"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day."
- George Carlin (1937 - )

Last night I had the honor and pleasure of being the guest juror at Multiple Exposures Gallery (formerly Factory Photoworks), where I juried a group show from the gallery's 14 members.

Multiple Exposures Gallery is one of the best examples around our area of what a dedicated and accomplished group of artists can do together. Running a cooperative artists' gallery is a difficult science at best, as doing anything by a committee of 14 is by human nature difficult. And yet, year after year this gallery manages to deliver superb photography, and as I have said many times in the past, continues to be one of the key photography galleries in our area.

The jurying process, as always, was difficult, and several pieces were rejected not because they were bad, but because the space also drives how one curates a show. In the end, I selected about two dozen photographs, nearly all black and white (my own prejudice) except for a couple of exceptional color photos by Barbara Southworth and Fran Livaditis. I've been watching Southworth's beautiful panoramic landscapes for a while now, where she fools you into being absorbed by the beauty of the landscape in her images, before one realizes that it is the exceptional, almost magical manipulation of light that really is the magnet in her imagery.

I also selected three pieces by Jim Steele; all exceptional nude studies by one of our area's top figurative photographers. I also included work by Danny Conant and Grace Taylor - both from their extensive travels to Tibet (Conant has recently published a book on the subject - see it here. And there are also some exceptional Cuban portraits by Karen Keating's continuing visits to the island prison.

The exhibition will hang until March 2, 2004.