Artist Talk with Brenton Hamilton, August 4

Page Gallery and Maine Media Workshops will host an artist talk with Brenton Hamilton about his cyanotype exhibition, Red Sky at Night, on Sunday, August 4 at 1:00 PM at Page Gallery, 23 Bay View Street in Camden. Hamilton’s work will be on view from July 18 through August 9. This event is free and open to the public.

The shapes of boats, sailors, the ocean waters and their behavior are characters from his childhood in and around Casco Bay. In the exhibition, viewers experience a grand narrative of floating clouds in a night sky and mischievous sailors. Knots of jute rope serve as metaphors for human experience. Gripping clouds lie beneath the cover of a special blue darkness. Shimmering gold leaf, at once elegant and eternal, creates an intricate pattern of imaginary constellations and unknown stars that glitter to light the way.

Embedded in the deepest blue imaginable, Hamilton’s nocturnal folly tells of a sailor and his adventures.

Hamilton reflects on his own adventures: a childhood idyll and a space to dream. Brenton Hamilton has created these unusual stories using the 19th century cyanotype photo process, using the sun to create the images.

A combination of iron salts exposed to the sun creates a new compound – and a vibrant, unfathomable blue.

Brenton is a leading lecturer and historian of photography. He has taught at Maine Media Workshops in Rockport for 30 years. His works are in the permanent collections of the Farnsworth Art Museum, the Portland Museum of Art, the University of New England, and the Lamar Dodd Art Centers in Georgia.

For more information, visit: thepagegallery.com.