ARTmonday: Winky Lewis

I have fallen hard for Portland, Maine-based photographer Winky Lewis. The portraits of her children are reminiscent of the photographs of my very first photo crush, Sally Mann. They’re also somewhat similar to photos taken by my friend Kathleen Schwartz of her fairy tale children. They also remind me of a photograph that hangs in my bedroom; the first portrait I ever purchased (you can see it at the end of this post). I love evocative black and white portraits of children and their fairy tale lives. Winky Lewis’ photographs are stunning and insightful.  She also happened to photograph my friend Sharon Kitchens‘ homestead for a Boston Globe story I wrote, but I’ll save that for another time.

Photograph By Winky Lewis

Photograph By Winky Lewis

Photograph By Winky Lewis

Photograph By Winky Lewis

Photograph By Winky Lewis

Photograph By Winky Lewis

 

 

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Photograph By Winky Lewis

Photograph By Winky Lewis

Photograph By Winky Lewis

Photograph By Winky Lewis

Photograph By Winky Lewis

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Photograph By Winky Lewis

Photograph By Winky Lewis

Photograph By Winky Lewis

 

 


Photograph By Winky Lewis

Photographs By Winky Lewis

Self Portrait By Winky Lewis

 Winky Lewis (with her son) (and her camera) 

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I think this is the first portrait I ever purchased. I bought it in the early ’90s at an auction at Little Red Schoolhouse / Elizabeth Irwin, a progressive school in NYC, whose alumni includes artists and artists’ kids. I remember seeing works by Francisco Clemente there. Those were certainly not in my budget. This photo was taken by one of the women who worked in the office of the school; it pictures her nieces. I still love it. It hangs above my bedside table.

photo-of-two-young-girls

ARTmonday: Quercus Designs’ Beach Object Photographs

Yesterday I finally caught up with miles of blog posts on Remodelista. I found a few items I must have, including the work of Jennifer Steen Booher, who photographs natural object assemblages under the name Quercus Designs. I purchased two 12x12s (the first two shown here) from her Etsy shop, and plan to hang them in our house on  the Cape. The silhouetted specimens in each of the arrays have a crisp sparseness, that I think, along with the colors, that work really well. So simple, but very satisfying. She writes about her work — where she found the tokens and such — on her blog. Bar Harbor Yacht Club, May 29, 2011

Bar Island, May 28, 2011

Eddie’s Brook, May 28, 2011

Rope & Driftwood, The Bluffs, July 13, 2010

Rope & Driftwood, The Bluffs, July 13, 2010

Tiny Shark Teeth