Jay Ressler • Artist

Jay Ressler • Artist

Artistic Images and Sometimes Commentary

Berks County Hamburg Kernsville Dam Schuylkill River 

No. 40. The Red Chair Challenge

Jay M. Ressler 0 Comments , ,
riding-the-kerny-in-a-red-chair-sharp
Surfing the Kearny on a Red Chair

At the end of 2015 the members of the Art Plus Gallery in West Reading, PA, completely renovated the gallery. Among the changes was the purchase of a distinctive red chair to allow customers to view the gallery’s extensive online offerings on a tablet computer. Members of the coop decided to challenge each other to creatively depict the red chair. The challenge is a kind of silly, but kind of fun branding exercise.

During the summer months, the Kernsville Dam became a popular site for youth, many from out-of-state, to surf the dam. Following a drowning death and a plague of litter, the road leading to the dam has been closed with a barrier. State and Tilden Township Police enforce trespassing regulations.

Jay M. Ressler

Jay Ressler Composite Photography, Encaustic Art, and Oil Painting He is an outstanding location photographer and painter, with an eye that can capture the soul of a Havana back street as beautifully as the sip of a hungry hummingbird, often with compelling black and white images. Jay Ressler is best known for artistic expression that lives in layers between opposites. “I like to explore boundaries,” he explains. “Boundaries between consciousness and the unconscious, between reality and imagination, between certainty and skepticism.” He does this by compositing his own photography in multiple layers to produce stunningly original, interleaved images. Using Photoshop, other image manipulation software and a variety of digital effects, he paints one photographic layer on top of another. He takes advantage of textures he's captured along with an array of processes for manipulating light, contrast, and color to tell the story. “Distorting and reinterpreting the literal 'machine moments' captured by the camera is as old as the art of photography,” he insists. Jay occasionally extends his multi-layered approach to encaustic mixed media creations. Based on ancient techniques, the process begins with cooking his own recipes of beeswax and damar resin and applying this medium between the layers of photographic images, along with various pigmented compounds and materials to add color, texture and expression. Either way, the results are riveting. The viewer is drawn into an unfolding, dreamlike scene that might be heart-warming, haunting, gritty, poignant or magical. Sometimes, within the various layers, all of the above. The award-winning photographer/artist has many dimensions himself. He studied advanced digital photography at Pittsburgh Filmmakers and advanced encaustic techniques with leading instructors in the field. He worked as an underground coal miner, steelworker, machinist, labor and civil rights activist, copywriter and commercial printer. He has a BS in Psychology from Albright College.

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