by Molly McKasson
Its name implies a very urbane fabrication shop. Perhaps that's the way it started out for owner Scott Baker at Metroform's original location on Stone Avenue. He featured art in all mediums, including his own exquisitely handcrafted wood furniture. When Scott moved his gallery over to 6th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues last summer, he dedicated his new space and his quiet passion solely to the advancement of fine photography.
My 17-year-old first called my attention to Metroform early last fall. We were enjoying a successful opening next door at Davis-Dominguez Gallery, and Clay wandered outside with some friends and then migrated into a new space just to the west. "You gotta see these photographs, Mom." It was a wonderful exhibit of three female photographers -- Rosanna Solania, Kristin Giordano, and Jennifer Shaw, whose photo of a warehouse loading dock with rain dripping off the overhanging tin roof still haunts me.
From that point on, Clay and I have been Metrofans. Scott consistently shows work that is on the edge, from artists solid enough in the exigencies of their art to push the envelopes of both form and content, and who do this to get closer to what is essential to them. When my son and I left the First Annual Winter Group Exhibit last November, we felt as if we'd been to a huge show.
In truth, the gallery is small, but the quality of the 25 or so different photographers left a felling of expansiveness and depth. Both Clay and I remember an elegant untitled composition of glass and nudity, the work of local artist Blair Friederich.
And then there was a frenetic and sublime photograph of three ponderosa pine trunks, with coils of white light spiraling in and out of them. Though it wasn't literally possible, my first impression was that the artist had captured a surreal unraveling in the forest, and my intuition accepted it completely. When Clay and I looked more closely, we began to think that the artist had done something chemical to the photo or maybe just scratched the negative. Whatever the process, it made my heart jump.
After the show, we continued to talk about this piece, entitled "The Three Surrenders." Clay asked Scott how the artist got electric coils to squiggle behind the dark trees, and we found out that Stu Jenks had used a very slow exposure and run between the trees twirling a hula hoop ringed in little white lights. The result is a photograph that makes you feel more deeply for the trees and more profoundly for the spirit in yourself.
Last February, much to Clay's and my delight, Scott opened a one man exhibition of Stu Jenks' work. Each photograph set us off in a new imaginative exchange. This artist has a way of capturing gesture in everything. Instead of outlying the world, Stu gives you the inside scoop -- the movement and intrinsic character of specific places, one after another, in both the natural and man made worlds -- Haw River in North Carolina, Monument Valley (with an apocalyptic orange exposure), Coalmine Canyon, the Abajo Mountains in Utah, a chapel in Virginia, Ventana Canyon, and Mt. Lemmon to name a few.
We loved the side-by-side frames in "Haw River, North Carolina," "Aspens Ascending, Utah," and "Equinox Rock, Arizona" in which the artist lets the walls of the world give way so the essence of rivers, trees, and rocks can come rushing through. There wasn't a photograph in the room that did not make me feel more alive, or Clay fell more like reloading his Nikon and shooting a slew of pictures. (Stu generously spent time at his opening explaining to my son the different techniques used for each shot.)
For me the message was instant: Leave the shutter open longer -- do not rush -- stay still, and you too can glimpse the movement of stars, of fire, and of the life force spinning, coiling, and spiraling through everything that seems flat in life's daily rush. Jenks gently loosens our perceptions to give us a better sense of what is really out there.
"The Three Surrenders", we learned, were three ponderosas that later ended up incinerated in last summer's Aspen Fire -- which brings me to one of the last photographs that we saw, "Aspen Fire Ring". It is not like any other photo I've seen of that horrific event. The fire burns in rings, not unlike the illusions Jenks so often creates. The smoke becomes an otherworldly ether that helps remind us that even in this terrible destruction, life is hovering, spirit does not let go.
New galleries are almost always "random acts of beauty and kindness." I hope that Tucson will discover Metroform and that Scott will be around for a long time. This kind of sustainability is so important for artists like Stu Jenks, whose studio is just around the corner at the Toole Shed. And it is so important for our city's soul.
Metroform Limited Gallery, at 110 E. 6th St. Call 882-6606 or visit www.metroformlimited.com for more information. You can see some of Stu Jenks' work at www.stujenks.com.