SUU Student James Culbertson, Opens Exhibit in Zion
By Ashley H Pollock
Southern Utah University student James Culbertson will exhibit his works from his Zion student artist residency at the Natural History Museum Art Gallery inside Zion National Park March 1–April 19.
“With the work in Zion, I really wanted to find a way to show the viewer how I feel in the park and how I felt during my residency,” said Culbertson, a senior BFA candidate in studio arts with an emphasis in photography and minors in art history, illustration, and painting/drawing/printmaking. “To do this, I chose to work in three different styles for the show: tri-color film photography, digital photography, and traditional salt printing. Each medium allowed me to speak to different aspects of the park and my experiences. Tri-color is an exploration into how I view the park. The digital photographs are a showcase of some of the park’s smaller and lesser-seen organisms. Lastly, the traditional salt printings are a way to call back to the historical photography figures who worked in the park long before I did. For a deeper look, I would hope that any and all interested individuals will take a trip to the park to see the show for themselves!”
Each year, a student artist is selected to work in Zion during SUU’s spring break. The artist is given a residence in a park house. The furnished house is large enough to comfortably provide studio space. The work completed under this program should contribute to the public understanding and appreciation of Zion National Park and should reflect the National Park Service’s mission to preserve and protect the park’s cultural and natural resources.
“James’ project combines the use of tri-color negative photography — the creation of a full-color composite image using separate cyan, yellow, and magenta layers created from individual black and white negatives shot through red, green, and blue filters sequentially — to explore the popularity of Zion National Parks most visited areas,” said Sam Davis, assistant professor of photography at SUU. “By using this vintage process combined with digital printing, James was able to create these unusual images whereby the landscape remains normal but the people walking within the frame take on primary colors due to their placement during the exposure of each sheet of film. This strategy underscores the number of people that explore these different parts of the park on a daily basis calling attention to both the popularity as well as the fragility of the park.”
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