On Friday, April 19, 20 North Gallery opened “ARToledo 2024,” an exhibition of photography and paintings—in acrylic, oil and ink—by four Toledo-area emerging artists, Austin Lipowski, Vincent Livecchi, Paul Lyon and Yuemin Xin. The exhibit will continue through June 22.

20 North Gallery and the artists will be welcoming friends and collectors at the free Public Reception for “ARToledo 2024” on Friday, April 19, from 6 pm – 9 pm. The reception will feature a free appetizer buffet and cash bar by venue.

Beginning to Now

Since its founding in 1993, 20 North Gallery has periodically hosted emerging artists exhibits, promoting the development of promising new talent in the Toledo art landscape. “ARToledo 2024” is a small group exhibition which provides the opportunity to nurture and retain Toledo’s rising artistic talent, giving new artists a chance to enter the commercial art market in their home community—while providing Toledo collectors the opportunity for a first view of the future of Toledo’s rich, continuing art legacy.

In 2024, the exhibition was designed as a competitive show, open to Ohio and Toledo-area artists who have prepared a body of work, but who have not yet been a featured artist in any commercial gallery venues prior to the ARToledo 2024 exhibit.

This year’s exhibition juror is Aaron Pickens. Pickens received his B.F.A. from Bowling Green State University (Ohio) and M.F.A. from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. Pickens spent his years as an emerging artist in Toledo, exhibiting in regional shows including “NowOH” at the Dorothy Uber Bryan Gallery at Bowling Green State University (First Place in 2D Art, 2016; Best of Show, 2017, 2018). Recently, his paintings have been included in national and international juried and invitational shows such as “Surreal Salon 14” at Baton Rouge Gallery (Baton Rouge, Louisiana). Pickens is Assistant Professor of Fine Arts and New Media at Indiana University Kokomo (Indiana).

Juror’s Remarks

As the juror and curator for “ARToledo 2024,” Mr. Pickens remarks, “Every time I evaluate an artist’s creative practice, I look at several different parameters. Is the artist technically proficient with their medium? Is there consistency within their body of work? Is there something distinctive about their creative practice? What do they want to communicate to the world through their art? Furthermore, when I curate an exhibition, I am also looking for a possible connection between the different artists. How would their artwork function together and what does it collectively say? The artists that were chosen for the 2024 ARToledo exhibition all demonstrate a strong creative practice and have a clear professional trajectory in the arts. Additionally, the exhibition evolved into having two connecting themes: painting and the landscape.

RELATED: Art Calendar May 2024

“However, despite these two connecting themes, the work is visually diverse. What caught my attention with Austin Lipowski’s abstract paintings is the sophisticated layering of the paint, the gestural mark-making, the use of color, and the dynamic compositions. With Yuemin Xin’s paintings of nature, the mark-making is both expressive, while also immaculately controlled. The work also embodies a reverence for tradition and seeks to preserve a culturally-significant discipline. Vince Livecchi’s photographs magnify subtle details within the natural world. With the extreme depth of field within his images, the compositions oscillate between abstraction and representation. Paul Lyon’s paintings of the landscape explore an impressionistic approach to depicting the Midwest. The energetic application of paint has elevated the familiar.

“Finally, there is an interplay between the macro and micro when viewing the work together in the exhibition. Not only is this evident in how the landscape has been represented but also in the mark-making and the use of paint. This is just one of many dialogues that are occurring between the work of the selected artists. Ultimately, the work chosen for this exhibition highlights the vitality of Toledo and the surrounding area. The range of expression and the technical proficiency of the work is a testament to the cultural health of the region – as well as the success of each of the artists. I want to congratulate the selected artists for their commitment to their creative practice and for sharing their unique voices with the community and 20 North Gallery.”

The online exhibition catalogue for “ARToledo 2024” containing images of the exhibited art, prices and artist information will be posted at the 20 North Gallery website: 20northgallery.com

What: “ARToledo 2024” Public Opening Reception
Where: 20 North Gallery, 18 N. St. Clair Street, (Downtown) Toledo, Ohio 43604, 419-241-2400
When: Friday, April 19, 2024, 6 pm – 9 pm

Regular Gallery Hours
Wednesday – Saturday: Noon – 4 pm
By Appointment

For more information, contact: Condessa Croninger (Art Director) or visit 20northgallery.com.

