by Bella Erakko

Living in the Midwest evokes deep American images of farm, family, home, state fairs, barbeques, and rodeos. Whether you live in a walk-up city apartment, a suburban community, or a mountaintop cabin, certain images deeply affect us. Alliance Art Gallery’s November guest artist Stan Kelton captures that America for us, from a surprise birthday for a 91 year old relative radiating love, life, beauty, or a red-white-blue garbed young boy, bright eyed beneath a cowboy hat, attempting to lasso. Explaining his love of rodeos, he laughs, “All you need is good light, good riders, good stock, action, cute kids, and pretty girls.” The trick, however, is to put them all together.

As we all know, with cellular phones, we can snap away to record memorable places and people, but some people just have “the eye.” One of the hardest subjects to capture is people—because they move, blink, have a bad angle, are surrounded by distracting backgrounds. Yet Stan hones in, driving home the image in heart-warming memorable ways. If you want to witness America at its best, these images captured by Stan Kelton, draw the viewer into the goodness within each one of us.

An opening reception will be held on Saturday, November 9 from 5 until 8:00.