Pictorialist Photography
Berges Alvarez's Experimental Methods of Photography as an Art Medium
Michael Shain, contributor Queens Chronicle
Bergés Alvarez’s art looks like it has always hung in the Visitor Center of the Jamaica Wildlife Refuge, the wind-swept headquarters of the 9,000-acre piece of Jamaica Bay managed by the federal government.
The 60-year-old Long Island artist uses castoffs — wrapping paper, tissue, fabric, cellophane — to create gauzy landscapes and seascapes.
It is the kind of stuff that makes people stopping by the center before their nature walks wonder, “How’d he do that?”
The show is called “Soundless Landscapes.” It opened on Nov. 3 and will be up in the center’s conference area — a well-used space by conservation groups in South Queens — through New Year’s. It is the third in a series of art shows that have hung in that space dealing with recycling and reuse.
Well over 6 feet tall and gleamingly bald, Bergés Alvarez looks a lot like Daddy Warbucks. “I wish I could call them paintings,” he says. “ They’re mixed media.”
The pieces start out as junk — nearly anything flat and flexible will do — that he collects from bins and end-of-the-roll throwaway spots.
Once home, Bergés Alvarez crumples and folds the material into endless forms and arranges them with other crunched-up stuff in a deep trough. From there, he starts to take scores of photographs — of the detritus still-life he’s made. Rearrange the stuff, take more pictures.
“I may take 50 to 100 photos of each arrangement,” he says. “From that, I may find one I like.”
The photo then goes through enhancing filters and softening touches on his computer. Once he has something to work with, he sends the image off to an online photo printing company in California, where it is turned into a canvas and sent back. From there, he will use pens, pencils or paint on the canvas to add the desired effects and final touches.
Each canvas is one of a kind, he says, despite starting out as a photo.
Bergés Alvarez, who is from the Dominican Republic and lives in Bellmore, is by profession a radiology technologist , at Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital.
He has shown his work at art galleries and group shows in the Hamptons and is a featured artist on the high-end website Saatchi Art, the huge online art gallery. But the Visitor Center exhibit is his first solo show.
The show includes 13 works, the most he’s ever displayed in one spot outside his home. At his Saturday afternoon opening, he seemed both nervous and exhilarated as he explained his unusual photo-into-art technique to visitors.
“I’m still at the stage where I’m emerging” as an artist, he says. “It’s a lot of marketing. But you have to be part of that scene. You have to put yourself out there.”
There is enough demand for his work that the Hamptons gallery was on the phone this week looking for more canvases. He has started to think taking work down from the walls of his house in order to have enough to show. “I told him he couldn’t sell the ones he gave to me,” his wife says. “He could take them, but it had to say ‘on loan’ on the wall.”
It’s a good problem to have for a artist. And Bergés Alvarez, whose first name is Michael, is getting used to the part of being an artist that requires him to go out and promote his work.
“I can’t help myself,” he says. “I just want to tell people, ‘Look at this. Can you believe it? I can’t believe it.’ It deserves to be seen.”
‘Soundless Landscapes’
When: Through the end of December 2018
Where: Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge Center, 175-10 Cross Bay Blvd., Broad Channel.
Entry: Free. Info: (718) 318-4340,
bergesalvarez.com
The 60-year-old Long Island artist uses castoffs — wrapping paper, tissue, fabric, cellophane — to create gauzy landscapes and seascapes.
It is the kind of stuff that makes people stopping by the center before their nature walks wonder, “How’d he do that?”
The show is called “Soundless Landscapes.” It opened on Nov. 3 and will be up in the center’s conference area — a well-used space by conservation groups in South Queens — through New Year’s. It is the third in a series of art shows that have hung in that space dealing with recycling and reuse.
Well over 6 feet tall and gleamingly bald, Bergés Alvarez looks a lot like Daddy Warbucks. “I wish I could call them paintings,” he says. “ They’re mixed media.”
The pieces start out as junk — nearly anything flat and flexible will do — that he collects from bins and end-of-the-roll throwaway spots.
Once home, Bergés Alvarez crumples and folds the material into endless forms and arranges them with other crunched-up stuff in a deep trough. From there, he starts to take scores of photographs — of the detritus still-life he’s made. Rearrange the stuff, take more pictures.
“I may take 50 to 100 photos of each arrangement,” he says. “From that, I may find one I like.”
The photo then goes through enhancing filters and softening touches on his computer. Once he has something to work with, he sends the image off to an online photo printing company in California, where it is turned into a canvas and sent back. From there, he will use pens, pencils or paint on the canvas to add the desired effects and final touches.
Each canvas is one of a kind, he says, despite starting out as a photo.
Bergés Alvarez, who is from the Dominican Republic and lives in Bellmore, is by profession a radiology technologist , at Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital.
He has shown his work at art galleries and group shows in the Hamptons and is a featured artist on the high-end website Saatchi Art, the huge online art gallery. But the Visitor Center exhibit is his first solo show.
The show includes 13 works, the most he’s ever displayed in one spot outside his home. At his Saturday afternoon opening, he seemed both nervous and exhilarated as he explained his unusual photo-into-art technique to visitors.
“I’m still at the stage where I’m emerging” as an artist, he says. “It’s a lot of marketing. But you have to be part of that scene. You have to put yourself out there.”
There is enough demand for his work that the Hamptons gallery was on the phone this week looking for more canvases. He has started to think taking work down from the walls of his house in order to have enough to show. “I told him he couldn’t sell the ones he gave to me,” his wife says. “He could take them, but it had to say ‘on loan’ on the wall.”
It’s a good problem to have for a artist. And Bergés Alvarez, whose first name is Michael, is getting used to the part of being an artist that requires him to go out and promote his work.
“I can’t help myself,” he says. “I just want to tell people, ‘Look at this. Can you believe it? I can’t believe it.’ It deserves to be seen.”
‘Soundless Landscapes’
When: Through the end of December 2018
Where: Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge Center, 175-10 Cross Bay Blvd., Broad Channel.
Entry: Free. Info: (718) 318-4340,
bergesalvarez.com