Curator's Eye: Great Stone Face

Great Stone Face

Selected by C.J. Swanson, Curator A.O.C. Gallery

I have often sat and stared at gargoyles when I come upon them and attempted to draw them in my sketchbook, a cherub here and the fine-looking Native American chief in full headdress there. Then there is Betty Sapp Ragan whose photography of architectural details seems to come alive.

Betty’s work in these pictures combines portraits of people with architectural photos she took while traveling abroad. She became immersed in this subject and, in turn, created her own method of making these five-foot-square images. The process — exposing the images on photo paper on the wall — was a huge effort; her physical and emotional self was taxed.

The result is a body of work that draws the viewer into the images. They have an eerie appearance. In most cases, the people in them are looking directly at you. One almost wants the people to move inside the stone buildings that hold them in the picture plane.  — C.J.S.

“All of my work involves some kind of architectural element. In my current work —  hand-colored photo collages — portraits are embedded in large-format close-ups of architectural decoration. The images are mounted and colored with Prismacolor pencil and oil pigment. I find myself making up stories about the collages as I execute them. I invite viewers to invent their own stories about the images.“  — B.S.R.

Gloriette, 2006, hand-colored photo collage, 43 x 32 inches