AU SABLE FORKS — Hidden Treasures, a photography exhibition featuring the works of Rob Fountain and Tammy Rose, opens with a reception on Saturday, Jan. 25, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the AuSable Forks Free Library, 9 Church Lane.
In the Community Room, the works will hang until Feb. 28. Admission is free.
BIOS
Fountain is an award-winning professional photographer with 30 years experience as a photojournalist. He obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Academy of Art, San Francisco University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from SUNY Potsdam. His photographs have appeared in Lake Placid News, Adirondack Daily Enterprise, and The Press Republican.
He has taught both photography and photojournalism at SUNY Plattsburgh, and continues to teach various art workshops at community libraries and at Tahawus Cultural Center. When he is not behind the camera, Fountain creates portraits by commission in oil, pastel, and charcoal.
Rose is a volunteer at the AuSable Forks Free Library and a gallery assistant at the Tahawus Cultural Center. She obtained a MLIS from the University of Western Ontario and a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Art History Specialization, from the University of Waterloo, where she learned black and white photography darkroom techniques. She fell in love with photography at a young age with a Kodak Instamatic. She currently works in digital and enjoys capturing scenes of places and things before they disappear.
TAMMY ROSE
Rose has always made art as long as she can remember.
“I used to draw all the time,” she said.
“My art degree is University of Waterloo-Ontario. That was art history major. That’s where I took my first formal photography course that had darkroom technique, student critiques, and we had a student show there. But my first photography teacher was my father. I’ve been taking photos since I was 8 or 10 years old. My first camera was a Kodak Instamatic, and I took hundreds and hundreds of pictures of my hamsters.”
Her father bumped her to his Pentax.
“Everything was film then,” she said.
“We were doing black-and-white film. He was a photographer. We used to do that together. When I was maybe around 12 or 13 he upgraded. He went from a Pentax to a Nikon FE. Motor drive. Bunch of toys. He let me use that. I was this kid that had this great camera to play with. My father was very socially active, and one of the things he did he had a scuba club. I was just a kid. I couldn’t dive. I had this camera and I would get to go and document everything that they did. Whatever activity they did, I was out there with a camera. and every so often, we would have a slideshow. I was a kid, so I was taking pictures of things that kids like. People jumping off of things into the water. Actions shots. I had a motor drive to play with. I really enjoyed watching them and enjoying the pictures I took documenting the fun stuff that they did. I’ve been doing it for a very long time. I did take a long break.”
After earning her bachelor of arts degree, Rose attended the University of Western Ontario where she did library and information science because she needed a job. Marriage and children followed.
“In between there, digital came out,” Rose said.
“When my children were younger, I was gifted a digital camera. It’s so freeing because you can take hundreds upon hundreds and just keep the ones you want without paying for the development fees. That got me going again. That was a gift from my husband.”
Over the years, Rose’s themes have changed.
“I’ve gotten more nostalgic,” she said.
“What I have in the show are three series. I have 8-by-8s, which I think of as the nostalgia series. What I mean is they are things that were once loved or extremely useful and are just now sitting, rotting, somewhere. I have a picture of a Toledo scale. No springs on its weight. You can see the mechanism in it. I got a picture of a bus left to rot out in a field with daisies surrounding it. I got a fire hydrant in the middle of the woods that used to be a military base. All the buildings are gone. You’re riding along a bike trail, and all of a sudden, there’s a fire hydrant there kind of like a reminder.”
Rose has a penchant for old vehicles – buses, work trucks – out in the middle of the woods. Various stages of rot and decay.”
Architecture is another one of her themes.
“My favorite pieces come from upstate New York,” she said.
“One is from Maine. Some are from Massachusetts. Some are from Canada, but the majority of subjects are upstate New York. I like historic themes, places and things that are disappearing. Buildings that are kind of already falling down, decrepit. But at one time were very busy, very beautiful, very functional. Some of the subjects I have here have been refurbished, and people are living in them. Some are on their way out. So, it’s kind of nostalgic in that way. I have a bunch of things from a Main Street in a small town not far from Watertown. At one time, it would have been a beautiful downtown, but the main industry left. Fort Drum moved in. People moved away. It’s slowly becoming a ghost town, but there’s still some beautiful things there. I turn them into portraits while they’re still there.”
Hidden Treasures is Rose’s first large-scale show.
“I have 18 pieces,” she said.
“Some are them are 8×8 and 12×14. I try not to do anything that’s too sad. It’s kind of like glimpses of the past, of things that we either don’t use anymore or are on their way out. Or else details like one of the shop fronts I have is just the front door and the two windows on either side. For a little nothing place in upstate New York, the detailing on it is lovely. There are things that people may walk past and not notice. They might not think to take a good look and wonder about.”