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Stanley Stellar has documented gay New York, on the streets and in his studio, for decades. Now he steps onto his biggest stage.

If you know nothing about photographer Fernando Gomez’s work, a click into his Instagram (a modern-day artist’s portfolio) and one thing is evident: a penchant for saturation. Color abounds in inky indigos, shocking scarlets, and ostentatious oranges. Gomez, who shoots largely still life and beauty imagery for brands like Loewe, Dior, Chanel, L’Oréal, Maybelline, and more, spends what he dubs a “couple of good full days” per month meticulously arranging his feed into a rainbow step-and-repeat of his photography. Ironically, his day-to-day life is mostly void of pigment.

His Barcelona home is all white. He dresses primarily in an array of black and white monochrome. “I’m kind of an old guy in a young person’s body, so my whole thing is super minimal,” he says. He conflates this taste for muted colors with his more serious personality. “Colors are like therapy work,” he explains of his process. “Working with different colors allows me to explore different emotions in an introspective way.” Ahead, the artist walks us through his career trajectory, his approach to color, and his other hobbies, including a fondness for the outdoors and a voracious appetite for reading.

Courtesy of Fernando Gomez

Courtesy of Fernando Gomez

Courtesy of Fernando Gomez

Fujifilm’s New Instax Mini 99 is an Instax camera for those who love manual controls and creative effects. It’s not the sharpest Instax I’ve tested—that remains the Mini Evo—but it might be the most analog and the most capable.

The $200 price tag is well above the entry-level point-and-shoot Instax cameras, but here you get exposure and shutter control, a swatch of color effects, and even the ability to simulate light leaks, like the ones you get with those thrift store cameras collecting dust on your shelf.

Manual Power

Except for the colorful and bubbly entry-level cameras, Fujifilm’s Instax design usually tends toward a retro-camera vibe, which holds true for the Mini 99. The 99 is all-black instead of the silver and black found in the Mini 90, but otherwise bears more than a passing resemblance to the older model. Fujifilm hasn’t officially said the 99 replaces the 90, but they feel close enough to each other that I’d be surprised if the Mini 90 continues for long.

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

The lens of the Mini 99 is the same as the Mini 90. It’s a 60-mm lens made of plastic. It works out to roughly the same field of view as a 35-mm lens in 35-mm format (or if you prefer, somewhere between 1x and 2x on your iPhone). The shutter is fixed at f/12.7, which means you’ll be relying on the flash in all but bright, sunny, outdoor shots. That said, unlike quite a few other Instax models, with the Mini 99 you can turn off the flash for those well-lit shots.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the Mini 99, and something new for the Instax line, are the manual focus options. The Mini 99 does not have true manual focus where you turn a dial on the lens to get precise focus. Instead there are three zones of focus: close up (0.3 to 0.6 meters), midrange (0.6 to 3 meters), and infinity (3 meters to infinity). For those not metric-savvy, that works out to 1 to 2 feet, 2 to 10 feet, and 10 feet to infinity. While that’s not as precise as a true manual focus camera, it’s more control than you typically get with Instax.

I find the manual focus to be a little inconsistent—or rather, the results were less dramatic than I expected. Keep in mind that the aperture is f/12.7, which means the plane of focus will be pretty wide, even with the focus zone controls. The Mini 99 is capable of bokeh (the name for out-of-focus regions in a photo), but only in very specific situations like a portrait, and even then you have to use the closest focus, which means your subject’s face will mostly fill the frame anyway. That said, being able to play with focus at all is a step up from most Instax cameras, where focus is fixed, and the 1-foot close focus distance of the Mini 99 is nice for macro-style shots. Unlike some Instax cameras, there is parallax correction in the viewfinder so that what you see in the frame is very close to what you get.

Photographer Doug Gemmell experienced the serendipity of being in the right place at the right time during one of his regular wildlife shoots. What he captured, however, was far from the ordinary eagle behavior one might expect.

An Unusual Discovery Through the Lens

While tracking the movements of a juvenile bald eagle—a creature yet to sprout its iconic white head feathers—Gemmell noticed the eagle descending not upon a body of water, which is typical for its species known for fishing, but rather toward a parking lot. Curiosity piqued, Gemmell continued snapping photos, intrigued by what such an unusual descent might yield.

