By Bella Erakko
Travel and taking photos seem inextricably combined, especially with today’s advanced telephone camera technology. But finding the memorable image, framing it, enhancing it until it evokes a genuine “Aahhh” requires a finely honed sense of its artistic potential.
Alliance Art Gallery’s June guest artist, Jeremy Divers, has trekked to over 35 countries, capturing thousands of images from Iceland (“where everywhere you look is a postcard”) to New Zealand and Australia. As he explains, “I may only be in this location once.” When not traveling with his wife, he sometimes goes with travel buddies. “We hike in mountains. It may be a dreary day.” Some of his best photos come from such moments. Usually he has his Sony a6000 digital camera in hand, but sometimes he meets the unexpected: an amazing potential photo. Then he grabs his phone. With extensive experience in digital art and photoshop, he can turn dreary into sunny, and erase the occasional interloping person.
Jeremy takes all of his travels—the culture, history, religious customs, and photos—into the art classes he teaches. “I’m big on multi-culture. I incorporate a lot of what I learn into the classroom: pinatas, shoji screens, African masks.” They become art projects for the students.
He teaches what he was taught. “I graduated from Columbia College in 2001, learning from the great Sydney Larson who was a pupil of Thomas Hart Benson.” He passes that valued inheritance on to his students. When not teaching, Divers admits, “I had taken a hiatus from gallery shows but the pandemic really helped me want to exhibit again. I printed a lot of photos and framed them.”
With many of us starved for travel because of the pandemic, Divers’ images evoke strong emotional responses. We safely take journeys into places of tremendous beauty, as captured by his camera and skill. His Alliance Art Gallery exhibit features pandemic-restricted travel to … Missouri. He admits, “I like every little town—its ‘rusty gold’—old barns, windmills, tractors, covered bridges.” We get the opportunity to travel with him.
An Opening Reception will be held on Saturday, June 12 from 4 until 7:00 pm.
