Anita Licis-Ribak Photography

Photo

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:23:41 -0400

Photo

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:29:23 -0400

First Day First day of spring, in the Northern hemisphere!...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:13:00 -0400

First Day

First day of spring, in the Northern hemisphere! Congratulations to you all, long winter survivors, and especially those of us who were greeted by the arriving equinox with a foot of snow yesterday! Say what you may, spring is in the air.. And on this sentimental note I want to send you a bouquet of flowers… I borrowed them from my friend Christina before giving them to her for her birthday… It’s a mysterious and rebellious looking flower, with an equally rebellious name: Rununculus, a.k.a. Persian buttercup. It has that antique patina and textured presence that is reminiscent of Flemish still life paintings.

Today is also the first day of my new migrated blog. As Posterous - which I’ve used for over 3 years as my blog host - will be closing their virtual doors in April, it was time to migrate to new pastures. After some nerdy conversing with my programmer - extraordinaire husband Agustin, our choice fell on Tumblr, an open, simple and connected platform. I fell in love with the theme Solaris (its name borrowed from the 1972 movie by the visionary Soviet director Andrei Tarkvosky). Agustin then migrated all the contents of my old blog to Tumblr using JustMigrate - a task that we have been dreading since Posterous made the announcement, but that was made easy and quite seamless by the websites’s interface. Thank you to Posterous for having been a great host, to JustMigrate team for making useful tools, and to you Agus, for making my life easier (and more beautiful all around)!

PRC 2012 Benefit Auction prints available for 3 MORE DAYS! Even...

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 12:27:07 -0500

PRC 2012 Benefit Auction prints available for 3 MORE DAYS!

Even though the Photographic Resource Center’s 2012 Benefit Auction is over, you can still support the PRC and build your photography collection! PRC is offering framed prints for sale at the minimum bid price, for 3 more days only! For the list of all available work click HERE.

My Untitled 3 diptych from the ‘Daudz mīļu buču!’ (Many Loving Kisses!) series is in lot No.75. It is work I made this summer, continuing my photographic assemblies series printed on airmail paper. Click HERE more more info.

Untitled 3 (diptych). ’Daudz mīļu buču!’ (Many Loving Kisses!) Series. 2010/2012

Amherst Biennial 2012 - Snapshots from the Opening Reception in October

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 17:51:11 -0400

Here are some snapshots from the opening reception at the Boltwood pop-up Gallery, the Biennial...

Amherst Biennial 2012 shines tonight!

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 16:01:50 -0400

Come out to town tonight for the monthly Amherst Arts Walk! Amherst Biennial 2012 sites will be...

NEPR Showcase - Cinematic Highlights

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 15:28:49 -0400

This is the final week of the New England Portfolio Review Showcase at the Boston Photographic...

New England Portfolio Review Showcase - Opening Reception today...

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 13:53:11 -0400

New England Portfolio Review Showcase - Opening Reception today

I am very happy to announce that the Opening Reception for the NEPR (New England Portfolio Review) Showcase will be held at the Boston Photographic Resource Center (PRC), located at 832 Commonwealth Ave. from 6 to 8pm. today. Work from two of my photo assemblies series printed on airmail paper were selected for the show.

The exhibit will feature 6 New England photographers, selected by the PRC staff from the pool of artists showing work a the NEPR Portfolio Walk in May 2012. According to PRC, “NEPR Showcase includes an interesting variety of work, ranging from a site-specific photo installation dealing with the arc of passionate experience to investigations of changing industrial landscapes to fragmented print on airmail paper assembled into collages. The artists - emerging and established - clearly demonstrate the vast diversity in today’s photographic practice in Massachusetts. The PRC staff was particularly drawn to these unique projects due to their excellent craftsmanship and artistic voice.”

You can find more information about the participating artists by clicking HERE

And to give you a small preview of my work on display, below is one of the pieces, Untitled from the Time Still Series. 2008-2012 (Ongoing)

This work consists of 6 photographic fragments, individually printed on 6 sheets of airmail paper, assembled into one panel and mounted on a heavy-weight Strathmore watercolor paper.

