In the galleries: Dynamic art captures the fractured side of nature

In the galleries: Dynamic art captures the fractured side of nature

by Mark Jenkins for The Washington Post
August 9, 2024

The three-artist show at Hemphill Artworks features several things associated with the decorative arts: flowers, butterflies and embroidery. Another essential element, however, is decay, which makes “Belkin Caldwell Shull” a bit edgier than its nature motifs might suggest.

Sophia Belkin is a Baltimore artist who prints wetlands-inspired compositions on fabric, outlining certain portions with stitching. A former local resident and a longtime Hemphill artist, North Carolina’s Colby Caldwell makes camera-less woodland photographs directly with a digital scanner. Randy Shull, who divides his time between North Carolina and Mexico, hints at butterflies (“mariposa” in his Spanish-language titles) with sections of partly unraveled hammocks painted in vivid hues.

Click here to read more.

The last day to see BELKIN · CALDWELL · SHULL at HEMPHILL is Saturday, August 24, 2024. Please stop by the gallery to see the exhibition before it closes.

Belkin • Caldwell • Shull at Hemphill Artworks

Belkin • Caldwell • Shull at Hemphill Artworks

By Louis Jacobson for Washington City Paper
August 14, 2024

A three-artist exhibit is an atypical format for Hemphill Artworks, but you can see how it came to be. Textile artists Sophia Belkin and Randy Shull and digital photographer Colby Caldwell share a large format and an appreciation for abstraction. Of the three, Shull’s work is the most different. He creates hammocks like those typical of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, where he spends much of the year; he then paints the hammocks and lets them “cure” in the sun...

Click here to read more.

The last day to see BELKIN · CALDWELL · SHULL at HEMPHILL is Saturday, August 24, 2024. Please stop by the gallery to see the exhibition before it closes.

Colby Caldwell featured in Art of The State: Celebrating The Visual Art of North Carolina By Liza Roberts

Colby Caldwell featured in Art of The State: Celebrating The Visual Art of North Carolina By Liza Roberts

This beautiful and informative volume illustrates the vitality and importance of North Carolina's contemporary art scene, showcasing the creation, collection, and celebration of art in all its richness and diversity. Featuring profiles of individual artists, compelling interviews, and beautiful full-color photography, this book tells the story of the state's evolution through the lens of its art world and some of its most compelling figures.

Video Recording: Now, What is Photography?

Video Recording: Now, What is Photography?

ART TALK with Colby Caldwell, Vesna Pavlović and Lucian Perkins

"Now, What is Photography?" a panel discussion conducted on June 8, 2022, brought together three viewpoints from the art world, journalism, and academia. The participants addressed the subtle and dramatic changes in photography brought about by digital technology and social media. The panelists included Vesna Pavlović, a fine art photographer, educator, and recipient of the Fulbright Scholar Award; Lucian Perkins, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist; and Colby Caldwell, whose current exhibition was created with the radical use of standard office digital scanners in place of a camera. 

Since 1998, the ART TALKS series at Hemphill has included educational lectures on topics such as collecting for beginners, artist talks, and panel discussions on issues in contemporary art.

Click here to view (approximate running time: 1 hour 12 minutes)

Artistic portals leading to and encouraging wonder: The Washington Post

Artistic portals leading to and encouraging wonder: The Washington Post

June 17, 2022

By Mark Jenkins

Experimental photographer Colby Caldwell has two interests that might seem incompatible: nature and digital distortion. For his Hemphill Artworks show, “over & under,” Caldwell hauled flatbed scanners into the woods to grab close-ups of the forest floor or, less often, panoramas of sky framed by treetops. The bulk of these wax-coated pictures are crisp and detailed, but they’re partly tinted in electric shades of red and pink and punctuated by swipes and swooshes of random pixels. Here and there, traditional nature imagery melts into computer-generated incoherence.

Colby Caldwell: Washington City Paper

Colby Caldwell: Washington City Paper

June 2, 2022

By Louis Jacobson

Caldwell’s forest floor images live up to their early promise, depicting natural elements within wavy glitches, unreal pink-hued distortions, and adventures in broken vertical hold settings. One work, “otff_(23),” includes a spectrum-like pattern that could be a crypto-homage to the Washington Color School, while another, “otff_(12),” suggests a Robert Motherwell abstract expressionist canvas limned in shades of brown and pink. But Caldwell’s photographs of the forest canopy and the sky more than hold their own. The skyward images are more conventional—essentially free of the digital glitchiness seen in the forest-floor works; as such, they offer a respite from the dizzying brambles below. 

Exhibition Tour | Colby Caldwell: over & under

Exhibition Tour | Colby Caldwell: over & under

Saturday, June 11, 2022 | 10:30 AM

Open to the public

Join us for a walk-through and discussion of the exhibition over & under with artist, Colby Caldwell. Complimentary coffee from our neighbors at Brew'd.

Exhibition on view May 14 - June 25, 2022

Now, What is Photography? ART TALK

Now, What is Photography? ART TALK

Wednesday, June 8, 2022 | 6:30 PM

Seating is Limited, Registration Required.This event is currently at capacity, please register for the waiting list. In the event a ticket becomes available we will notify you by June 7.

"Now, What is Photography?" a panel discussion, brings together three viewpoints from the art world, journalism, and academia. The participants will address the subtle and dramatic changes in photography brought about by digital technology and social media. The panelists include Vesna Pavlović, a fine art photographer, educator, and recipient of the Fulbright Scholar Award; Lucian Perkins, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist; and Colby Caldwell, whose current exhibition was created with the radical use of standard office digital scanners in place of a camera. 

