Implied Metaphor by Brianna Burnett, a series of diminutive images of fruit and vegetables, is on display at Studio 106B in the Blue Star Arts Complex, which is normally Alba de Leon’s working studio. Alba generously opens up her studio to different artists, allowing them to show their work in her space.

A recent transplant to San Antonio, Brianna went to respectable efforts trying to find a space to show her work as soon as she learned of the FOTOSEPTIEMBRE USA Festival. We appreciate and favor her level of personal enterprise, common sense, and cordial manner. Plus, even though still a young artist, Brianna has an interesting, well integrated body of work.

In her words: My work revolves around storytelling. I find delight in the layers of mythology, and the idea of a memory transforming into a story retold, with countless artifacts full of narratives waiting to be illustrated. My images reconsider the myths and folklore that surround our references to food.

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Once again, the folks at Say Sí have made a terrific impression on us and our festival guests with the images and installations presented in the Memories: Projected And Invented exhibit, housed in the Say Sí campus on South Alamo. Featuring a wide variety of works by Middle and High School Students, the exhibit is testimony to the talent and dedication of the Say Sí instructors and administrators.

Say Sí is a FOTOSEPTIEMBRE USA Partner in the 2009 festival, having joined us with this in-house exhibit, and also as part of our Signature Exhibit series in the Instituto Cultural de Mexico, where The Way I Sí It, curated by Say Sí Media Arts Director/artist, Guillermina Zabala is on display in the Instituto’s Frida Kahlo Gallery.

SAY Sí is committed to creating a premier, dynamic and nurturing educational environment for San Antonio’s artistic youth. SAY Sí recognizes that the arts reshape how young people learn, communicate and prepare for their work and civic future. SAY Sí’s vision is to meet the current needs of students, to provide quality programs and resources, and to prepare for future growth and development for San Antonio’s economic and cultural community.

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Something Unexpected, a series of Polymer Photogravures by Deborah Riley is on display at StoneMetal Press. Founded by Le Green and Kathleen Baker Pittman, StoneMetal Press is San Antonio’s oldest and most significant, artist-driven Printmaking Center.

Deborah Riley utilizes both the principles of darkroom photography and the processes of printmaking. Her prints resemble mezzotints in the delicate balance of value and tone. Riley manipulates the surface of the plates to reconstruct established images in an extraordinary fashion. Her art is so rich in its tonal range the blacks are dense and appear to have a velvet finish while the whites of the paper contrast beautifully with the perfect exposure ranges Deborah achieves.

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In their new, more public location at 1414 South Alamo, Suite 103, in the Blue Star Arts Complex, the folks at Fiber Art Space present Foto Fiber Fabulous, a juried show of international fiber artists working with photographic images. We are always amazed by the complexity and intricacy of the works we’ve seen at the FOTOSEPTIEMBRE USA exhibits here. The Foto Fiber Fabulous exhibit was juried by the four partners in Fiber Art Space, Laurie Brainerd, Laura Beehler, Leslie Tucker Jennison, and Laurel Gibson, and features works by twenty three artists.

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Building Vernacular Imaginations, curated by Scott Sherer (Ph.D., Associate Professor of Art History, and Director, UTSA Art Gallery and Satellite Space, Department of Art and Art History, The University of Texas at San Antonio, and all that), is on display at the UTSA Satellite Space, featuring the works of Paho Mann and Libby Rowe, whose images create dialogues between actual and conceptual representations of contemporary American built environments.

Paho Mann’s series, Re-inhabited Circle K’s, highlights the multiple uses of the buildings built for this retail chain over the years. Since the 1950s, these buildings do not show a linear progression and homogenization of suburbia, but rather serve as evidence of a more circular system of actions and choices that shapes the built environment. Rowe’s series Dwellings investigates the dual meaning of the word “dwelling”—how the “mental state” of dwelling is seen as definitively negative while the “home” dwelling holds the potential for both positive and negative associations. This series of photographs uses iconic images of dwellings made from materials that, along with their environments, suggest a state of brooding. Dwellings demonstrates the subtle differences between pondering, reflection, meditation, and rumination and when these seemingly harmless contemplations turn to a more decidedly negative, and often detrimental, dwelling.

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Blue Star Contemporary Art Center is once again joining FOTOSEPTIEMBRE USA with a comprehensive series of exhibits housed in their four galleries. The FOTOSEPTIEMBRE USA exhibits at Blue Star Contemporary Art Center are always a great draw for fans of contemporary forms of the photographic arts, and add a well articulated layer of exhibitions to our festival.

In what is surely a fortuitous funding and public relations coup, Bill Fitzgibbons, Executive Director of Blue Star Contemporary Art Center, in partnership with the Lannan Foundation, has arranged to present the exhibit The History Of The Future, which is curated by Nancy Sutor, and features the work of Michael Berman and Julián Cardona. Special thanks for the realization of this exhibit in the Main Gallery goes to Libby D. Tilley.

Ron Binks, with his Black Sites installation in Gallery 4, presents a conceptual interpretation of the rendition sites used by the CIA for interrogations during the Irag war.

Jason Willome, son of our friend Tom Willome, presents his multi-media installation Extensions in Blue Star’s Project Space. We are glad to see that the time-proven tradition of passing the artistic torch from generation to generation is alive and well in San Antonio.

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