Dan's Papers - January 16, 2009 -

Defining Moments in an Artist's Life, Part II: Kathryn Szoka and Janet Culbertson

At first glance it seems unlikely that photographer Kathryn Szoka and painter Janet Culbertson have a lot in common. But for both, an unfortunate turn of events changed their professional direction.

For Szoka, it was her father's bout with dementia that propelled her to do a series of photographs documenting his illness. The endeavor was a far cry from her previous pursuits and, in fact, was an even farther cry from her signature landscape images. But realizing that Szoka's training and background have been diverse, it comes as no surprise that she took on her father's photographic essay. Like all her other projects, it evokes potency and preciseness. Such conciseness and attention to detail may have derived from Szoka's study of math at the University of Maryland, although this is, admittedly, an assumption. Other training followed that combined math and aesthetics, as Szoka went to California to work in computer graphics - a pursuit she continued when she moved to New York. A 1983 weekend visit to the Hamptons, however, landed her here for good when she "fell in love with the area."

Thus, Szoka began her career as a landscape photographer, her water views especially beautiful, the composition and lighting most memorable. But when her father became ill, she decided to do a series of images based on his relationship with the family.

The photographs are both objective, recording daily routines, and subjective, particularly when Szoka is part of the picture. As such, they bring both intellectual timelessness to her father's life and an emotional "here and now." Although the images are not constructed or created, they evoke the astounding natural composition and lighting that Szoka is known for.

Szoka spoke of how her father's story and the subsequent photographic series become a defining moment. "When we were walking through the nursing home one day, my father suddenly turned to me and said, 'There's a crooked knee here,' referring to his dementia," she said. "And then I understood."

A "personal apocalypse" (car accident) changed Janet Culbertson's aesthetic life. Always involved in studying to be an artist, her love for drawing started at an early age, continued at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie-Mellon), with teacher Balcomb Greene, and ending with a Master of Arts degree from NYU. The high point of her academic life, she says, was teaching painting and art history at Pace College.

After marriage, Culbertson went to California with her husband, drawing hometown life inspired by her family album. Yet her penchant for nature led her to paint the area's desert and canyons. Moving back to New York, Culbertson found other ways of painting nature, traveling to the Galapagos Islands and the Grand Canyon, "fueling my sense of awe and concern for the earth." She took another step in her artistic career when she helped establish the idea of eco-feminism with her articles and paintings.

Yet things changed dramatically when Culbertson had an automobile accident and spent six weeks in the hospital. As she put it, "the confrontation of my mortality deepened my awareness and clarified my vision toward the future world. The degradation of the environment seemed very real... and perhaps paralleled my physical destruction."

That awareness has inspired Culbertson to create several series based on the environment, including "Billboards," "Industrial Park Series, Overview," "Toxic Landscapes" and "Response to 9/11." Culbertson has finally found her calling, and we are the better for it.