.” Light Cache co-curator Frank Konhaus.
LIGHT CACHE
Curator's Statement
To say that the path to getting one of MJ Sharp’s sumptuous large format photographs on this gallery wall is a long one is an almost laughable understatement. Her images are typically born in the middle of the night, often under a freezing February moon, inside a hulking mid-century bellows camera, with exposure times that could be described as gestational. The scene is often too dark to be discernible. It is an act of faith (and hard earned experience) that the mysteries of the darkness will be drawn onto the film.
Negative in hand, the process is only beginning. MJ scans the negative at high resolution and begins a laborious and inexplicable (to me) process of eking out every nuance of shadow detail, texture, and color rendition as well as many intangible qualities that finally brings that elusive “I got it” smile. I have seen her spend 8 hours huddled over a single image.
MJ’s standard of image reproduction and proclivity toward perfectionism is at once awe inspiring and infuriating. Her studio floor is like a battlefield of fallen image warriors. 5, 10, even 100 versions of a single image, each one seemingly perfect to the mortal’s eye, all deemed inadequate to make it to the wall. “2% less magenta on the ice cubes.” “Oh I must fix the texture detailing on the sheep’s fur again”. “Maybe I need to desaturate the leaves a hair more.” At times I literally need to pry the print from her hands and admonish her to not call the lab again for yet another version. “Step away from the print MJ!” She gets holiday fruit baskets from her photo lab and the FedEx Corporation. The cycle begins anew when someone wants to buy a print—there is always one more tweak MJ MUST do….
I am not a curator by training. I came to this project more as an enthusiastic collector who has collected MJ’s work for years. I am also a dear friend and huge fan. After 3 or 4 consecutive twelve hour days working on this show I had an epiphany of sorts—it is an unbelievable gift for any collector or art lover to get to draw back the curtain behind the magical process of art making so far that your understanding and appreciation of it is forever altered. MJ Sharp is a great artist and the images all around you are redundant testimony to that.
Getting to partner with my long time friends at Craven Allen Gallery, who are the trusted and exclusive framers of our personal collection, has been a joy. There has been nothing they have been unwillingly to do—even letting me replace the Moorish light fixtures in the stairwell!—to make this show as beautiful as it can be. Thank you John, Keith, Kathryn, Linwood, and Mark.
We are greatly indebted to many of MJ’s collectors for allowing us to borrow work from their collections for this show. Because of her super glossy surfaces, all but the smallest of MJ’s work must be mounted by a special process available only in places like New York City and Los Angeles. Shipping, crating and handling these delicate prints is an expensive and meticulous undertaking and would have been impossible for an exhibition of this magnitude. Each of these generous lenders is acknowledged on the wall labels and in the exhibition guide.
Lastly I am deeply grateful to my dear friend MJ Sharp. She has kept me laughing, enlarged my world, and stoked the fire of great photography that is one of my greatest joys.
Frank Konhaus, Co-curator
December 2011
