Abbot-Haley-Straub
EXPLORING PORTRAITURE

Artists Reception: January 10, 2019, 6-7:30 PM
Exhibit: September 16, 2018 through
January 10, 2019

As the season shifts and students head back to school, the RFA is celebrating the accomplishments of some of Rangeley’s own. On September 15 the selected works of recent Rangeley Lakes Regional School graduates Logan Abbott, Natasha Haley, and Isobel Straub will be in an exhibition at the Lakeside Contemporary Art Gallery. This show highlights the unique perspectives of three artists examining the diversity of elements and character discovered in portraiture. An artist’s reception will be held later in the season during school holidays.

Under the tutelage of art and graphics teachers Sonja Johnson and Maryam Emami, these young artists developed accomplished, award-winning portfolios during their years at RLRS. Abbott, Haley and Straub not only participated in the Advanced Placement (AP) program where their work was reviewed by the College Board and awarded college credit; they were also honored in National Congressional Art and Scholastic Art competitions. The RFA is proud to present a show that will allow audiences the opportunity to glimpse into the portfolios of these talented individuals and also celebrate all of their accomplishments as they take their first steps into their post-secondary studies.

Logan Abbot:

is an AP honors student and that she is pleased to be showing her photography at LCAG beside her friends Natasha and Isobel.

Natasha Haley:

My artwork is a representation of the emotions animals have but are unable to show verbally. Animals communicate with humans by their facial expressions. Their expression gives the same story as if they were telling it with their mouth. A face can say more than a mouthful of words. I experimented with a layered background which then led me to investigate altered surfaces. This made me extend my work into sanded paper and newsprint. My junior year I spent a large amount fo my time exploring the monoprint process. After doing all of those prints, I didn’t know what to do with them. I investigated collage, overlays, transparency, image transfer. I decided to invest the rest of my year working on mastery of drawing. My senior year I continued on with the drawing process with a focus on charcoal. I was felling confident with my ability to create lines and marks in charcoal, so I decided to investigate surfaces. Sanded paper was a natural match for charcoal. I went onto my early works: the dog, cat and dear on newspaper were the starting point of my love for altered backgrounds and manipulation. The next surface was my monoprints that I had left behind the year prior because I couldn’t figure out what to do with them. One of my last works was the charcoal dog on the brick background. I had the picture of the dog and knew she need to be charcoaled with something other than a  flat background. I made the background with black and white paint, where I used a sponge to create the bricks that made her pop. In the giraffe images, I had this mysterious animal with no background. I then used my collaging skills and my old monoprint to create a cohesive image that shows the rendering of the animal.

Isobel Straub:

While photographing Ballet I from the Lakeside Dance Academy (LDA), I was automatically inspired by the setting light gleaming through the door. In my composition, I focused on the contrast of light and dark while utilizing the developing light of the day. Because I myself was once in Ballet I at LDA, I wanted to show the engagement, confusion, focus, and awe when it comes to dance and learning through the eyes of the mentor and mentees. When it comes to dance, patterns and repetition occur naturally within the human body and I captured the work in motion and focused on the lines of the legs and arms and the art they produce. All of the original photographs were in color, but I shifted almost all of them to black and white to emphasize the contrast of light and dark.

“Hand in Hand” is one image from my photo documentary of the same name, taken during the adaptive art program at RLRS in which I was a mentor.  I decided to make all the backgrounds black and to put all of them in black and white to have the photographs have a raw genuine feeling about them.