This year has been a good one for having some of my photographic work included in a few exhibitions, one of which I consider to be a/the highlight of my creative life within the last five or eight years.
A few years ago I made the decision, instead of most of my responses/submissions to calls for entry going to galleries across the nation, I would focus (no pun intended…ok, maybe it was a little intentional) on more local galleries and calls for entry, places I could physically deliver the framed photographs myself (or, as has been the case fairly often, recruit my wife, or parents, or sisters to make the deliveries and/or pickups). Since then, I’ve had work shown in Logan, Ogden, Idaho Falls, and here in Brigham City.
To return to addressing the shows of 2025, in February I had a few cyanotypes included in Eccles Art Center’s 2025 Photographic Statewide Competition.
I wasn’t real thrilled with their placement in the gallery; it was poorly lit, and located where there’s less traffic. They were easy to miss. Granted, they’re small to begin with, being 5x7 contact prints in 11x14 frames, but I’d have hoped that based on those two aspects they would have been grouped with the other smaller works. But oh well.
Then beginning in March, I had a lumen on display in Idaho Falls as part of their 17th Annual National Juried Exhibition. This was my second year being in this particular show, and both times have felt good to have work included.
But the most meaningful one, which I alluded to at the opening of this post, happened just very recently. Nearly a year ago I was told by my former professor at BYU Idaho that there was going to be a 25th anniversary alumni exhibit taking place this year, titled Legacy in Color, 25 Year Exhibit, and in February I received an email from the curator of the Spori Art Gallery with the official announcement and invitation to submit work for consideration. Over the next few months I got work ready, and photographed and submitted, and the show’s reception finally opened September 25, a Thursday. We all made a little vacation out of the weekend so we could attend the reception, and I looked forward to that event much the same way a child anticipates Christmas. The week before the show opened, the curator asked if I would be interested in being interviewed by the university’s radio host, and of course I accepted. I was interviewed the week of the exhibit and that interview can be heard here.
It was such an honor being included in this one. To have work shown at my alma mater after graduating in 2005 was something really special, and I still lack adequate words to describe just what it means/meant to be considered. Hopefully I’m not being to open by saying that in some ways it felt very validating, like the past 20 years of creative ups and downs, all the struggles and doubts and dealing with my inner critic were all worth it. I’d felt seen, and for that, I’m really quite humbled from and by the experience.
In the weeks since the reception in Rexburg I’ve had a few moments of thinking what the next 25 years have in store: what other exhibition opportunities might come up? What direction will my work take? What challenges do I face that keep me from carrying out my creative vision and how can I overcome them? What excites and motivates and inspires me creatively? Is any of that different now than it was when I graduated? Why, and what is different? How do I feel about that? What can I do to prioritize creative time?
Whatever the answers to those questions (and many more that have come and will come to mind), I know things can be pretty amazing, if I do the work to ensure that kind of outcome.