"Push and Pull" by Hugh McCloud, an image capture from a recent show at Duke University's Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, NC
1) Alexa and I are both on the mend. She's a month out of abdominal surgery and is healing well, even though it will be a long process to full health for her. But she is doing great, and she had a birthday on Sunday. Happy, happy, honey.
2) This coming Monday, I will have my final radiation treatment. I've had 36 out of 40 Easy Bake Oven sessions as of this afternoon. Frankly, the side effects have been horrendous. I'll spare you the details. Thank f-ing God this will all be over soon. But I'm hopeful that this will have zapped the little bit of cancer that I still had after my radical prostatectomy surgery in 2020.
3) And lastly, I'm pleased and honored to have been accepted into Tohono Chul's show, Elements: Fire. The show will open on August 25th and run through early November. I hope you can get to see it, if you are in the Tucson area. James Schaub, an amazing painter in his own right, is the Director of Exhibitions at Tohono Chul Park. He has quietly championed my work for a good number of years now. Thank you, James, for picking these two pieces for your show. Included below are the vision statements for these pieces and the images themselves.
That's it for now.
Love you all, and thanks so very much for the prayers and support you have given the Jenks, in this difficult summer for us.
Love, light and luck.
Stu
“Catalina State Park, Arizona (The Ikon)”
11 x 14 inch fiber based gelatin silver print, sepia toned
Edition: 9/25
Taken with a 1954 Rollei medium format camera, using Ilford 400 black and white film.
A time exposure of around 30 minutes, on a full moon night, the light source for the flame spiral, a Zippo lighter.
Printed in the Toole Shed Darkroom in Tucson, by me, in the early 2000’s
Price: $400
I could tell so many stories about this image: how it was used on a Steve Roach album cover; how it became the logo of the Mythic Journeys conference in Atlanta; how one woman came up to me at an opening and said, “It is so amazing that you were there when THEY came.”; how it’s one of my top five images I’ve sold in my career; and how I’ve enjoyed telling people how I create this flame spiral image, at many open studios and gallery openings.
Due to limited space, I’ll just tell this one story.
In 2016, Julie Sasse, the Contemporary Art curator at the Tucson Museum of Art, asked me to show this image as part of her Into the Night: Contemporary Art and the Nocturne Tradition show. I had printed up a three large, 16 x 20 inch fiber based prints of The Ikon over the years, one hanging in the ex-CEO of Krispy Kreme donuts’ home, one stored safely away, and another framed in my studio. The large framed print was given to Julie for her show.
That summer, a woman I knew only casually, took her godmother to see the Into The Night show. When she came to this image she said to her godmother, “I know that guy.” That started her wheels turning. “I want to get to know him,” she thought. She reached out to me a month later. In December, we will have been married five years. Her name is Alexa McCool Smith Jenks.
“DC-10 Spreading Retardant, Dragoon Mountains, Arizona”
4 1/2 x 8 inch archival pigment print
Shot using 70-200 mm IS glass, with Canon 5D Mark II back.
Price: $100
It’s too bad this image doesn’t come with a soundtrack. I’ll explain.
A few years ago, a terrible fire exploded near Cochise Stronghold in the Dragoon Mountains of Arizona. I drove down, found a low hill to stand atop of, and waiting for the DC-10s to make their passes.
(Photographer’s Tip: To take a good picture, go out into the world, find a spot, and wait. Then wait some more. Let the image come to you. Try not to chase it. Just be present in the space. Look, wait, and see what happens. Pop the shutter then.)
The DC-10s seemed to arrive every 20 minutes or so. I think I was there for an hour and a half. I captured two images that I liked. This is one of them.
Here’s what you don’t see in the photograph.
After the planes had dropped their loads, they banked hard to the left and headed back north to replenish and refuel. The little hill I was standing on was right below their flight path. I know they were probably over 100 feet above me, but it sure didn’t feel like it, as the sound and force of their accelerating engines shook my body. It was fabulous, almost as loud as a Social Distortion concert at the Rialto Theatre.
Almost.