El Capitan, Sunrise,Winter, Yosemite National Park, CA 1968

Etherton Gallery presents its summer exhibition, Masters of American Photography (June 11, 2011 – August 27, 2011). The show opens with a reception Saturday, June 11, 2011, 7-10pm.

Chief Joseph-Nez Perces (c1879) by Frank A. Rinehart

The exhibition, which celebrates Etherton Gallery’s 30^th Anniversary, features a selection of photographs recently acquired from important private collections by the great practitioners of American photography: including Ansel Adams, Richard Misrach, Ruth Bernhard and Frank A. Rinehart, and works culled from the gallery’s extensive holdings.

Tyrannosaurus Rex and Impala (1984) by Richard Misrach

Galax, Virginia (1962) by Lee Friedlander

The exhibition articulates the breadth of Etherton Gallery’s distinctly classical American aesthetic with a few twists and turns, developed over the last 30 years. Highlights of the show include rare vintage prints from the Night Desert series (c. 1975-77) by Richard Misrach; El Capitan, Sunrise, Winter, Yosemite National Park, California (1968) by Ansel Adams; Ruth Bernhard’s sensuous nude, In the Box, Horizontal (1962); Joel Peter Witkin’s s beautiful portrait, La Giovanissima (2007); a vintage print of Helmut Newton’s In My Apartment, Paris (1978); and a rare image of  Chief Joseph – Nez Perces (1879) by Frank A. Rinehart.

Chicago (1950) by Harry Callahan

Other highlights include works by Harry Callahan, Linda Connor, Lee Friedlander, Emmet Gowin, Mark Klett, Danny Lyon, Timothy O’Sullivan, Frederick Sommer, Garry Winogrand, and numerous others.

Untitled, Plate 22 from the Night Desert series (1977) by Richard Misrach

Etherton Gallery is located in SoCo (the recently designated cultural district South of Congress) at 135 South 6th Avenue in downtown Tucson, AZ 85701, above Janos Downtown Kitchen+Cocktails. Regular hours: Tues-Sat, 11am-5pm and by appointment. For more information, contact the gallery at (520) 624-7370 or info@ethertongallery.com

Still Life Lady by Cynthia Miller

The Temple Gallery opens a new exhibition, Cynthia Miller: Paintings, featuring recent work by Tucson painter Cynthia Miller. The exhibition opens with an artist reception Friday, March 4 from 5:30-7:30pm and runs through April 5. The show features new work from the series Domestica.

New York by Cynthia Miller

Inspired by recent travels and a love of what she playfully describes as “the unstill still-life,” Miller’s work speaks to the immediacy of daily life. In the joyous world of Domestica, a series of mixedmedia paintings of furniture and household goods, (both real and imagined), everything is fodder for her paintings, from 14^th century fabric swatches and oddball studio props, to the bloom of cherry blossoms in New York’s Central Park. Painted in her loose signature style, Miller creates impressions of daily life using pattern and bold washes of color. In Still Life Yellow (2009), brightly patterned teapots and pitchers float in an ambiguous space. Fleurs 1 (2008) channels Matisse, as washes of terracotta and green collide with a vibrant blue and white striped vase and casually arranged flowers. Miller, a modern day Fauve, waxes lyrical about “the possibilities, the poetry of it all!”

Still Life Yellow by Cynthia Miller

Fleurs-1 by Cynthia Miller

Cynthia Miller’s work reminds us that spring is on its way and that renewal is possible for us all. Put a bounce in your step and head over to the Temple Gallery on Friday, March 4 for the opening reception. The Temple Gallery is located in SoCo (the recently designated cultural district South of Congress) at the Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave. in downtown Tucson. For more information about the exhibition, please contact Etherton Gallery, which manages Temple Gallery, at (520) 624-7370 or info@ethertongallery.com. To confirm Temple Gallery weekend hours, call the Temple of Music and Art box office at (520)622-2823.

Dates:                                      March 4 – April 5, 2011

Reception:                           Friday, March 4, 2011, 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm

Regular Hours:  Monday–Friday, 10am–5pm & before Arizona Theatre Company performances on Saturday & Sunday

Drama Queen by Nikki Westra

The works of , Nikki Westra: Collage, will be exhibited at an artist’s reception October 22 at the Temple Gallery.  Her work features intricate collages using images appropriated from anatomical texts, published between the late 19^th and mid 20^th century.

The artist was inspired by meeting the renowned photographer Frederick Sommer.  Westra cuts up beautifully colored anatomical drawings and then rearranges the delicately veined organs and tissue in new relationships to make her collages. She literally transforms the machinery of  the human body reorganizing tissue and bone to make something new.

Valor by Nikki Westra

For example in Valor, Westra strategically juxtaposes unrelated parts of the body, bringing to life a fantastic new being that resembles a back-to-the-future Roman warrior. By moving pelvis, spinal cord and bony fingers to the surface, she constructs an exoskeleton helmet that protects the figure’s head and the green tracery beneath the skin. The accolades symbolized by the medal of valor, seem like meaningless praise to Westra’s inconsolable figure.

