The Temple Gallery is pleased to announce its first exhibition of the 2011-2012 season, Stephen E. Strom: Earth and Mars, featuring recent work by photographer by Stephen E. Strom. The Earth and Mars photographs are a series of diptychs that juxtapose Strom’s abstract desert landscape images against photographs of Mars from the NASA archives, producing works of profound beauty and mystery. The exhibition opens September 9 and runs through October 18. An artist reception has been scheduled for Friday, September 23 from 5:30-7:30pm. Strom will also give a talk about the Earth and Mars project, tentatively scheduled for October 14.

The Earth and Mars series comprise diptychs that pair images of Mars obtained from the NASA archives with Strom’s desert landscapes, which operate at multiple levels of meaning. Diptychs such as Dune Field, Mars/ Dunes, Great Sand Dunes National Park underscore the aesthetic affinities that result from Strom’s meticulous editing and sequencing of the Mars-scapes, to highlight the colorful rhythms and patterns found in his desert landscapes. The shifting sands of Colorado seem as profoundly ethereal as the Dune Field on Mars; neither image possesses the markers that help us identify distance, scale or perspective. Strom’s diptych registers with equal importance the geological affinity between landscapes of the two planets which results from the application of similar natural forces. However, our understanding of the Earth and Mars photographs should not be limited to measures of science or aesthetics.  Rather, Strom’s diptychs propose something much greater, a philosophical, even mystical response to the multitude of patterns and rhythms found in the universe. The Earth and Mars series, visualize a metaphysical intuition, that we are all connected by a universal force, greater than the sum of our individual or even collective selves.

Stephen E. Strom: Earth and Mars opens at the Temple Gallery on Friday, September 23, 2011 from 5:30 to 7:30pm. The Temple Gallery is located in SoCo (the recently designated cultural district South of Congress) at the Temple of Music and Art in downtown Tucson at 330 S. Scott Ave. Regular gallery hours are Monday – Friday, 10am to 5pm and before Arizona Theatre Company performances on Saturday and Sunday. An artist talk is tentatively scheduled for October 14. For information about the show or to confirm time and place of the artist talk, contact Etherton Gallery, which manages the Temple Gallery at (520) 624-7370 or info@ethertongallery.com.  To confirm Temple Gallery weekend hours, call the box office at (520) 622-2823.

Stephen E. Strom
Stephen E. Strom began photographing in 1978 while pursuing an academic career as an astronomer. Best known for his abstract desert landscape images, he has collaborated on a number of books including: Secrets from the Center of the World with Muscogee poet, Joy Harjo (1989); Sonoita Plain: Views of a Southwestern Grassland, with ecologists Jane and Carl Bock (2005); and Tseyi (Deep in the Rock): Reflections on Canyon de Chelly, with Navajo poet Laura Tohe (2005). Strom and colleague Stephen Capra documented the grasslands of Southern New Mexico for Gregory McNamee’s Otero Mesa: America’s Wildest Grassland (2008). Strom’s monograph Earth Forms, was published in 2009 by Dewi Lewis Publishing. Stephen Strom’s work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States and is held in the permanent collections of the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, Tucson; the Fred Jones, Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma, Norman; the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, Amherst, MA; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, MA.

Temple Gallery
Since 1990, Etherton Gallery has managed the Temple Gallery at the historic Temple of Music and Art, home of the Arizona Theatre Company. The gallery is a mainstay of the downtown Tucson arts community and hosts several exhibitions each year featuring painting and mixed media by top local and regional artists. The Temple Gallery is located in SoCo (the recently designated cultural district South of Congress) at 330 S. Scott Avenue. Regular gallery hours are Monday – Friday, 10am-5pm and before Arizona Theatre Company Performances on Saturday and Sunday. For more information, please contact Etherton Gallery at (520) 624-7370 or info@ethertongallery.com. To confirm Temple Gallery weekend hours, call the Temple of Music and Art box office at (520)622-2823.