Artists in Residence at St. Louis Artists Guild

The Fall, 2012, Artists in Residence at St Louis Artists Guild gave a talk last evening. Discussing print-making, Laura Cardenas, and photography, Jana Anonnuevo Langholz, stood in the gallery where their works are displayed.

Ms. Cardenas, a recent graduate of Washington University in St Louis, titled her works, "Como Fue", loosely translated to be "as it were". She uses the Xerox machine as her camera, but frequently her hand can be seen in the image. She uses 8.5 x 11" images from old books to explore the "dualities of light and dark collapsing." For the artist, light "stands still" and has a "residue of memory."

Ms Langholz warmed up her audience by giving away three of her unframed photographs if the audience could correctly identify their elements. Her background is in the fiber arts (pattern, repetition, shading, shape), but she uses the classical tools of the darkroom to infuse tactility into her photographs. Some of her influences were her mother's water logged photo album from a typhoon in the Philippines and her volunteer stint after Hurricane Katrina where she found numerous peeled and partially erased photos.

Her exhibit, "Shift", explores the metaphor of water for constant change. As both subject and photographer she appears in her photos, not as self-portrait, but as sole performer. Many of her photos were taken near Alton, IL, and at the Confluence of the Great Rivers.

She explained that once she got to water, she shot a sequence of images for 15 minutes, and returned to the lab to develop the film. She then altered her photographs by placing objects on the developing photo (photo-gram). Using an enlarger, she "dodged and burned", collaged, or did double exposures to create a fascinating body of work.

The exhibit continues through March 17, 2012. For more information and hours go to www.stlouisartistguild.org .