The Hamburg Area Arts Alliance is pleased to welcome Hamburg area artist Jay Ressler as a Featured Artist in our gallery during the month of April. Jay is exhibiting works on paper, photographs and encaustic mixed media. A special reception will be held on April 2 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Art & Craft Gallery of Hamburg at 335 State Street, in downtown Hamburg.
A local artist whose work has been shown widely around the state, Ressler has developed a distinctive style of compositing photographs to produce stunning works on paper.
He is an outstanding location photographer, with an eye that can capture the soul of a Havana back street as beautifully as the sip of a hungry hummingbird, often with compelling black and white images. However, Jay Ressler is best known for artistic expression that lives in layers between opposites.
“I like to explore boundaries,” he said. “Boundaries between consciousness and the unconscious, between reality and imagination, between certainty and skepticism.”
Using Photoshop, other image manipulation software and a variety of digital effects, he paints one photographic layer on top of another. He takes advantage of textures he has captured along with an array of processes for manipulating light, contrast and color to tell the story.
“Distorting and reinterpreting the literal ‘machine moments’ captured by the camera is as old as the art of photography,” he said.
Ressler occasionally extends his multi-layered approach to encaustic mixed media creations. Based on ancient techniques, the process begins with cooking his own recipes of beeswax and damar resin and applying this medium between the layers of photographic images, along with various pigmented compounds and materials to add color, texture and expression.
Either way, the results are riveting. The viewer is drawn into an unfolding, dreamlike scene that might be heart-warming, haunting, gritty, poignant or magical. Sometimes, within the various layers, all of the above.
The reception is hosted by Jay Ressler and The Hamburg Area Arts Alliance, a subdivision of Our Town Foundation, a non-profit, community revitalization organization. For more information, contact the Hamburg Area Arts Alliance at 610-562-3106.
