Exhibition notes:
Tide Pool features eight framed 18" x 24" archival ink print photographs (24" x 30" framed) of seaweed by Portland artist Michael Heiko. A highlight of the show will be the artist's first exhibited puzzle print: a 500 piece puzzle print (edition #1/10) which the public audience can help put together. Heiko's puzzle prints are available for $150 each.
The exhibition is an introduction to a body of the artist's work focused on tide pools which he has been pursuing since 2006. "All of the images are Maine tide pools," notes Heiko: "They are not manipulated. They are shot, printed and framed right here in Maine. They're living local sea flora."
Before the Tide Pool works, Heiko started with large format pinhole photos of rocks and shells on the coast. Unconsciously, he moved closer and closer to the tide pools until he finally moved into the water to shoot the subject. Heiko spends up to 15 minutes to set up a single shot: taking into consideration time of day, the tide, the sky, the light and, most importantly, the seaweed within the moving water. Says Heiko: "The flow of the seaweed in the current is the key to the image: the way it settles and floats with the ebb and flow of the water." His process is all about diligence. "The meniscus and the bubbles coming off the living seaweed keep me looking," he admits: "This process is all about patience and observation."
The layering of Heiko's seaweed photographs leads to complex effects: like the layers of posters ripped off of urban buildings or the growth and decay of sediments. The seaweed photos are all about texture. Sometimes they have more to do with Jackson Pollock than landscape photography. "The puzzles are in some ways a throwback to my being a kid and loving to have fun," explains Heiko, "but I think they do something amazing with the seaweed pictures. Because those are more like fields of rhythm and texture, they build up an aesthetic tone more than the image of a single object or scene. Breaking them down into bits for the puzzles, I think, reveals something about the complexity of the flora and fauna in the tide pools."
Michael Heiko's work was featured in Re-View — an exhibition of abstract photography that ran at Daniel Kany Gallery in Jan/Feb of 2008. Before coming to Portland, Heiko worked for over a decade as a professional photographer in New York City where he owned and operated a studio in Brooklyn. In addition to exhibitions, his work has appeared in the New York Times, Outside Magazine, Men's Journal, Parents Magazine, Print Magazine, Fairchild Publications and on numerous book covers for Random House Doubleday.
Tide Pool, June 6 - 28, 2008