When and Where are Nude Trees Okay?
(how a photograph of a blurry tree ended up in a bank’s vault)
Photographer Rick Gustafson frequently uses in-camera motion blur to create photographs that, at times, are not so much of things but of feelings. Fields of color and pattern may hint at the thing they “are” but one’s imagination is free to see or feel something else. Sometimes Rick’s photographs have a dreamy, other-worldly quality.
One day while making photographs for his series A Walk in the Forest there came a point when Rick started seeing rather sensual forms within the relationships of various tree “parts” and a new series called Maude’s Delight came into being. Rick first showed a collection of these images in the C Street Hall Gallery in Eureka earlier this summer. Most recently a couple of them found their way into the Redwood Camera Club’s show in the lobby of a U S Bank. The photo entitled Stepping Out (shown above) was removed from the wall and placed in the Bank’s vault after someone complained about its depiction of “nudity.”
We all know if one is displaying art of a controversial nature that time and place are appropriate things to consider and displaying erotic art in a bank during regular banking hours is not going to fly. It’s really quite easy to accept that a bank is going to have different standards than an art gallery. The trouble of course is that deciding what is appropriate is rather subjective and sometimes there is not a mutual understanding. Sometimes a photograph of a blurry tree displayed upside down and resembling the human form will get you kicked out of a show.
Rick’s photography has been shown at the Upstairs Art Gallery as well as the Morris Graves Museum of Art. His complete portfolio can be seen by visiting his website: www.rickgustafson.com.
Six of his photos from the series of Maude’s Delight are currently on display at Eureka Art and Frame at 1636 F street, Eureka, CA.
