January 14 - February 20, 2005 Reception: January 14 from 7 to 9pm   Artist Talks: Thursday, January 27 at 7:00pm A DIFFERENT VIEW, curated by Alida Bray photography by Sarah Puckitt, Lisa Ricci, Linda Poe This exhibition was made possible through the generous sponsorship of Bleyle Elevator. We appreciate their support of the arts in Pacifica! “A Different View” features contemporary photography and installation art by Linda Poe, Sarah Puckitt and Lisa Ricci. Guest curator Alida Bray is the Director of Collections and Exhibitions at History San Jose. She is fascinated by the artist’s ability to transform common objects and views into remarkable and mysterious images that compel us to reconsider our environment. Bray says, “For me, art is about raising questions, evoking visceral responses, and seeing things from a different point of view.” Both the curator and the exhibiting artists use the gallery space as a venue to observe, contemplate and interpret ideas and images. Lisa Ricci is interested in the documentary nature of photography as it relates to social narrative and identity. Sarah Puckitt and Linda Poe are meticulous in their investigations of scale shifts and illusions, making the microscopic appear epic in their photography. In many of the images, an edgy sense of paranoia and uncertainty adds tension to the ambiguity expressed in the photographs, which often parallels our society’s current collective state-of-mind.   Aspects of Linda Poe’s daily museum work – arranging, categorizing and describing rare artifacts – surely influences her artwork. She rarely travels anywhere without her Minolta and rarely misses an opportunity to view her surroundings through a lens. Poe divides and categorizes her environment by color, size and shape, sometimes focusing so closely that common views are abstracted. Her work invites the viewer to dissect the images – magnified and using startling juxtapositions of biological and man made forms. By layering and arrangement, her process becomes an investigation of the minute and the mysterious. Like many photographers, Poe uses the camera to control the environment – to organize, frame, and classify the material world around her. Her photographs focus on looking, drawing attention to a specific detail or object that is beautiful, odd, unusual or commonplace.  She collects rare moments, curious textures, and ambiguous shapes. Her passion is reflected in her professional career as collection manager for historic and cultural museum artifacts.   Sarah Puckitt is fascinated with ideas of miniaturized explorations of the body such as the one in the 1966 film “Fantastic Voyage.”  For the most part, her photographs are a whimsical abstraction of bodily interiors.  Root vegetables are often her subject matter because their irregular shapes are simultaneously repulsive and engaging.  Use of extreme close-up implies a substance that is so large it can not be contained. Puckitt says, “I have been fortunate in that I have been healthy all my life, although this does not stop me from worrying about what mysterious ailment may pop up at any moment. These fears inform my work in an attempt to initiate a dialogue with the viewer.”   Lisa Ricci searches for her photographs at local thrift stores and yard sales.  She states that while she is excited by discovering images, she is also saddened that someone's treasured memories are discarded like trash and bartered by strangers. Ricci will create a photographic installation in the Main Gallery called “an absence that is almost a presence” that features portraits from photographs she owns of individuals who are no longer in her life.  The materials and craft symbolize the daguerreotype, a ghostly apparition of a loved one lost. She says, “Throughout our life, we make friends, meet lovers, form families.  In time, these individuals pass away, grow apart, lose touch, and burn bridges.  What remains in their absence are memories and photographs.” Ricci explores the need to create and possess images that reaffirm our cultural identity and how these perceptions are distorted by subjectivity and the passage of time. She expresses ideas using a variety of art techniques including drawing, painting, sculpture and installation, so that the complexities and assumptions of photography come into question. Manipulating these images creates a context that questions the inherent truth of the original photographic moment.   This exhibition was made possible through the generous sponsorship of Bleyle Elevator. We appreciate their support of the arts in Pacifica!