Water a Living Being – Photography Exhibit at The Gallery, Scotch Plains Library

Photographs by local artist, Connie Pinkowski  will be on exhibit at the Scotch Plains Library from Saturday, May  19, 2012 until  Tuesday, June 12, 2012.  The exhibit depicts Connie’s love of water comes from living by the water all her life.  “Water has continued to have an emotional and artist influence on me.  My most creative ideas have always emerged while swimming or walking on the beach.   A creative challenge has been to produce interesting, vivid and colorful photographs from the clear liquid.  Water is colorless, but it is our environment and natural surroundings that are reflected on the water which create my abstract images.  Water is always moving, changing and reflecting the world around us.  Through my photographs I’m trying to convey the connection between water and our manmade surroundings.  Even though our coasts are threatened by continued flooding as the sea levels rise each year, people are still drawn to water, a perfect example are all the visitors to LBI each year,” says Ms. Pinkowski.

Having spent her summers on LBI for the past 40 years has shown the artist what water can do to our environment, by the changes that have affected the Island over the past decade.  It is by creating images of water patterns that she portrays how connected we are to this natural resource.  In one sense the photographs can be seen as colorful abstraction or as a way to build a connection to our tangible resource that we need to help preserve.  She wants people to appreciate our natural resource and find joy and the unexpected in viewing her photographs.  “I also want the viewer to think about ways they can help protect and preserve our most important natural resource, water. Our lives will depend on it.  Water is life and we have an obligation to protect it, now and in the future.”  The Library invites the community to visit and reflect on these digital reflections. 

The artist has a BFA in photography from Rochester Institute of Technology.  She has taught photography and art workshops to teens and adults at the Scotch Plains Library and at the LBI Foundation of Arts and Sciences on Long Beach Island.  Ms. Pinkowski shows her photography throughout the tri-state area and her work is in many private collections.

There will be a reception at the library, Thursday, May 31 from 7 – 8:30 pm.  The Scotch Plains Public Library is located at 1927 Bartle Avenue, one block from Park Avenue, in the center of the township.  Library hours are Monday and Thursday, 9 am to 9 pm; Tuesday and Friday, 9 am to 5 pm; Wednesday 9 am to 8 pm; Saturday 9 am to 5pm and Sunday 12 noon to 4 pm.