Steve Jellen – photography
April 19 – May 17
Sacred Grounds Cafe
233 N. Main St., Edwardsville, IL.
hours 7 a.m. - 11 p.m. daily
click here to view images…
Artist's Statement
Looking back on my 59 years lived mostly in Edwardsville, I reflect on how lucky we are to have “the university” here. Among the paramount aspects of our good fortune has been the evolution within SIUE - a university put together “from scratch” beginning some 50 years ago - of a premier art school that has been greatly accomplished from the outset. The folks whose portraits you see on this wall are some of the professors who made that happen with their skill. dedication and enthusiasm. These six are among the progenitors of the fine arts aspect of the SIUE Department of Art and Design.
There are other worthy art professors, but these six are my friends whom I presume to know well enough to ask them to sit for a portrait. They are retired now all but one - and one, Mike Smith, died in 2005. They have passed the professorial torch to a new generation of teachers (who certainly have “shoes to fill,” but who seem to be doing it well). But now, far from being tired in their retirement, they, relieved of their teaching duties are most of them making art fulltime. Their work is nationally recognized and sought by collectors. They have also been elementary in developing the Edwardsville Arts Center (EAC) as a community art exhibition/education resource outside of the university.
My development as a photographer has been independent of the university art school, but my development as a person has been intimately involved with the good folks pictured here – much like the development of the community has incorporated the university. I suggest that now that you know their names and have seen their faces, that you too get to know them, if you don’t already. Your life will be greatly richer as mine has so become. The Edwardsville Arts Center is a wonderful facility for seeing art and meeting with art appreciators and artists. People of all levels of expertise are welcome.
The portraits are conventional silver halide “analog” photographs. The negatives are on 4” x 5” sheet film, Kodak TMX 100. They were exposed in a Sinar camera with a 240mm Rodenstock Apo-Ronar lens, no filter. The exposure times were ¼ second (long enough that some slight subject-motion blurring is visible). Lighting was a single 500 watt tungsten photoflood in a 12” reflector with a white nylon scrim reflector opposite. The negatives were developed normally in full strength Kodak X-TOL developer. (It is a developer that uses Ascorbic Acid, essentially Vitamin C, as its silver-reducing agent.) The 16” x 20” prints are on graded fiber paper, Ilford Gallerie Grade 2, glossy surface air-dried without ferrotyping. The 11” x 14” print was printed on fiber Oriental Seagull G, grade 2, glossy. They were all developed in Kodak Dektol diluted 1:3 with various emergence-time development factors. Slight dodging and burning was done on some of the prints. They were toned in Selenium and dry mounted onto Crescent Rag-mat Museum Board. Full archival processing, including two fixing baths, toning, hypo-clearing and washing in an archival print washer, and the use of buffered 100% rag mounting boards should make for long lived prints.
Stephen Jellen
April 5, 2008
310 Hillsboro St., Edwardsville IL 62025 • 618.655.0337 • edwartscenter@att.net