Mark Aufiery, Eola Ball, S.M. Belair, M. E. Brinton, Donna Chellis, Diana Coleman, Steve Feeney, N.T. Franklin, Lee Heffner, Donna Hinkley, Khristina Marie Landers, Rosemarie Nervelle, Ed Peele, Lynn Smith, Sandra Sylvester, Lee Van Dyke, & John Holt Willey
With Photographic art by
Yorozuya Yohaku & Ramona du Houx
Seventeen writers tell stories about the Maine coast with depth, insight, candor, irony, wit and humor. Anyone who has ever visited or lived in the area will relate to them. They’ve put humankind’s instinctive emotional connection to the sea into words.
Last spring The Solon Center for Research and Publishing (SCRP) held a contest to give unknown writers in Maine an opportunity to be published in a book with photographic art that depicts Rockland and the coast in its myriad situations, moods and emotions. The result was pleasantly overwhelming with 88 stories submitted. In the end the 27 stories were published to accompany 23 images in Coastal Maine in Words and Art.
The art included in the book is currently on exhibit at Fukurou Gallery, 20 Main Street in Rockland. http://www.galleryfukurou.com
All book sales go into a SCRP fund for a project of the same nature next year. We’re want to thank The Maine Humanities Council for providing a grant to help the project.
More about the artists:
Yorozuya Yohaku is an artist with gallery Fukurou. He is renowned for his use of classic darkroom techniques. He’s used Ansel Adams’ zone system, polarization, solarization, as well as a camera obscura and many other methods over his career. He sometimes develops his images using ocean water, following a tradition of a few of the masters. He is a true craftsman, ensuring that all his techniques are personally applied in the darkroom. Some of his images are prophetic, like the Twin Towers series, which depicts the Towers in the 1980s, when he felt compelled to extensively record them from various perspectives. His images immortalize their memory. Yohaku (aka Takafumi Suzuki) is professor at Nihon University in Tokyo, where for many years he led the Department of Photography at the College of Art. He is the assistant dean and professor at the University of International Fashion in Tokyo, with branches in Osaka and Nagoya. He is a director of the Japan Society for Arts and History of Photography, as well as a member of Kokugakai (Society of Masters of Modern Japanese Art), the Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences, and the Photographic Society of Japan.
Ramona uses the camera with a painter’s eye. She started her technique in 1979, using movement to create a sense of wonder through colors, textures, memories, and the seasons. Everything within the viewfinder becomes visibly interconnected when objects merge with the motion of the camera as the image, the “lightgraph,” is taken. “Many Native Americans continue to believe that everything and everyone is connected. It is that interconnectedness that helps to make us whole. Through photography, I have found light expresses that reality in unique ways. I try to bring the beauty and mystery of nature to viewers by amplifying this essence. That mystery can be transformational.” Ramona is president and cofounder of the Solon Center for Research and Publishing.
PB Co. 