December 2020 Print Sale and Fundraiser

My December 2020 print sale and fundraiser is now live! All of the photographs from my recent 50 for 50 collection (my favorite 50 photographs I’ve ever taken) are available as 4”x4” prints for $75 each, with $25 from each sale going to food security charities here in Maine. To take a look at the selection and order, go here.

Upcoming Camden Conference Talk

Svínafellsjökull #1, Iceland, Copyright Jim Nickelson. All Rights Reserved.

I’m very excited to announce that I’ll be presenting at an upcoming Camden Conference free community event on November 5th, 2020, from 6:30-8 pm (Eastern). If you are interested, follow the instructions at that link to sign up and get the Zoom link.

The theme of the upcoming Camden Conference in 2021 is the Arctic, and I’ll be discussing my 2018 artist residency in Iceland for the presentation. I’ll also discuss how pivotal this trip was in my own artistic development and resulted in a more activist stance in my own photography.

I hope you can join in!

Zest Maine Magazine & Other Online Features

“Pyrotechnic #35”, Copyright Jim Nickelson

The most recent Zest Maine online magazine featured an interview with me about my photography as well as a selection of my work. It was great fun to take part in this article, and I encourage you to check it out and see some of the other great content on the magazine, too!

Embedded in the article is a Youtube video of my presentation at Pecha Kucha in Rockport, Maine back in January, which I think we can all agree feels like a lifetime ago. In this short presentation I talked about my recent project focused on climate change.

And last but not least, my work has been included in two of the features of the online blog What Will You Remember - way back in May in a post called “Into the White”, and “Splash” in August.

Finding Our Voices

Mourning Moon I, 2016, Copyright Jim Nickelson. All Rights Reserved.

I’m proud to note that one of my photographs is included in the current fundraiser for Finding Our Voices, a non-profit focused on sharing the voices and stories of survivors of domestic abuse. Mourning Moon I and about 50 other pieces of art are available via auction through the end of October to raise money for Finding Our Voices.

You can see and bid on the artwork online here, and see it in person in the windows of 50 businesses in downtown Rockland, Maine during the month of October.

Fall & Winter Workshops

My fall workshops are now available and online, with The Sense of Wonder in September and my The Craft And Art of the Fine Digital Print in December. Find out more and register at the Maine Media Workshops website via the links above!

I’ve now taken and taught online workshops and have found that they can indeed by very valuable with modifications. It is great that we have the option of doing these given the broader circumstances.

Eco-Anxiety and the Pandemic Course

I’m honored to have my photographs included as part of the upcoming Eco-Anxiety and the Pandemic free virtual course beginning August 3rd. You can find out more from the poster below, and you can register here if you are interested.

"Our Maine" Zoom Artist Talk

Pale Fire, Canto One III

I’m excited to participate in the Zoom-based artist talk for the “Our Maine” exhibition at Rockland’s Archipelago Gallery. You can register for the free event here, and the talk will run from 2-3 pm on July 8th. Without in-person big events like openings on First Friday, this is a nice substitute! And, of course, the gallery is open to visitors and maintaining social distancing guidelines.

"Our Maine" at Archipelago Gallery

“Our Maine”, Archipelago Gallery, Summer 2020

I’m very pleased to be included in the “Our Maine” exhibition opening June 24th at the Archipelago Gallery in Rockland, Maine. A wide selection of newer work from my Harmony of the Spheres project, mostly from the Pale Fire series, is included.

The exhibition includes four other photographers as well — Olga Merrill, Lisa Mossel Vietze, Josie Iselin, and the late Terry Hire (a great friend of mine who we lost in January). Because of the pandemic, there will not be a traditional opening, but stay tuned for more details on what the gallery will be able to provide.

MMPA Antidote & Interview

Cosmographia #13, Copyright Jim Nickelson

I had a delightful surprise last week with the most recent Maine Museum of Photographic Arts newsletter, the MMPA Antidote. The newsletter includes (amongst other excellent content) a short interview with Ella Hudson about the purchase of one of my photographs in her collection.

Thank you Ella (and Knapp) for becoming a collector, and thank you to the MMPA for providing this sort of content during the global pandemic! I definitely recommend checking all the great content in the newsletter.