The process of making this, and other pieces in these series, is slow and tedious. It also presents a certain challenge, since airmail paper is very fragile and ephemeral, which makes it extremely hard to work with. On the other hand, because of this fragility, it intrinsically possesses the very quality - that of being perishable - that these series are centered on: time, displacement, search of identity, and long-distance relationships.

From my artist statement for the Time Still series:

Time = Tempus (Latin) ->

…Temporary = Emphemeral - slight and perishable

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

…

Words move, music moves

Only in time; but that which is only living

Can only die. Words, after speech, reach

Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,

Can words or music reach

The stillness…

(T.S. Eliott, Four Quartets: Burnt Norton, I & IV)

‘Time Still’ speaks of that unattainable fictional point of stillness, or the present, around which Time hinges.

Even in perceived stillness, the present Time is fragmented, ephemeral, and often obscured.

As in Letters Between the (Coast) Lines, the medium of artwork - fragmented assembly of photographs printed on airmail paper - attempts to convey these qualities of fragmentation, ephemerality and obfuscation, even as we behold the most life-reaffirming and persistent forms of life.

To get insight into my other series in the show, Many Loving Kisses, click HERE

I hope your summer is going well, and hope to see many of you in Boston tonight!

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Russia-By-Rail

Thu, 03 May 2012 13:48:30 -0400

Read and watch NPR’s reporter David Green and photographer David Gilkey’s account of...

Blueberry Ice Cream of Snow Mounds A wonderful Russian...

Thu, 03 May 2012 11:30:00 -0400

Blueberry Ice Cream of Snow Mounds

A wonderful Russian photographer, Evgenia Arbugaeva, documents life in her native Tiksi, a small town in Northern Siberia. As a young girl, I had a layover in Tiksi, on my way further Northeast to my future home in the remote town of Chersky. My memories of Tiksi are indelible: first aurora borealis, unbelievable cold, the world outside the small airport lost to endless darkness and 2 meter deep blanket of snow and ice. See it through Evgenia’s eyes, in her collection called Tiksi…

Evgenia Arbugaeva, Tiksi

This is Evgenia’s introduction to the project:

Once upon a time in Siberia, on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, in a warm bed in a small town, a little girl woke up from a dream. It was morning, but it was still dark out, for the little town was so far North that the sun would not show itself for many months. They called this the Polar Night.

The little girl rubbed the sleep from her eyes and dressed in the dark. She put on her pink jacket and red stocking cap and stepped outside. Her breath froze and she walked in the direction of school. All around her were endless fields of frozen tundra. But the fields were not white like you might think, for up above the Aurora Borealis lit up the sky. It looked like a big green breath frozen in the heavens and all around the little girl were beautiful colors. The snow was painted green. And on some mornings—if she was lucky—she’d even see bits of blue, yellow and pink on her walk to school.

She loved these colors very much. Walking through them made her imagination come alive. She liked to think of the fields as blank canvases for Mother Nature to paint upon. And what did that make her? Was she part of the painting too, in her pink jacket and red hat?

She smiled and her mind began dreaming of the days when the Polar Night would come to an end, when the first sun would light up the snowy mountains, making it look like blueberry ice cream. And then the summer would come, the snow would melt and the tundra would transform into planet Mars with it’s golden color seeming to stretch out forever in every direction.

She thought to herself, “Every season has its own colors.” She stored all these colors in her heart, and walked beneath the Aurora Borealis in this little town way up North.

The town was called Tiksi.

To be continued…

Congratulations to Eugenia, the Magenta Foundation’s Bright Spark Award 2012 winner!

Night Photography

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:30:37 -0400

I am pleased to announce the opening of a photography exhibition Night Photography at the Darkroom...

Isa Leshko: Elderly Animals

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 11:03:00 -0500

I just received the December newsletter from the photographer Isa Leshko, and wanted to share her...

