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Justus Fine Art Gallery will host “Seeing: a Photography Exhibition” in September.
The exhibit will feature work by artists including Beverly Buys, Robbie Brindley, George Chambers, Don House, Carey Roberson, Andie Roberts and Eli Vega.
“Along with the individuality of artistic styles, a range of photographic processes will also be displayed. In conjunction with the photography show, a Haiku poetry competition, inspired by the works on display, will be held throughout the month,” a news release said.
The opening reception will be held from 5-9 p.m. Friday as part of the monthly Gallery Walk in downtown Hot Springs. The exhibit will be on display through Sept. 30.
Selections from Roberson’s “Morning Stroll Surprise” series will be featured in the exhibit.
“‘Morning Stroll Surprise’ is an iPhone-based side-project, that began while on a trip to New York in 2015, and was originally intended only as a creative exercise to get out of an artistic rut, and to lose some weight while taking morning walks (but that is a whole other issue),” Roberson said in the release.
Eight years later, “it has developed into part of my creative practice and is a major influence in all of my other work. The premise of the project is to study the unnoticed through a process of subtraction, framing, and questioning. Poetic connections are created through little shifts in perspective. Hidden arrangements wait to be subtracted by the camera’s frame and brought into a new life. Disparate forms and objects generate into new contexts and meanings, and framed assortments of circumstances give significance to the often unremarkable. Unfortunately, the weight loss part hasn’t gone as well as the project,” Roberson said.
Roberson earned a BFA in Studio Art from Henderson University in Arkadelphia and a MFA in photography from Louisiana Tech University. He is an associate professor of Art at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, where he is the gallery director for the Rosemary Adams Department of Art & Design Galleries, and teaches art foundations, photography, sculpture, printmaking, and other studio art courses. He previously served as an associate professor of Art at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock from 2002 to 2018, where he headed the Photography Program, along with serving as the BFA coordinator and interim chair of the Department of Art & Design.
“Roberson’s artwork integrates traditional studio media with new digital technologies and methods to create quiet personal narratives,” the release said.
Roberson has exhibited in over 70 competitive, invitational, and solo exhibitions. His work has been exhibited at the University of North Texas, Ithaca College, Huntsville Museum of Art, Mobile Museum of Art, the Arkansas Museum of Fine Art, and numerous other university and private galleries around the nation. He is a winner of the Arkansas Arts Council Individual Fellowship Award and has works in a number of collections, including the Mobile Museum of Art in Mobile, Alabama. Roberson’s artwork has also been featured in the national publications of New American Paintings and CMYK Magazine.
“Using a film camera and an enlarger, nothing is digital in Buys’ process of creating cyanotype prints. Each print is one-of-a-kind — no two prints from the same negative are ever the same,” the release said.
“Cyanotype prints are made when sensitized paper is exposed to ultraviolet light. It is simple and direct in execution,” Buys said in the release.
“I strive for perfection at the beginning and embrace, even encourage, the imperfections that the process brings. The photographs are grid-like in that I enlarge each negative on six separate pieces of film that I have pieced together kind of like tile on a floor. The resulting negatives are placed on cotton rag paper that I have coated with the simple cyanotype chemistry. On sunny summer days, I make the prints by exposing this sandwich of sensitized paper, negative and a heavy sheet of glass to hold all in place under the sun. The prints are developed and washed in a large tray in my backyard using a garden hose. The simple tools and processes that I use to make the photographs reflect back on the type of ingenuity that I appreciate in the subjects of my Delta imagery,” Buys said.
Buys’ cyanotypes have been showcased in solo exhibits at Arkansas State University in Beebe; the Delta Cultural Center in Helena; the Russell Fine Arts Gallery at Henderson State University; and the University of Memphis Art Gallery in Memphis. Buys’ work has also been included in group exhibitions including the annual “Delta Exhibition” at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Art in Little Rock; “artSpark 2013” in Raleigh, North Carolina; the “2011 Winthrop Rockefeller Institute Legacy Art Exhibition” at Petit Jean; and “Selections From the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Permanent Collections” at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock.
Buys earned a BSE in Art Education from Henderson State University, an MA in Photography from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and an MFA in Photography/Printmaking from the University of Memphis. Buys served as a professor of photography at the Ellis College of Arts and Sciences at Henderson State University prior to retiring in 2014.
Chambers’ photographs focus on the landscape in an attempt to “look beneath the symbolic language we overlay the world with and glimpse what’s there” will be included in the exhibit, the release said.
“Place a tiny human face somewhere in the landscape and the eye will find it immediately. Any text in the scene and the eye wants to read it,” Chambers says in the release.
“Avoiding these symbols, I try to create a blank slate that is still visually dynamic, leading the eye into ever deeper levels of textures and detail. If the viewer connects with the image, they project their own feelings and meanings onto the piece.”
Chambers earned a BA in Commercial Photography from the Brooks Institute of Photography in California and currently maintains an active studio in Little Rock. His work has been included in a range of group and solo exhibitions, including “Beyond Symbol” solo exhibit at the Baum Gallery of the University of Central Arkansas in Conway in 1999; “Small Works on Paper,” 2003, 2002, 2000 and 1998; “Visual Anthropology: Welcome to our Neighborhoods” group show at the Laman Public Library in North Little Rock, 2016; two-person show, Anna Eaton Stout Gallery, Brescia College, Owensboro, Kentucky in 1996; “Trappings Exhibition,” Hot Springs Arts Center, Hot Springs, 1991; “Lightwriters,” Kresge Art Center, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, 1984; and “Prints, Drawings, Crafts Exhibition,” Arkansas Museum of Fine Art, Little Rock, 1991, 1984 and 1983. Collections include Arkansas Fine Art Museum, Henderson State University, University of Arkansas Medical Center, Kimberly Clarke Corporation, and LSI (GMAC Financing).
House “is respected for his dramatic black-and-white portraiture and rural scenes, along with his altered Polaroid prints. His work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the U.S., along with a wide range of publications. His photography has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, American Forests, Boy’s Life, Persimmon Hill, First Freedom, Free Hunters, Outdoor Oklahoma, Wood, Traditional Bowhunter, Backpacker Magazine, and Woman’s World, along with a variety of university textbooks, and covers for fiction and nonfiction books. Two collections of his work, “Buffalo Creek Chronicles” and “Not a Good Sign,” have been published by Phoenix International Press.
Selections of Brindley’s spare landscapes will also be included in the exhibit. “He only shoots with film using a Mamiya RB67, which requires a tripod and careful attention when composing his photos,” the release said.
“My work is a slow process. Sometimes driving all day over many miles of back roads and dirt paths, passing small towns and empty fields … to take one picture,” Brindley said in the release.
“Roberts has been photographing since she was a child and more seriously for the past 15 years. Her images reflect her interest in finding beauty in the abandoned. She doesn’t manipulate the imagery she finds, but creates engaging compositions from what she sees. This exhibit will be the first time Roberts has shared her work publicly,” the release said.
Vega was first exposed to art while attending Texas Tech University “where he gained a foundation in color theory, design, and composition. It wasn’t until 20 years later that he first began to explore photography,” it said. He currently teaches private and group photography workshops, along with writing. His books include “Renditions of Famous Paintings,” “Right Brain Photography (Be an Artist First),” and “I Always Wanted to Be Somebody (But, I Settled for Much More: Me).”
Owned by artist Dolores Justus, Justus Fine Art Gallery, 827-A Central Ave., is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. Call 501-321-2335 or visit http://www.justusfineart.com for more information.


