Two bikes, a Jersey corndog & a pencil

Large photo images by Barbara Beeman

@ The Cupping Room Cafe

359 West Broadway, New York, NY

July 19, 2007 - October 7, 2007 - A Review by Anneke Prins Simons, Ph.D. , Professor Emeritus,  New Jersey City University

Barbara Beeman's photo exhibition Two bikes, a Jersey corndog & a pencil at the Cupping Room Cafe in New York City, is not just a feast for the eyes, with its strong compositions, rich, deep, often luminous colors and love of textures old and new.  It contains visual discoveries, asks questions and celebrates.  It finds the extraordinary in the ordinary.

In the Jersey Corndog, the sign dominates the image space.  A golden-yellow glow emanates from the huge corndog.  It is at once mysterious and an exuberant Pop icon.

In the Dixon Mills Pencil Mural-Jersey City, the image of the pencil shoots across the architecture like a missile-obelisk.  The architecture serves as canvas(the 'weave' of the brick showing through).  There is a richness and depth of color - yellow pencil, green leaves, violet flower and the deep blue sky.  We fondly identify, through her art, a cherished piece of local history.

In the P-town Bicycle, the empty machine is separated from nature by a fence.  What happened to the cyclist?  What is behind the looming closed wall of dunes?  We search for answers.

The Bar Harbor, Maine, Chair with Fruit is not just a simple homegrown still life with an almost classical (but slightly off-center) balanced composition.  The plain chair, with its surface of broken paint and wood, reveals a history of use.  It holds a hand-carved bowl with fresh, smoothly-gleaming, flawless, ripe tomatoes.  It brings to mind thoughts about death and rebirth. 

Several images show humble structures transformed.

In the Green Mural-Copenhagen, Denmark, we see a flaming ferocious dragon, gnomes, and a myriad of other imaginary creatures, painted in rich magical colors, along the wall.  Many, are out of scale, having a riotous good and ferocious time in the land of Hans Christian Anderson.

White Door, With Red, Copenhagen, shows a plain building, forming a severe composition.  It is a lived-in Mondrian.

Back in the U.S., in WTC dog & Soho Store - New York City, the walls of one low building have been transformed into a jeweled fabric.

The subjects are unpretentious.  The every day has been transformed by the poetry of the heart, the depth of thought and the fine eye of the artist.