Game Face by Nikki Westra

This theme is also evident in Game Face, in which Westra reverses the position of tissue and bone to form a helmet, and here presents half a rib cage as a shield or perhaps a cape and transforms pieces of bone into an axe. Like Prometheus, who defied the laws of nature and created man, Westra’s transformation of the human body into new, unimagined beings, defies the laws of human anatomy. The effect is eerily beautiful and fascinating, drawing us in to look closely at the work and ultimately, at ourselves.

Nikki Westra returned to the practice of art after a distinguished legal career. Always an avid amateur photographer, early on she became interested in composition and balance. While living in Prescott, Arizona, during the 1990s, she made the acquaintance of photographer, Frederick Sommer whose philosophy of art and life had a profound influence on her work. Westra likes to think that Sommer, who also experimented with collage, would approve of the structure and source material of her collages.

Nikki Westra: Collages will be available for viewing and purchase until November 23, 2010. The Temple Gallery will host an artist reception on Friday, October 22, 5:30-7:30 pm.

LOCATION: The Temple Gallery is located in SoCo (South of Congress) at the Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave in downtown Tucson.

HOURS: Open Monday – Friday, 10am to 5pm and prior to Arizona Theatre Company performances on Saturday and Sunday.

For information about the exhibition, contact Etherton Gallery, which manages the Temple Gallery at (520) 624-7370 or info@ethertongallery.com. To confirm gallery hours, please call the Temple of Music and Art at (520) 807-8029.

The Etherton Gallery is having its first exhibition of the 2010-2011 season, Ojos bien abiertos/Eyes Wide Open opening September 7 and running through November 6, 2010.

It is part of a yearlong celebration of Etherton Gallery’s 30^th Anniversary.  The show features sgrafitto drawings by Alice Leora Briggs, hand-colored gelatin silver photographs by Guatemalan photographer, Luis Gonzalez Palma and documentary photographs by Mexican photographer Rodrigo Moya. Together these artists give the viewer access to intimate moments, insider views and documentary images that challenge the cultural myths and historical understanding that have conditioned our appraisal of Latin America.

Coral by Luis Gonzalez Palma

The Etherton Gallery will host an artist reception Saturday, September 11, 7-10 pm at the gallery. Luis Gonzalez Palma, who lives in Argentina, is traveling to Tucson in one of his few trips to the United States this year, to attend the reception and will speak at the Center for Creative Photography the next day.

Observar en Silencio by Alice Leora Briggs

Etherton Gallery will show new work by Alice Leora Briggs as well as a number of works from Dreamland: The Way Out of Juarez, a collaboration with writer Charles Bowden, which she describes as part “illuminated manuscript” and part “crime blotter.” Briggs’ sgraffito drawings reveal the otherwise untold story of the victims, bystanders, and collaborators in the Juarez drug wars.  Images from a series of postage stamp styled drawings like Silencio make clear that sins of omission are in fact political acts that can have the same deadly consequences as sins of commission, regardless of who perpetrates them.

Eyes Wide Open showcases work by Palma, including photographs from the series, Your Gaze Distorts Me Without Knowing It (translated from Spanish), which features portraits of young women with bleached, riveting eyes. The series, inspired by Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), articulates Palma’s belief that, “when we see, we do not see what we see, we see who we are.”  In Palma’s words these portraits  “. . . support an imagined gaze, to establish a relation that does not exist in reality, but does create its own reality.”

LaPesca Milagrosa by Rodrigo Moya

Working in the tradition of Henri Cartier Bresson and Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Mexican photographer Rodrigo Moya covered political unrest throughout Latin America during the 1950s and 1960s. Part photojournalist, part street photographer, Moya  brought the human cost of civil and military uprisings and the people who lived through these turbulent times to the pages of magazines such as Impacto, El Espectador, Politica, Sucesos and Siempre! Moya documents not only the newsworthy event, he provides us with the insider’s view, as though his subjects were waiting for his camera. Eyes Wide Open features a selection of Moya’s most iconic images from this period, including his photographs of the charismatic Che Guevara.

Etherton Gallery will host an artist reception at the gallery Saturday, September 11, 7 to 10 pm. Luis Gonzalez Palma and Alice Leora Briggs will attend.  The following day, September 12 at 2 pm, Luis Gonzalez Palma will give a talk about his work at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona.

Etherton Gallery is located in SoCo at 135 South 6th Avenue in downtown Tucson, AZ 85701. Regular business hours are Tuesday — Saturday, 11 am-5 pm and by appointment. For more information, contact the gallery at (520) 624-7370 or info@ethertongallery.com

John Muir (standing) & John Burroughs at the Grand Canyon (1909) PHOTO by Karl Moon

Opening June 8 and running through August 28, 2010 at Etherton Gallery, A Grand View: Arizona Landscape Photography 1871-2010, is an historical survey of landscape photographs, featuring a selection of images by more than 30 photographers including: including: Ansel Adams, Linda Connor, Forman Hanna, Eliot Erwitt, Timothy O’Sullivan, Richard Misrach, Frederick Sommer, as well as nationally known Arizona photographers including William Lesch, Jay Dusard, Edward McCain, and many more.

