Local artist to show Gettysburg images in exhibit

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February 21, 2012

By Denise Richardson Staff Writer The Daily Star Tue Feb 21, 2012, 02:30 AM EST

A local artist will share images of Gettysburg in an exhibition at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown starting this spring.

"Reclaiming Gettysburg" by Kevin Q. Gray of Cherry Valley will be shown from April 1 until Aug. 5. His exhibition of modern tintypes is presented in conjunction with another exhibit commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

Gray said his exhibition features 16 pieces, including three glass photo-sculptures. Other pieces have multiple tintypes combined to create a panoramic image of battlefields, he said, and four are tintypes of maps of the Gettysburg battlefields, drawn by the U.S. Army after the war.

Gray said he lived in Littlestown, Pa., until age 12 and spent many weekends as a child playing on the fields of Gettysburg. His family moved to Augusta, Maine, and later he studied at Hartwick College in Oneonta, graduating in 2001. He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University in 2009.

Gray said a sense of Gettysburg's importance sown during his childhood was solidified when he returned to the historic sites as a graduate student. Some pieces in the Fenimore exhibition were part of his final graduate school project.

Gray's works convey "a rich sense of nostalgia for a treasured and alluring American past," the Fenimore Art Museum website said, and his tintype montages express his perspective of Gettysburg history using a modernized version of a photographic technique popularized during the Civil War.

The Fenimore Art Museum is the showcase of the New York State Historical Association, which was founded in 1899. "Between the States: Photographs from the American Civil War" is an exhibition organized by the George Eastman House. The collection includes images by George Barnard, Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner and will be on display from April 1 to May 13.

Gray, 33, previously worked at the museum in school program. Museum officials were familiar with his work, Gray said, and he was "thrilled" to be invited to present his tintypes.

"This is by far the biggest show I've had," Gray said. He will speak about his exhibition in a museum "Food For Thought" lunch-and-lecture program from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. May 2.

Gray's solo exhibitions include "Tintypes and Polaroid Emulsion Lifts" at the Roxbury Arts Group in Roxbury, and "Semblances" at the Upper Catskill Community Council of the Arts in Oneonta. In 2009, he was awarded Best in Show at the Art and Soul of the Catskills Fine Arts Festival in Delhi, the Best Photograph Award at the City of the Hills Fine Arts Festival in Oneonta, and the Best Photograph Award at the Colorscape Chenango Arts Festival in Norwich, according to a media release from Hartwick College.

Gray described tintype as a process in which a photograph is printed on a thin black piece of metal painted black. The process produced inexpensive, durable photographs, which contributed to its popularity in the Civil War era, he said.

Gray said he studied photography studied under Katherine Kreisher and the late Ronald Wilcox at Hartwick, where he has returned as an adjunct to teach a class called The Manipulated Image. Gray said he enjoys working with 19th century photography developing processes rather than modern digital formats.

"I like the tactile qualities," he said. "I like getting my hands dirty. I like to be in the darkroom."

Gray is in his third year as program coordinator at Hanford Mills Museum in East Meredith. He is taking photographs there to create tintypes for an exhibition later this year at the Erpf Gallery in Arkville, he said.