"Now, What is Photography?" is presented in conjunction with Colby Caldwell: over & under.

Since 1998, the ART TALKS series at Hemphill has included educational lectures on topics such as collecting for beginners, artist talks, and panel discussions on issues in contemporary art.

Selu Songs: Photographs by Colby Caldwell

Selu Songs: Photographs by Colby Caldwell

Radford University Art Museum
February 9 - April 30, 2022

There is a shifting dialogue between the seemingly static nature of what the land holds, and how the land evolves as humans live off of it, appropriate it, fight over it, and remake it. Although we humans move with our own histories within us, the land we’ve lived on stays, holding what occurs upon it as another kind of history—both exploitative and generative—waiting to be explored, questioned, and shared. 

~Colby Caldwell

Click here to learn more.

Colby Caldwell

Colby Caldwell

City Lights: Scan a Set of Stunning Photos Made With a Scanner

08/10/20

by Louis Jacobson, Washington City Paper

Hemphill Coloring Book

Hemphill Coloring Book

by HEMPHILL

07/15/2020

This coloring book was created during the shelter-in-place period of 2020. Thanks to the artists for their participation and inspiration. Art endures and so will we. Be well and thank you for continued support. 

Colby Caldwell

Colby Caldwell

Picture Leaving Big-City Success To Visit Skeet Ranges

07/31/2019

by Michael Shoeffel, Asheville Made 

Colby Caldwell: how to survive your own death

Colby Caldwell: how to survive your own death

One corrupt file = A colorful, brilliant exhibition

March 14, 2016

Bronwen Latimer, The Washington Post

"These are photographs, Caldwell insists, because they have all the elements of a modern photograph: light, time, a capturing tool, and a subject."

Colby Caldwell: how to survive your own death

Colby Caldwell: how to survive your own death

Digital Photography + Phantom Practices: Colby Caldwell Photo+Craft

March 1, 2016

Ali McGhee, Asheville Grit

"Colby Caldwell has been thinking about the place of the digital in photography for a long time. His most recent show, How to Survive Your Own Death, is currently up at Washington, D.C.'s Hemphill Gallery, and much of it revolves around one corrupt PICT file that Caldwell has been exploring for years."

Colby Caldwell

Colby Caldwell

In the galleries: A photographer’s accident yielded artistic results

February 19, 2016

Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post

"Separating the large and small galleries at Hemphill Fine Arts is a room so tiny that it might be better called a niche. Sometimes it’s empty, but at the moment it holds a small 1999 print titled 'How to Survive Your Own Death (Whole).' Colby Caldwell made this array of random pixels, but not on purpose. It was an accident — one he has been exploiting for almost two decades."

Colby Caldwell: how to survive your own death

Colby Caldwell: how to survive your own death

"Colby Caldwell: how to survive your own death" at Hemphill Fine Arts, Reviewed

01/29/2016

Kriston Capps, Washington City Paper

"The exhibit is split between Caldwell’s surveys—prints from his dives into the abstract depths of corrupted digital interference—alongside more traditional still-life photos. Together, these series tease out what it means to construct photos. One series is no more natural than the other."

REPRESENT

REPRESENT

At Hemphill Fine Arts, a retrospective show that's bigger than the gallery

November 15, 2013

Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post

"Several mini-shows nestle within “Represent,” Hemphill Fine Arts’s 20th-anniversary exhibition."

Artist-Citizen, Washington, DC

Artist-Citizen, Washington, DC

A quartet of gallery summer group shows

July 12, 2013

Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post

"If the personal is political, these grandiose, dysfunctional structures are calling artist-citizens to take to the streets (or, more likely, cul-de-sacs)."

Artist-Citizen, Washington, DC

Artist-Citizen, Washington, DC

"Artist-Citizen" at Hemphill, Reviewed

June 14, 2013

Matthew Smith, Washington City Paper

"The show focuses on artistic civic engagement—artists that are out of their studios and walking the streets. Mostly culled from the gallery’s stable of artists, 'Artist-Citizen' presents works that speak through the city itself."

Colby Caldwell: gun shy

Colby Caldwell: gun shy

Colby Caldwell fuses traditional and digital with his art

March 30, 2012

Danielle O'Steen, The Washington Post

"Caldwell’s subject matter, as it turns out, is only the vehicle for his greater dialogue with the history of his medium. He questions what fits into the definition of photography. Does a scanned object count? Must photographers use a camera? Must prints offer a certain truth, in the spirit of a documentary?"

Viewing Rm.

Viewing Rm.

"Viewing Rm." at Hemphill Fine Arts

February 4, 2011

Louis Jacobson, Washington City Paper

"The exhibit is variegated, but like any good combine painting (and those are included too) it coheres pretty well despite itself, as giants like Robert Rauschenberg mix with such local figures as Joseph Mills, Mingering Mike and Colby Caldwell."

Viewing Rm.

Viewing Rm.

Familiar favorites: Once more, with feeling

January 28, 2011

Jessica Dawson, The Washington Post

"Here hang big, striking works by Tom Downing and Jacob Kainen. Here, too, are precious works on paper by Al Jensen and Alma Thomas. That Eugene Atget picture of the taxidermist's vitrine? I'll take it."