Sahuaras (1890) PHOTO by Willis P. Haynes

Cactus Tree, Arizona (1875) PHOTO by Elias A. Bonine

Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, Mouth of Kanab Wash Looking West (1872) PHOTO by William Bell

A Grand View features work from individual artists and Etherton’s extensive inventory by some of the most important masters of the medium, illuminating our long standing and storied fascination with Arizona. Beginning with the first government sponsored surveys of the West, Timothy O’Sullivan’s Black Cañon, Colorado River from Camp 8, Looking Above (1871), made for the US Geological Survey, is an image of a man seated in a boat with a box of camera equipment, dwarfed by the jagged canyon walls that frame the image. Although O’Sullivan could only hint at the roaring motion of the river, the image creates the impression of Arizona as a dangerous uncharted frontier, when the transcontinental railroad was just 100 miles away.

Medicine Wheel, Sedona, Arizona ( 1989) PHOTO by Debra Bloomfield

Among the contemporary works included in A Grand View is Santa Catalina Sunset, Arizona (2001) by Jeff Smith, a large format color photograph that romanticizes the wild beauty of Arizona’s monsoons. Smith’s use of color — saturated velvety blues and inky blacks — heightens the contrast with the dramatic veins of lightning that dominate the Tucson city lights below. William Lesch’s black and white topographic view of the Tucson valley, Developing Thunderstorm over the Tucson Valley, Triptych, August, 2006 makes clear that Arizona’s beauty resides in its treasured wide open spaces and the lofty clouds that rise and fall as they pass over the valley. A Grand View captures the paradox of Arizona, its great cultural history, natural beauty and iconoclastic spirit, reminding us why we call Arizona home.

Motel, Southern Arizona (2007) PHOTO by Scott B. Davis

Canyon de Chelly (1910) PHOTO by Roland Reed

Seen and Not Seen PHOTO by Ken Rosenthal

A Grand View: Arizona Landscape Photography 1871-2010 opens June 8 and runs through August 28, 2010. Etherton Gallery is located in SoCo at 135 S. 6^th Ave., in downtown Tucson, AZ. Summer hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 11am-5pm and by appointment. For information about the exhibition please contact Etherton Gallery at (520) 624-7370 or info@ethertongallery.com

About the show

Etherton Gallery asked artists to take a fresh look at the much beloved Saguaro using a photographic process. Terry Etherton and the staff of Etherton Gallery juried submissions. The resulting show features work by local as well as regional and national photographers. Diverse photographic processes are represented including ambrotypes and iPhone. A saguaro sculpture by artist Simon Donovan will also be on display.

Hours & Admission

Garden hours: Garden hours are 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. Open seven days a week, year round, except July 4^th, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Day and New Year’s Day.

Gardens’ admission: $7 for adults (age 13+), $3 for children 4-12, free for children 3 and under.

About the Gardens

Tucson Botanical Gardens is a private, non-profit organization that promotes botanical, horticultural, and ecological education; encourages responsible environmental stewardship; and provides a beautiful setting for enjoyment and relaxation. The Gardens is an urban oasis in the heart of Tucson featuring a 5 ½ acre collection of 16 specialty gardens. It is located at 2150 N. Alvernon Way. For more information, call (520) 326-9686, Ext. 10, email: info@tucsonbotanical.org

Carnegiea Gigantea 123 by James Eschinger

The Tucson Saguaro Photography Invitational will be having its Opening Reception this Friday at the Temple Gallery on Scott Avenue.  The photography exhibition will be available for viewing through April 24^th. A few images can be viewed below.

Flowering Crested Saguaro by Karen Dombrowski-Sobel

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In keeping with the theme of the Arizona Theatre Company production, The Second City Does Arizona, or Close But No Saguaro, this collection features pictures by 32 photographers from Arizona and beyond that cast a fresh eye on our prickly friend, using technologies that range from cell phone capture, and pinhole cameras to ambrotyping and Polaroid cameras

Curtain Call by Kenn Coplan

Saguaro Decomposite by Michael Berman

Etherton Gallery, which manages the Temple Gallery, invited artists to take a fresh look at the much beloved Saguaro using a photographic process.  Terry Etherton and the staff of Etherton Gallery juried submissions.  The resulting show features work by artists primarily from southern Arizona, although it includes artists from as far west as Silicon Valley and Portland, Oregon. With inventive images ranging from James Eschinger’s boldly colored Carnegiea gigantea 1 2 3 (2009) to Dorothy Nevitt’s Polaroid print diptych Power Plant (2005-2010), the Tucson Saguaro Photography Invitational demonstrates that the inspirational power of the Saguaro remains strong.

The Tucson Saguaro Photography Invitational opening artist reception this Friday April 9, from 5:30-7:30pm. The Temple Gallery is located in SoCo, the newly designated South of Congress district, at the Temple of Music and Art. Address: 330 S. Scott Ave. in downtown Tucson. Gallery hours are Mon-Fri, 10am-5pm and prior to Arizona Theatre Company performances. For more information, please contact the Etherton Gallery, which manages the Temple Gallery, at (520) 624-7370 or info@ethertongallery.com.

Cristate With Roadrunner by Karen Dombrowski-Sobel