A Slice of the Unexpected

Upon reviewing his photographs, Gemmell was astounded to discover that clutched in the eagle’s talons was not the expected fish or small mammal, but a delicious-looking slice of pepperoni pizza. “It’s not something you see every day, that’s for sure,” commented Gemmell on the unexpected find.

This peculiar moment highlighted the adaptability of wildlife, particularly urban-dwelling animals, which sometimes forage far beyond the natural menu. While it remains unknown whether the eagle actually consumed its saucy prize, the image itself serves as a humorous and stark symbol of nature intersecting with human life.

The Hunting Techniques of Eagles

Eagles, larger than most other diurnal birds of prey except for vultures and harpy eagles, possess unique hunting capabilities. Their size and weight might not allow the agility in flight exhibited by smaller raptors like falcons, but their powerful build enables them to exploit a range of hunting strategies—evidently, sometimes extending to unexpected scavenging in parking lots.

The adaptability of eagles, as shown in Gemmell’s photograph, suggests that these majestic birds will not only continue to surprise us with their behavior but also adapt in ways we might not anticipate. This intersection of wildlife behavior and human encroachment offers a fascinating glimpse into the changing dynamics of natural habitats—a reminder of the unpredictable ways in which wildlife interacts with the spaces we consider our own.

Healthcare provider LifeStance Health has teamed up with Leica Camera on a campaign that uses photography and poetry to reduce stigmas around mental health. 

The Not One Face campaign, which started in 2021, launched its latest iteration this week with a video titled There is Not One Face to Mental Health. 

It features a slideshow of black-and-white and color photographs backed by music and a poetry reading by Hussain Manawer, a celebrated British author who has written about his mental health struggles.

The launch coincides with Mental Health Awareness Month and comes amidst concerns about a mental health crisisamong children and young adults. 

“We really wanted to challenge certain assumptions and make it clear that mental health does not always look the same,” said Ashley Anderson, LifeStance SVP of marketing.

For the project, 13 photographers used Leica equipment to “depict how anxiety manifests in the real world through their creative lenses,” an introduction to the slideshow states.

Anderson said the brand’s creatives had talked with its agency of record, The Unquantifiable, about collaborating with another company for the campaign. They landed on the idea of working with a camera brand and reached out to Leica.

The collection features a wide array of subjects, including school children lined up on a sidewalk; a carnival featuring a “chaos” sign; a man in distress letting the ocean wash over him; and a broken, old television in the middle of a field. 

Manawer also recites the poem, “The Deep End,” which he wrote for the campaign. It opens with shots of children and the lines: 

“There’s the innocence in my youth

Where I swim, walk, stand strong

In hope my shadow never leaves me

When I’m in my darkest room

Don’t tell me this is how my future tastes

I don’t want to be your future face

Depression, how dare you attempt to attach yourself to my roots.”

Manawer “was a very natural fit to the campaign because of his own personal struggles and narrative with mental health,” Anderson said.

LifeStance, Leica and the photographers will share content on their social media feeds including links to the campaign landing page.

I recently was introduced to photographer Todd Hido in Jason Momoa’s docuseries on HBO. Momoa has a real affinity for Todd. I wish I had a fan like that; if you watch the show, you will see what I mean.

In this video, you will see Hido talking about what it took to put his latest photography book together, “The End Sends Advance Warning.” Hido’s work is shot at night and usually when it’s rainy and foggy, which creates a moody and ominous look. The homes are reminiscent of his hometown of Ohio, and being from Michigan, I can relate to all of his work. Hido says these images bring him back to his childhood. But they are shot in Northern California; he found an area near his home where the developer built homes similar to the Midwest style.

Hido says he is an artist, not a documentarian, and he suggests printing your photos. We get so stuck with our photos being digital and looking at them on screen, but when you create a physical copy of your image, it changes everything.

Hido also says that creating a photo book is the best way to get your work out into the world. Having a physical photography book in your home is a great way to immerse yourself in a physical form of photography as opposed to looking on the internet. I agree; I have many coffee table photography books, and I look through them often. They can provoke a new idea and are such a great source of inspiration.