The Student News Site of Central Oregon Community College

The Broadside

The Student News Site of Central Oregon Community College

The Broadside

The Student News Site of Central Oregon Community College

The Broadside

Innovative Art Graces the Rotunda Gallery

Patrick Iler | the Broadside

“Poster Collage” By Commercial photographic artist E. Edward Endsley

Kathryn Eng
The Broadside

Vivid, light inspired pieces adorn Barber Library’s Rotunda Gallery. The installment is titled Color Mysteries and Abstract Fantasies.

The show features the work of two artists, Natasha Bacca, a photography professor at Central Oregon Community College, and E. Edward Endsley a commercial photographic artist, painter and sculptor.

The two artists’ work stand in contrast to each other. Much of Bacca’s work is nature inspired, with multiple offset imprints of pure, soft color. Each is simply titled “Photogram,” which she says allows the viewer to tell his or her own story. Endsley’s pieces are intense
with saturated color and bold abstract shapes, with an effective use of negative space. Endsley has used descriptive names like “Emerald Emergence” and “Dragon Dance.”

In a clip from Oregon Public Broadcasting, Bacca is shown drawing/painting in the dark with light pens of various colors on light sensitive photographic paper. She then uses an old finicky photo processor that crumples her work at regular intervals. In a recent correspondence, Bacca stated a viewer who saw that broadcast donated a newly refurbished processor!

Many students know Bacca as a photography professor. She is also a serious artist with 24 shows under her belt for just this year, including exhibitions in Nashville and Hollywood. The process to create her work according to her website, natashabacca.com, is “a whole new form of photographic art.” She stated in the video clip with OPB, this process is done without a camera or computer.

Endsley is a member of the community who was enamored with the Rotunda Gallery and approached the director of the library, David Bilyeu, to display his art there.

Endsley’s work, according to his biography located at the display, are, “Virtual images, existing only in suspended space.” His paintings are decidedly more high-tech and bold in nature, than Bacca’s. “Dragon Dance” displays ribbons of movement, with slurred light and a bold use of black. Endsley describes this process as “painting (with) quick thrusts…and flowing texture.”

Endsley calls himself a commercial photographic artist. In a recent telephone interview, he described most of his work as “abstract
photography” and added, “is presented for your pleasure.”

The installment runs through the end of November. Click here for a view of Central Oregon.

You can contact Kathryn Eng at [email protected].

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