Departments
Arts
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Week of 17 October 1997 |
Vol. I, No. 8 |
Arts
The exquisite photography of Kal Zabarsky
Exquisite Ruin, now at the GSU Gallery, is the latest exhibition of photographic works by Kal Zabarsky, a longtime member of BU's Photo Services. In addition to earlier shows at BU, Zabarsky has exhibited his work at MIT, Harvard, New England School of Photography, Gallery Naga, and the Vineyard Gallery.
BU Bridge: You graduated from SFA in 1969 with a degree in painting. How did that lead to photography and to BU Photo Services?
Kal Zabarsky: When you're an art student, you're always after someone to take slides of your paintings or sculptures. It's expensive and difficult, so I decided to buy a camera and learn how to do it myself. Having the camera around, I started shooting friends and things that caught my fancy. Soon I found myself being drawn deeper into it. Since I never really studied photography, it became a grand exploration. Which is what art really is.
After I graduated, I started at Photo Services as a darkroom technician. After about three years, one of the photographers resigned, and I was asked to fill the position.
BU Bridge: Is it difficult to maintain your artistic work when you spend your days documenting people and events on campus?
Zabarsky: Most of the work that I do for myself is of people. The two still life projects, the current exhibition, Exquisite Ruin, and a previous project, In Camera Illuminata, 1992, came around the time my son was born. I needed the flexibility -- you can set up a still life, walk away from it, and come back to it, whereas photographing people, you have to arrange times and places. Being attracted to photographing people, it's easy for me to be around people and take pictures on campus.
BU Bridge: How did Exquisite Ruin evolve?
Zabarsky: It evolved from my being attracted to leaves. I started taking pictures of them, but the first images didn't have any special quality beyond the texture of the leaf. I was talking to a friend of mine about the idea of falling and he suggested I read Dante's Inferno, which led to the idea of ruin and trying to understand about falling from grace. Exquisite means beautiful and elaborate and also very intense -- so exquisite pain can be intense pain. Exquisite ruin is sort of an intense ruin. It also implies a beautiful ruin, so it's that ambiguity of meaning that became interesting to me.
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Kal Zabarsky (SFA'69) taught
himself photography in order to assist in the
promotion of his paintings. Now, he says, his
training as a painter informs his approach to
photography. Exquisite Ruin, an exhibition of his
still life photographs, is currently in the GSU
Gallery.
Photo by Fred
Sway
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Zabarsky: Being an avid collector -- to the discouragement of my wife -- I pick up stones, rusted slabs of metal, and feather clusters that look as if they had been ripped out by some predatory bird. The other fascinating part of this is that I still have all the leaves -- probably about 200 altogether. A couple of them have crumbled in using them, and that was an emotional experience.
BU Bridge: Your process is unusual in that you shoot the original photos in black and white, then use a color laser copy process to produce the final image.
Zabarsky: There is a temptation to do them in color, but I didn't want to deal with that because it evokes autumn and looking at foliage. By removing them from their color I could focus more on the qualities of being chewed and stained.
The color Xerox gives the image this sort of ink quality. The acid green/black duotones give it the kind of richness and mystery -- there's something about surface, like surface of paint or surface of watercolor, the surface of the etching ink on the paper, that seems to go along with the pictures.
BU Bridge: That's a very painterly way to look at it.
Zabarsky: A lot of the understanding I got out of art school just carries right into my photography.
A bow to Time's Arrow
By Judith Sandler
There are early music groups and there are contemporary music groups. Time's Arrow is one group that aims to draw a line between the music of the past and the music of the present.
"Time's Arrow has performed 12th-century pieces alongside contemporary music to demonstrate the qualities they share," says Richard Cornell, SFA associate professor. "It could be their structure, technique, or melodic shape. We're showing the historic link -- we're giving a context to today's music."
Established in the fall of 1994 under the direction of Cornell and the guidance of Christopher Kendall, who was then director of SFA's Music Division, Time's Arrow is currently overseen by a faculty group and directed by Julian Wachner, University organist and choirmaster and STH assistant professor of sacred music.
Wachner incorporates the vision of Cornell and Kendall while adding a new dimension to Time's Arrow performances. "I want to start a conversation with the audience," he says, "in order to help make the more challenging works less intimidating. I present an introduction, drawing parallels between the less accessible and the more accessible works." Wachner takes great pleasure in working with the ensemble. "These are some of the most advanced students in SFA, many of whom are looking at contemporary music for the first time. They can play a Mozart or Brahms concerto with some sophistication and understanding," he says, "but haven't yet experienced the notational peculiarities and technical demands of 20th-century music, and it's exciting to see them solve those problems and conquer those challenges."
Each of Time's Arrow's four performances this season will be directed by a different conductor. Leading the first program of the season on Thursday, October 23, Richard Cornell has selected music that he says "features the contemporary legacy of St. Petersburg as a musical center. St. Petersburg is the cultural capital of Russia. Going back to the time of Peter the Great, it has a history of musical and cultural activity extending up to the present time."
At the center of this program -- which is framed by the music of one of St. Petersburg's most famous sons, Dmitri Shostakovich -- are works by two highly respected contemporary St. Petersburg composers, Alexander Mnatsakanyan and Boris Tishchenko. Visiting Boston as part of a cultural exchange, the two composers will attend the concert and participate in a Composer's Forum on Tuesday, October 28, at noon in the School for the Arts Concert Hall, as well as other events at BU, Tufts, and the Longy School of Music. Completing the cultural exchange, Marjorie Merryman, chairman of the theory and composition department at SFA, will visit St. Petersburg.
The Time's Arrow program on Thursday, October 23, at 8 p.m., features works by Boris Tishchenko, Alexander Mnatsakanyan, Roman Yakub, Alfred Schnittke, and Dmitri Shostakovich. For the next performance, on Thursday, December 11, at 8 p.m., director Julian Wachner has selected music of Bach, Stravinsky, and Ligetti. The remaining Time's Arrow concerts will be led by SFA professors Lukas Foss, on March 31, and Theodore Antoniou, on April 22. All performances are in the Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue.