Anna Rheim, Prison
Jane Olin, Intimate Conversations 35, The Road Less Traveled (2023)
For over a decade, the artists of Salon Jane have explored their artwork with the consistent presence of a dedicated working group for critiques, discussion and encouragement. Their meetings are a place to think seriously about photography, challenge the boundaries of the medium, and open new paths of creative expression. While each artist independently develops their own artwork, the Salon’s ongoing dialogues draw unexpected connections and resonance between each other’s ideas and aesthetics.
NUMU is thrilled to present a group exhibition of Salon Jane: Resonance, featuring new works of traditional, alternative process, digital, and mixed media photographic art that highlight the innovation and collective wisdom that emerges from this unique artistic group.
This exhibition will be on view in our Spotlight Gallery.
The members of Salon Jane. Photograph by Martha Casanave.
About Salon Jane
Salon Jane is a six-member artist collective formed in Monterey in 2014. The members are Martha Casanave, Susan Hyde Green, Jane Olin, Anna Rheim, Robin V. Robinson, and Robin Ward. salonjane.com
About the Artists
Martha Casanave
Website
I have been using a camera for all of my teenage and adult life—that’s sixty years now. My work has always been project-oriented, usually centered around people or human narrative. Every project has a similar arc, starting with a blank slate: A sudden, sometimes random, inspiration triggers a period of experimentation, followed by exploration and discovery, during which time I am totally immersed and productive. Eventually, the project slows down and completes itself. Only then can I write about it. Sometimes I look back at a body of work and ask myself: “Did I really do that?”
I have taught photography and photographic history for thirty years at Cabrillo and Monterey Peninsula Colleges. Being an educator has been an essential part of my creative work—exchanging ideas with students, sharing our successes and failures to enhance our growth as artists.
Susan Hyde Greene
Website
As I became aware that the history of art is the history of people, I saw the possibility of bringing people together through the language of art.
Following the tradition of women using stitches to mend and heal, my quiet pictures portray the wonder and miracle that is our world. Through photographs cut apart and fractured pieces stitched together, they offer hope that humans will come together, assuring succeeding generations a healthy, peaceful, safe, and breathing world.
Jane Olin
Website
My photographs always begin with a question or some curiosity that arises within me. In more than twenty-five years, I have rarely photographed the external world for its own sake, but for the ways in which it helps to reveal subconscious processes and evoke meaning. I focus on a single subject in a related series of images, which allows me to hone in on the heart of what I am after. I also have a contemplative awareness practice that is of central importance to me, and which guides and enhances my working methods and my output.
As an adventurer who likes to experiment, I find that pushing the boundaries of what is possible with both camera and darkroom techniques motivates my best work. I photograph with film and often use a pinhole or Holga camera for making images. I enjoy the darkroom process and take advantage of every tool and technique at my disposal. Playing with exposure, focus, and a wide variety of photographic chemicals, I embrace creative accidents, and willingly abandon darkroom rules, with the intention of expressing a distinctive vision by whatever method seems right. I sometimes print my gelatin silver pieces digitally, but only after darkroom work is completed.
Anna Rheim
Website
I am a storyteller. Handmade books are my favorite art form for my stories. Currently, members of my family of origin are my primary source material.
By combining writing, photographs, painting, and paper arts, I offer my stories with a variety of techniques to intrigue the viewer. Examining the humor and pathos of the human condition is my abiding interest. By creating handmade books, I invite viewers to hold my questions in their hand and reflect on their own experience.
After graduating from Stanford University with a BA in History in 1966, I studied black and white photography and mixed media at Monterey Peninsula College with Henry Gilpin, Roger Fremier, and Don Anderson, and color photography and printing at University of California Santa Cruz with Jack Fulton. I’ve taken private classes with many noted photographers including David Bayles, Ruth Bernhard, Martha Casanave, Lisl Dennis, Tom Millea, and Ted Orland.
Robin V. Robinson
Website
Robin V. Robinson explores mystery and metaphors found in all forms of life, focusing especially on the way we look at the planet and ourselves. Her newest images are based on ideas about the human species and the relative permanence of the earth, with questions about our brief time here. This unique moment on the planet is unsettling and desires perspective. Robinson’s images provide intimate suggestions of our physical and spiritual place in this liminal state.
Ongoing work includes in-water images evoking curiosity about the ocean’s deep landscape, how it relates to dry land, and what is “normal” for human beings, now and in our rapidly changing environment. Robinson’s “Surfacing” series explores the tension we feel on the water and in life, on the edge between what is above and below, between the known and unknown.
Robinson embraces the element of chance: “My time in the darkroom is full of ‘what-ifs.’ I use the experimental nature of chemistry to explore pathways which are magical, alchemical in feeling, transformational in the end. This type of play and chance are what I love about the analog photography process, not to mention a satisfying original print.”
Robinson studied with West Coast Photography mentors, and at City College SF and Foothill College. Her degrees in engineering and music from Cal Poly and Stanford Universities, and her personal studies of depth psychology contribute to her distinctive style of seeing and creating art. Robinson’s work is in the permanent collections of the Monterey Museum of Art, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France and the National Mariners’ Museum.
Robin Ward
Website
I practice art as a conduit for personal transformation and healing. My imagery is primarily sourced in nature and in particular water knowing its power to heal. My experimental process fuses original photography, digital compositing, videography and animation. The varied techniques and media offer fertile ground for inquiry into perspective driven by a longing for unity and wellbeing.
Submerged, featuring effervescent flowers, marks the beginning of my healing journey and radical introspection. Above the Sea is an expansive observation of the lively rhythm of the ocean’s perpetual motion. In Echoes from a Future Past, I composite photographs and video into atmospheric, alternative landscapes that invite playful curiosity into the flow of time. Symbiosis is composed of layered and blended photographs that celebrate the complexity, vitality, and beauty of our natural world.
