HOOPS by Dan Smith
December 12, 2019 – January 18, 2020
The Arts Center Gallery is open
Weekdays: 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Saturdays: 10:00 am – 2:00 pm
Admission is always free.
This exhibit features twenty-seven works by Dan Smith. Dan is from Nanson, ND and has been a professional photographer since 1972.
When Sally Jeppson scheduled this exhibition she was thinking about winter, about how many of us might be dreaming of warm days and the basketball court or any warm weather outdoor sport. And of course, there is the Midwestern obsession with small-town basketball and all the “madness” that goes with it. I thought the exhibit might appeal to some who don’t generally come to see our art exhibits. This exhibition addresses much more than basketball, which the photographer Dan Smith captures so well in his description of this project.
This project as seen started with one image.
The Old Idaho State Penitentiary was the site. The witness room of the Execution Chamber the location. One small window looking out.
The shadow of a basketball standard on an empty prison yard.
The first of what was to be HOOPS, an exploration. A trip into barns, yards, garages and fields. A visit to a world of aspiration and hope, of youthful dreams and bitter failure.
These basketball hoops—put up for kids to play with, farmhands to keep occupied while waiting for a grain wagon or load of hay—were the subject matter. Sculpted by light, location and weather they remain. Silent and gradually decaying via wind, water and time.
I enter with a camera and an idea quietly shaping the quest for meaning in images devoid of people. The suggestion of activity in silence.
Gradually the idea took shape and images presented themselves before my lens.
Images that, at times seemed to jump out of the day as I chanced upon a basketball standard. Others dimly seen in passing and only recognized after many visits, finally to reveal subject matter worth stopping for. Still others seen clearly, yet not realized until weather and light and opportunity combined for an image worth the effort.
Night skies, morning dew —an animal emphasizing the playground nature of the quest. Hay and farm machinery and winter winds in sub zero temperatures. The net made of baling twine… the bare rim, the shadow.
HOOPS, images of dreams, hopes and daily life. Tangible reminders of youth too quickly gone, friendships of the past pushed aside by the demands of the day.
I stop and I photograph. Seeking quiet, the memory of days long gone. These remnants of life once seemingly important. Totems of happiness and friendship and effort. All in images seen and felt as I photograph, as I print and as I exhibit them.
This exhibition is sponsored by the North Dakota Art Gallery Association with support from the North Dakota Council on the Arts, which receives funding from the State Legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Pictured: Quonset Snowstorm, ND, digital print by Dan Smith
More Info: http://www.jamestownarts.com
Event Start Date: 12/12/2019 Event End Date: 01/18/2020
Time: 9:00am - 5:00pm
Sally Jeppson
701-251-2496
sjeppson@jamestownarts.com
Location Name:
The Arts Center
Location Address:
115 2nd Street SW
Jamestown, ND58401
Event posting from www.JamestownCalendar.com