RiverBorne: Moments of Confluence

RiverBorne: Moments of Confluence
An exhibition of photographs by Ian Ruhter

Thursday, September 20, 6 to 9 PM | Show ends October 20

Museum Hours for Exhibit: Tuesday – Friday 12pm to 4pm, Saturday 10am to 4pm.

No registration needed for this event

The Forest Service is partnering with the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum to present an art exhibition entitled RiverBorne, featuring the work of California artist Ian Ruhter. His large-scale one-of-a-kind images are captured in his camera truck, which he built nine years ago with his life savings after giving up a successful commercial photography business in Los Angeles and moving back to his hometown, South Lake Tahoe.

Ruhter’s photographs, following in the steps of the great 19th century American landscape photographers, transform the imagery of the west into a scale unimaginable in their time. Creating unique collodion wet plates up to 48 x 60” (as well as making same-scale silver gelatin images on photographic paper) Ruhter blends old and new technologies to create powerful and resonant artworks.

For his RiverBorne project, Ruhter and his assistant Will Eichelberger spent a week in July capturing images on Mare Island, the home of the former Naval Shipyards on the Napa River in Vallejo. They explored the island in the camera truck, stopping for long hours to expose images directly on to 40″ x 60″ sheets of light-sensitive paper. After hand processing at Ruhter’s studio in South Lake Tahoe, these, along with images of Lake Tahoe, will become the collection of negative-state, unique, (one-of-a-kind) silver gelatin photographs, which will be seen for the first time in RiverBorne at the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum this September. A selection of Ruhter’s existing large photographs on glass and metal plates (ambrotypes and tintypes) will be shown as well.

The exhibition will also include historic photographs of Mare Island and the surrounding waterways from the Museum’s collection, selected by exhibition curator Kathryn Weller Renfrow. In addition, photograms created by students of Ruhter’s recent workshops at the Vallejo Summer Art Camp will be on display.

Companion RiverBorne exhibits of paintings about local and regional waterways, curated by Susan Schneider, will be on view in the Museum as well. The artists are Warren Dreher, Deanna Forbes, and Linda Grebmeier.

Visions of the Wild is an annual festival presented by the United States Forest Service, whose Pacific Southwest Regional Headquarters are located on Mare Island in Vallejo, California. The festival will take place in downtown Vallejo September 20th through 23rd, the week following the openings of the art exhibitions.

The festival features films, speakers, river cruises, and field trips, as well as the art exhibitions, all designed around the festival theme. This year’s theme, Wild and Scenic, celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of Congress passed in 1968.

Presented by: Visions of the Wild Film and Arts Festival 2018, The United States Forest Service, and the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum.

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Date/Time
Date(s) - Thu, Sep 20, 2018
6:00 pm to 9:00 pm

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