work seen at the Lensculture/Foto Fest reviews in Paris….

I had the pleasure of seeing Andrea Stone‘s large scale photographs at the reviews in Paris.  These small jpgs don’t do justice to the images. Her lifelong interest in color, form and design has led to her project, City Reflections.Andrea’s work is meditative and the combination of abstraction and reality becomes almost dream-like. Her City Reflections Project was recently published by LensWork magazine (Extended #106, May/June 2013) and earned a 2013 Grand Prix Juror of Merit Award by the International Fine Art Competition in Paris.

Andrea’s work can be found on the Stone Photography website, www.arstonephotography.com, and at the Stone Photography Studio by appointment. Her work has been selected for multiple juried shows in Northern California, including Viewpoint Photographic Art Center, The Blue Line Gallery and Gallery 1855. Andrea is also represented by Art Consulting Services in Sacramento and DSA Fine Arts in New York.

 City Reflections

We can try to look directly at the world and never truly see it. Reality, without intention, is inevitably distorted through the lens of our personal histories. It is like light on a window, deforming the objects it is reflecting. Although never fully, objectively real, there are elements of reality most of us could agree on and that is why fragments of objects (a fluorescent light shining in a window, a car parked on a rooftop garage, or a rivet driven into steel) remain in these images as illustrations of how we see what’s in front of us.

The City Reflections Project, through its imagery of colors, shapes and patterns, represents the way we place discordant pieces of our lives in proximity to each other, deconstruct the whole of an experience, embellish, elaborate and abstract the simple, plain and ordinary truth that is life.

Associations

Metal and glass, like structure and openness, represent the tension between elements in modern architecture. While the metal framework demands conformity, the glass reflections seem to explode, almost in defiance of this supra-structure and, in the end, seem to transcend their captors. The bars in my images can represent confinement/prison or, in a grid, can represent organization, a way to comprehend information in small, digestible bits. For me, the latter is most true. Only when there are boundaries, when there is an order I can grasp and when there is some semblance of control, can I allow myself to dream, to experiment, to escape. The abstract patterns, shapes and colors in my photographs represent the me that is open, spontaneous and creative. The grids formed from the architectural structure are like a container with recognizable borders that both ground me and give me a sense of freedom to express myself.