Photographic storytelling by Judith Sparhawk | Arts & Entertainment

For 30 several years, artist Judith Sparhawk has concentrated on bringing a lot more playfulness into her lifestyle. Now guests to the Redlands Art Affiliation (RAA) can expertise Sparhawk’s imaginative photographic art bending truth firsthand at the gallery in the thirty day period of July. Jewelry artist Kay West is the other highlighted artist this month.

“I didn’t definitely begin performing anything at all right up until I was in my 50s. I experienced invested a superior 20 many years overworking and underplaying. I did nothing at all but get the job done for so long,” explained Sparhawk. She employed to get the job done as a vocational rehabilitation counselor, the place “The get the job done never ever ended.”

Somebody gave Sparhawk the book “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron, which modified her everyday living, and she taught The Artist’s Way workshops for decades afterward. She tried various media, but pictures truly stuck, she stated.

“I like the thought of staying in a position to seize a moment and maintain on to it,” she explained about pictures.

Sparhawk has lived most of her existence in and all-around California. She put in five several years in Anchorage as a child. For the past 40 yrs she has called Redlands house. For 25 decades she has been involved with the artwork association, wherever she now will work as the gallery supervisor.

For a extensive period, she has captured Redlands imagery. One particular of her most popular series was generating collages of the many Redlands’ images she took.

“I sold a whole lot of all those around the a long time.”

Then she required to move on.

“I went from film to digital kicking and screaming,” she stated. “Eventually I acquired that electronic opened up a ton of alternatives.”

These possibilities have resulted in Sparhawk creating photographic art of up to 30 layers of images to generate a tale. “The paradox that’s involved in matters that you do not assume to see jointly. That is the genuinely exciting aspect of doing this,” she reported.

Her artwork has appeared in a lot of juried reveals in Redlands and San Bernardino, winning very first, next and excellence awards, together with at the Redlands Digital camera Club.

Very last yr she won a person of the top rated awards at the Redlands Conservancy’s photography contest.

Aside from pictures, Sparhawk is a huge birder, and she has finished a lot of writing. The latter has resulted in 8 self-revealed textbooks.

“In the commencing it was really just showcasing [my] images and perhaps just one minimal sentence,” she reported.

Photographing her granddaughter’s cats turned an plan that grew and grew. In the starting they would discover their way into the pictures here and there. The 1st photograph centered all over cats was “Friday Night’s E-book Club” that showcases her granddaughter’s cats: Trixie, Luna, Minerva and Hermione.

From there Sparhawk established photographs of cats. Every graphic tells a story and these illustrations or photos resulted in a photo e book for her granddaughter past year.

“I devoted the e book to her and experienced her cats in it,” she stated.

That was 1 of three textbooks she has posted as a result of the current pandemic a long time.

“I am incredibly happy of my textbooks,” she claimed. “The simple fact that I’ve performed them and been in a position to express myself creatively in lots of strategies.”

Other strategies she has worked on involve “Emergence,” how the roles of gals arise throughout difference phases of their lives. One more time she took a sequence of images on the celebration of regular books when digital readers were taking about the earth.

This is Sparhawk’s fourth highlighted demonstrate. It has been 7 yrs because she had the very last one. There will be matted prints, cards, bookmarks and mugs with cats. She will have some of her books offered, too.