Despite decreased snowfalls and record high temperatures, current events indicate this winter is one of the toughest in recent memory. Winter Blues, the contemporary cyanotype exhibition at Center for Photographic Arts is a bright spot in the season’s darkness. The show features artists Diana H. Bloomfield, J.M. Golding, Brenton Hamilton, Barbara Hazen, Max Kellenberger, Heidi Kirkpatrick, Meghann Riepenhoff, Paula Riff, Leah Sobsey, and Brian Taylor who have revived this 19th-century photographic process for the modern audience.  

Historically, cyanotypes are small, intimate photographs and photograms. Winter Blues acknowledges the process’s history, while remaining rooted in its present and the myriad ways in which artists combine two chemicals in equal parts to create wildly different works of art along the blue color spectrum.

Displayed among indigo, cobalt, and Prussian photograms, still lifes, and abstractions are three-dimensional pieces that challenge the conventions of the cyanotype process as well as our conceptions of lens-based media. Diana H. Bloomfield’s artist books unfold into visual poems. Heidi Kirkpatrick’s unique art objects blend photography and sculpture while Leah Sobey’s explosion of blue butterflies allude to the coming of spring.

For Director Ann Jastrab, this exhibition has been a long time coming. She met artist Brenton Hamilton nearly 30 years ago at Maine Media Workshops. After teaching all day, he quietly worked on a new cyanotype series—the chemicals staining the bathtub blue. Jastrab was enthralled with the array of blue hues he achieved and with his work ethic as he toiled away all winter in the school’s freezing darkroom. In Winter Blues, Jastrab has curated an exhibition that brings her back to that blue-tinted bathtub in Maine and brings viewers into the multi-faceted world of the cyanotype process.

Winter Blues is on view at Center for Photographic Arts through April 5, 2020. The gallery is closed due to the COVID-19 outbreak, but you can view the show by appointment.