Sophie Lee — a photographer and painter who teaches art full-time at Miss Hall’s School in Pittsfield and has a studio in the Art on No building at 311 North Street – keeps kind of a low profile in the Pittsfield art world and is not a natural self-promoter. She makes exquisite work that too few people get to see.
But her enrollment in Assets for Artists this year is part of a larger plan to begin exhibiting and selling her work more widely, while investing in the equipment she needs to produce her work in larger quantities and at lower cost. She’s making some first steps on that path this month with her exhibition “Blue Harvest” at the new Marketplace Cafe at 55 North Street in Pittsfield (next to the Beacon Cinema). This new work is really beautiful. Go check it out, and contact Sophie to purchase a garden-inspired print.
And here is Sophie’s “Artist Statement” about the new work:
Blue Harvest
Cyanotypes by Sophia D. Lee
Many artists experience that formidable, inevitable creative rut from time to time. For me, that’s what happened this past summer. The seeming ease and sterility of digital photography had deadened my desire to pick up the camera. Besides, I was busy with many other, more “hands-on” summertime activities, including starting my very own backyard garden. But as I waited patiently for the little sprouts to pop up, I got excited about the connection between the simplicity and beauty of what was happening in my garden and a photographic process I had recently re-discovered with my students. Both the plants in my garden and these images called cyanotypes require nothing more than sunlight and water in order to be formed. That idea was all I needed to spur me on to document every sprout, stalk, flower, and eventually fruit or vegetable growing in my backyard. I am happy that I could combine so many of the processes and approaches that I enjoy, and I hope viewers can connect with the sense that something can be simultaneously familiar yet mysterious in its simplicity.
