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Gallery Happenings September 2012

Tom Till Gallery’s 15th Season

The Tom Till Gallery and Tom Till Photography invite you to celebrate the Gallery’s 15th season and Tom’s 35 years as a professional landscape and nature photographer. Till first picked up a 4x5 camera in 1977, and began photographing around the Moab area, an activity he still pursues, but now with a digital camera. Moving ever outward, Till has eventually photographed in all fifty states and in 93 countries overseas. Over the decades over a quarter million of Till’s images have appeared in print, at least that’s where he stopped counting. With an established career and many books to his credit, Till opened the Tom Till Gallery on Main Street in Moab in 1998.

Photo by Tom Till, Moab UtahFirst featuring just handmade Ilfochrome prints, the store now features four media. The Gallery continues to offer paper prints from Tom’s 4x5 transparencies and 36 megapixel camera created on the legendary Lightjet Printer. With the greatest sharpness and color fidelity of any printer, the Lightjet produces the mesmerizing images that have been the gallery mainstays for many years. Metal prints, introduced last year, are printed on aluminum and are now the best-selling product. Appearing to be lit from behind, the luminous metals have to be seen to be believed. The popular canvas gallery wraps are especially great in homes with lots of reflections from windows. Finally, new this year, the gallery is offering acrylic, or Museum Prints. These pieces are all the rage in Las Vegas, and beat all comers when it comes to archival longevity.Their beauty and modern look have captured the imagination of many of our customers. Any image in Tom’s collection can be reproduced in any media in any size.

Marcy Till, who was instrumental in the creation of the gallery, still continues in a management role at the gallery and at Tom Till Photography, and sometimes can be found manning the store on weeknights. Although Tom does not work a regular schedule in the store, he fills in for other employees, and visits often. During the winter months when the gallery is open by appointment, most like it will be Tom who unlocks the door. The gallery has had many great employees over the years, and Sandy Barr is completing her 11th season in the shop.

Photo by Tom Till, Moab UtahIn other Tom Till news, Tom’s new book “Photographing the World,” a Guide to Photographing the World’s 201 Most Scenic Landscapes, will appear in October. At over 300 pages and 80,000 words and with hundreds of images, the book offers practical information on how to photograph the world’s most beautiful scenery on every continent. Till visited and photographed every site in the book himself over a 25-year period. Though famous locations form the core of the book, Till offers information on many lesser known spots like the Wulingyuan Mountains in China that were the inspiration for the gravity defying peaks in Avatar. Till’s next book, also in the works now, will be focused on the Western Balkans in Eastern Europe, where he will be shooting landscapes and cultural sites that have not been seen by much of the outside world.

Also, Till was happy to learn that the American Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, will be featuring his images of all 50 states in a permanent exhibit. In 2013, Till and daughter Mikenna will be traveling to Saudi Arabia to open three simultaneous exhibits of Till’s images of American landscapes throughout the Kingdom. Mikenna will be reading from her texts that graced two of Tom’s recent books. Tom’s son Bryce has taken an interest in the gallery, and along with Cooper Henderson of Moab has produced a new website for Tom’s businesses, which will debut this fall. Till feels he has won life’s lottery and is thankful everyday he makes a living at a job he loves and that his work gives joy to thousands of visitors to Moab, many of whom make a trip to the Tom Till Gallery a “must-visit” in the area. A special thrill for Till and his staff was the visit the summer of several movie stars. Follow Tom on his blog which will be rekindled after a hiatus while he wrote his upcoming book, and on Facebook and Twitter.

Sarah Harms - Forging Her Own Path
"I love forging steel, and find it to be a mystical, meditative experience every day. The more I learn about the history, process, and art of blacksmithing, the more reverent, grateful, and humbled I become.” ~ Sarah Harms

Sarah Harms’ love affair with metal and jewelry making began when she was about 9 or 10. She took a piece of copper wire out to the curb and start hammering. Disappointed with the results, she set the hammer down for a few years. Luckily for us, Sarah picked it back up in 1979, as a sophomore in high school, then focused on jewelry design for the rest of her high school years. The summer before her senior year, Sarah got a job as a jeweler’s apprentice, and worked in a limited production studio (basement) for ten years before venturing out on her own, doing art fairs, and eventually consigning her work to a few select gallries.

Jewelry of Sarah Harms Picture 1Sarah’s passion for blacksmithing began in the mid-nineties, when she discovered that her local art center offered a metals class, and had the only coal forge on the North Shore of Chicago. After a guest demo from a southern Illinois blacksmith, Sarah was off and running; playing with fire and experimenting with smithing techniques. Sarah decided that she had to incorporate the steel into her jewelry work. She forged a pair of spiral earrings in her tiny basement studio using her air/acetylene torch, and then the excitement really began!!

Necklace made by Sarah HarmsShortly thereafter Sarah became pregnant with her first child, and decided that standing around a coal burning forge was probably not the healthiest thing, so she put the steel work on hold, and then the jewelry as well, to be a mom full time. But her creative desires remained and she knew that she would pick up the hammer again when the time was right.
In 2007, ten years and two boys later, Sarah & her family moved from Illinois to Camp Verde, AZ. As fate would have it, that area is a veritable hotbed(yes pun) of blacksmiths and bladesmiths. Sarah took a weekend workshop and was quickly back in the swing of things! The time was now right, Sarah set up her workshop and got to hammering!!Picture of Earrings by Sarah Harms

Today, Sarah is a full time jewelry artist. Much of her inspiration comes from nature and various forms of symbolism. There is a lot of meaning in her work, some of it quite obvious to the viewer, and much of it mysterious, within the combination of material, colors, and numbers of elements she uses in a piece. Sarah forges each piece individually, using hammersand tongs, fire and anvil. The addition of silver, copper, bronze, and 14k gold give great contrast and visual interest to her work. She includes found beach rocks and recycled glass beads into her work for color and more good energy. The combination of all the various materials gives her work a contemporary, yet earthy feeling.

Sarah will be the featured artist at
Savage Spirit! for the Moab Art Walk on September 8th and her work is always available in Moab at Savage Spirit!
87 N Main. https://www.facebook.com/savagespirit.moab

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