Local photographer’s work and Italian artist featured at Krempp Gallery in November
The Krempp Gallery at the Jasper Arts Center will host the photographs of Jasper photographer, Jay Hamlin and the pen and ink sketches of Italian artist, Guglielmo Botter from Treviso, Italy.
Jasper resident and photographer, Jay Hamlin’s series focuses on water.
“Today, in locations around the world with no access to fresh, clean water, humans are not surviving. Their right to life is being denied. So, I think about water; its power to shape a landscape, its strength to carve rock, its ability to change courses, its essence that gives life to plants, animals, to our planet as a whole. I am drawn to water,” Hamlin explained.
His photography has a knack for ?nding water or traces of where water has been. Hamlin’s hope is that these images beckon the viewer to think more about water and how they use it, where it comes from, where it goes.
“We are typically blessed in the Midwest to have an abundance of water, and we turn a tap or spigot and all the water we want arrives instantly. Yet water is a finite resource on our planet. How do our decisions we make about water impact those around us, those across the country, those across the world,” he said. “Each day that I am mindful of water, I can make a small step to make this planet better for water. Each image I make perhaps sparks someone else to be mindful of water’s role in life and to make his/her own small changes to improve water’s lot and improve the quality of life around the planet.”
On display with Jay Hamlin is, Guglielmo Botter, an Italian-American citizen born in Treviso, Italy. The sketches in Guglielmo Botter’s series are all images of iconic landmarks in Dubois County. Botter spent quite a bit of time traveling to Jasper throughout the past year capturing photographs of numerous local locations. Those pictures then allowed him to create his many sketches while back home in Italy.
Botter started drawing with an ink pen when he was only 5 years old after his father brought home a Steadler Pen, commonly used by Architects at the time. He has not stopped using the pen since. His favorite subjects are urban landscapes. At the age of eleven, Botter had his very first solo exhibit in Treviso, Italy (“Forty drawings of an eleven-year-old boy”). It was then the critics predicted a successful career.
Young Botter has collaborated with many editors and authors. At age 13 he received his most important success of being ranked first place among 350,000 participants at the National Drawing Competition in Rome. His sketch of Treviso became a stamp of Italian Post (November 30th, 1980). The same year the Municipality, in recognition of the important success, invited him to exhibit his latest drawings of Treviso alongside those of his great-grandfather, who used the same technique hundreds of years before.
Botter’s family is well-known in the art field. For three generations (Girolamo, Mario and Memi Botter, the last his father), starting from 1890, they saved and restored frescos in the region of Veneto. However, Guglielmo Botter decided to follow his family heritage in a different branch, becoming an Architect. Then in 1993, he graduated in Venice from the IUAV.
He continued to draw while working as a professional, but only in his free time and on vacations. During Botter’s trips in Europe and America, he took his sketchbook to picture the most beautiful places he had the chance of visiting. After drawing his hometown for decades, he finally decided to sketch it from a bird’s eye view in 1997: in those last years of the Millennium there was still no Google Map and he had to climb the towers of the churches to take pictures and sketches from the high to understand the city shape. Since 1813, no one had attempted to draw the city with a view this complex. After three and a half months of hard work, the perspective map of Treviso was introduced to the Press on November 30th.
Botter later became a teaching assistant at the University of Architecture and then a Professor of Techniques of Drawings and Surveying at the International University of Art at the Giudecca Island, Venice.
The economic crisis made Botter rediscover the pleasure of drawing that has now replaced his previous employment. His drawing skills have turned into a full-time job for him and he is now working in the USA where his work is very well received.
In 2012 Botter decided to return to the U.S. where his mother, also a painter, lived in the 50s and 60s. In Pittsburgh – Pennsylvania, he found the right place to continue his career in art.
After his first exhibition in the U.S. in January 2013, Botter has continued to exhibit in numerous states and cities throughout the country. He has been featured in many magazines and publications, along with being selected for several awards.
To learn more about the artists, visit their websites at, www.yourstoryphoto.com and www.guglielmobotter.com.
Join us at the Art Center for an opening reception at the Krempp Gallery on Thursday, November 2nd, 2017 from 5 to 7 pm. Both artists will join us for the evening and will give a brief gallery talk about their work. Enjoy an evening of art, food, cash bar, music and fun!
The Krempp Gallery, located in the Jasper Arts Center adjacent to the VUJC campus, is open to the public Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., until 7 p.m. on Thursdays, and Sunday from noon to 3 p.m. School groups, clubs and students are welcome. Admission is free.