Steven Holl Awarded AIA Gold Medal

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 21:08:00 -0500

Steven Holl has long been one of my favorite architects. (The others are Tadao Ando, Carlo...

18-year Old French Boy Meets Far North Siberia Emile Hyperion...

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:42:00 -0500

18-year Old French Boy Meets Far North Siberia

Emile Hyperion Dubuission, from Siberia. The Far North Series

I just came across this young photographer’s work. It struck a very personal note with me.. His images look like visitors in my family album, from the days when I lived in the extreme Far North of Siberia. They are hauntingly beautiful, stripped of any pretense, and spontaneous. A veil of bleak beauty covers them, distancing the viewer from the viewed..

P.S. I do wonder though, how did he - and his camera - survive in those temperatures. It takes years to persuade your body and mind to marginally agree with the extremities of that place…

Presenting at Hillside Art Salon tonight 6pm. at the University...

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:45:55 -0400

Presenting at Hillside Art Salon tonight

6pm. at the University of Massachusetts chancellor Robert C. Holub and Sabine Holub’s house.

Hosted by Sabine Holub.

Check out the Salon’s website to see a couple of pieces from the collection I will be showing tonight, as well as those of other presenters. 20 slides/20 seconds each! Sounds like a brutal format, a kind of speed dating with art, but I think I like it: it prevents preciousness from slipping into the presentation. The time constraint has it’s price too.. Didn’t Mark Twain once complain about the 5 minutes he was given once to deliver a speech, saying that he’d need two weeks to prepare for it, while he could give a 2-hour lecture today! :)

I am really excited about this event…., and I better practice my “5 minutes” now!

From the Lightness Series. Walker Art Center. Minneapolis. 2011

Works on Paper

Fri, 06 May 2011 11:46:00 -0400

An expansive art show covering a wide range of media - all focusing on PAPER - is opening tonight in...

What Matters About Photography?

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 21:40:00 -0400

I’d never asked myself this question before. But the theme and the title of an upcoming...

Presenting at Smith College

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 10:23:00 -0500

This afternoon, I will be giving a presentation on my personal design and photography work at Smith...

Our little Railija is going to Minneapolis I am thrilled to...

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 15:43:00 -0500

Our little Railija is going to Minneapolis

I am thrilled to share this news with you. ’Railija and Runka’, my photograph from the City on the Sea series, was recently selected to be part of a juried photography show at the Minneapolis Photography Center in Minnesota.

The show will be comprised of prints selected by Christina Chang, Assistant Curator at the Weisman Art Center in Minneapolis, from a pool of work submitted to the International Call for Entry, “Woman As Photographer. Picturing Life As A Woman”. The exhibition will run from March 4th through April 17th at the Minneapolis Photography Center.

Railija and Runka is a double portrait of my 3 year-old niece (she was 2 when I took the picture) with my brother’s cat Runka (or Čumins, as my brother’s family calls him). I took it at the end of an unusually sunny summer of 2009, during my last visit to Latvia.

The City on the Sea. Fragments of (Brief Returns to) Rīga, Latvia opens in Amherst tomorrow, Feb. 3.

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Railija and Runka. Latvia. 2009

City on the Sea comes to Amherst After a month in Northampton,...

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 15:31:00 -0500

City on the Sea comes to Amherst

After a month in Northampton, the exhibit of 30 or so photographic prints of Latvia will open in Amherst tomorrow, Thursday. Please come to the opening reception between 6 and 8 p.m. tomorrow night, if you are in town, or between 1 and 2 p.m. on Sat. Feb.19th when I will be at the gallery to give a tour to anyone who would like to hear the stories behind the pictures.

Thank you so much to all of you who came to the show in Northampton, and for all the feedback and inspiration (and gorgeous flowers!) you’ve brought along!

For a preview of the show, please visit one of my previous posts, or Jones Library website: http://www.joneslibrary.org/burnett/thismonth.html