* Gallery Sitka "Art Sundays" series (August - Mother Nature)

Gifted Mass. Photographers Come Together
to Save and Celebrate the Natural World at Gallery Sitka
 
Mother Nature will be the guest of honor at Gallery Sitka’s “Art Sundays” series, with a gathering set for Sunday, Aug. 2. This exhibition will feature the work of several Massachusetts photographers who excel at recording the fleeting beauty of the natural world.
“I’ve always loved animals and nature and have enjoyed capturing images of both at any opportunity,” says photographer Amanda L. McSweeney. She sympathizes with the power of nature to reclaim the landscape, noting her fondness for the sight of an abandoned building covered with ivy. Her own home in Templeton, where she lives with her boyfriend Jim, is also a refuge for animals who are perhaps still a little bit wild—“my cat Lenore, my dog Cooper, my frog Dumpy, and my Betta fish Dr. Catastrophe.”
Daniel Senie has documented the unspoiled wilderness in such far-flung places as the underwater world of the Caribbean but also closer to home in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts where he grew up. Recently he has even exhibited a shot of the Milky Way, the irregular band of cloudy white light that is actually our own galaxy seen edge-on and home to perhaps as many as 200 billion stars or more. This photo, and others of the night sky, “are reminders that we are just a tiny dot in the Galaxy,” as Mr. Senie puts it. His art serves the practical purpose of encouraging us to take better care of the Earth. “We might not want to destroy our only home,” he says.
Considering himself lucky to have grown up as an army brat in Europe, where he prowled the great museums, Lawrence “Larry” Libby later learned to appreciate the art of his native country. The photographer counts among his major influences great American Regionalist artists such as Winslow Homer and Ansel Adams. Both are well-known for their representations of the wilderness — Homer for his remarkable seascapes and landscapes in both watercolors and oils, and Adams for his stunning photos of the Rocky Mountains.
Jonathan Route discovered his passion for photography in 2011, armed with a secondhand camera given to him by his brother. He is donating proceeds from the sale of some of his photos to the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, through a project of his called “Tutus 4 Tatas.” This series is made up of photos of ballerinas, young women who can strike an artful, athletic pose both on stage and in the wild forest setting that Mr. Route employs. He has dedicated this project to the memory of his mother, Elaine Route, who died in 2009 after a long battle with breast cancer.
Photographer Aric Rasmussen, in stark contrast to his colleagues in this show, is probably better known for his images of Man and Machine than for pictures of the natural world. Mr. Rasmussen began shooting scenes of the Formula 1 auto races at Watkins Glen in the 1970s with his father, also a photographer. The younger Rasmussen recalls with pride winning full media credentials to cover Indy Car and NASCAR, shooting inside the spectator fence, right next to the track — an experience he describes as “a total rush.” Mr. Rasmussen is now enthusiastically dedicated to this kind of action photography.
This event will take place at Gallery Sitka, 2 Shaker Road, D101, Shirley, Mass., on Sunday, Aug. 2, 2 – 4 p.m. Please visit www.sitkacreations.com for more information.