Earth Day 2020

Aspens, San Juan Mountains, #5

Today is the 50th (!) anniversary of Earth Day and the birth of the modern environmental movement. I’ve been wrestling with what to say about this, especially during the times of a global pandemic. Since the first Earth Day there have been incredible successes of the environmental movement — here in the US, the passing of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, the creation of the EPA, and so on (more details here). But all of these successes are at risk from the current administration as well as the increasingly conservative courts — I have little doubt that many of these environmental protections will be in shreds in the next decade.

Discussion of the impact of the environmental movement over the last 50 years cannot ignore the larger problem looming over us of climate change. I wish I had a more positive and uplifting message for today, but the problems facing us are immense and the fight will be long and hard — but fight we must, in hopes of making a better world for future generations.

Working the Backlog

Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Sunrise #3, New Mexico, 2018

For years now I’ve had a ridiculously large backlog of images to edit…just a few months ago I had over 15,000 photographs to deal with in some fashion, with the oldest ones going back to 2014. The results of four artist residencies and my big trip out West last fall were a big part of this group. Since the beginning of 2020 I’ve been diligently going through this backlog and have been making pretty good progress overall.

Now, being forced to stay at home because of the pandemic, it looks like I’m finally going to get caught up — something that seemed very unlikely for the past years as my backlog piled up higher and higher. I’m down to about 1,000 left of that original mass of 15,000, and victory is in sight.

Many photographers are taking advantage of this backlog, too — see these two recent posts as examples — and it certainly makes sense to do so if it makes sense for your life.

For me, finally ridding myself of this backlog will help me confirm or deny a theory I’ve had for a long time. I do a terrible job getting out to photograph on a regular basis and instead mostly produce only when I take a bigger trip and get away from all my other responsibilities. (Hence, those artist residencies I mentioned…) It has always seemed an excuse, though, and it certainly seems like I should be able to get out and photograph on a more regular basis, and I’ve wondered whether the backlog served as a disincentive to take more photographs and make my problem more severe.

As spring comes here in Maine and I finish the backlog, I hope to find out if removing the backlog also removes the extra burden on taking new photographs.

Pecha Kucha and Other Things to Keep You Busy

Back on January 31st (which seems like forever ago), I was one of the speakers at the Pecha Kucha night for Midcoast Maine at the Rockport Opera House. If you are looking for an entertaining hour, you can find the video online here (I’m the last presenter, FYI):

If you are an artist and want to use this time to work on the business or marketing side of things, I highly recommend this collection of resources from the CMCA.

Another link worth checking out is this compilation of free art and art history courses from Don’t Take Pictures magazine.

The artist/photographer Amy Parrish has compiled a list of free calls for entries and such here.

Enjoy!

The Photographic Life in the Time of the Coronavirus

Obviously the global coronavirus pandemic has been dramatically impacting news and lives of late, and details about how best to respond to this in terms of one’s life are beyond my expertise except to say follow good advice and be safe! I’ve temporarily shut down in-person contact in my printing business accordingly (though I’m still open for pick up and mail-order as of now).

Assuming you have been fortunate enough to stay healthy and remain employed, the biggest impact on you is probably a sudden clearing of the schedule. Schools and after-school activities are closed, large group gatherings suspended, gallery openings canceled, and so on.

For myself, I hope to take advantage of this sudden freeing of time to deal with many long-term projects. Articles I always meant to read, getting caught up on processing my photographs, writing an artist statement for my Pale Fire project, reading some of the many photobooks on my shelf, maybe even taking some new pictures finally. All while trying to spend too much time reading the news.

I hope all of you out there stay safe and also find some time to be creative or to learn!

A Dangerous New World reading on Wednesday

I’ll be participating in a reading at COESPACE in Bangor this coming Wednesday, February 12th, at 6 pm. The readings and presentations will center around the recent anthology “A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis”, which includes one of my photographs.

I still haven’t seen the book and I look forward to doing so on Wednesday, as they will have copies for sale. You can read more about the book here.

The press release with more details (and a poster) is below:

BANGOR — "A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis" is a new anthology of work by 65 writers and 27 artists who responded to a call for essays, poetry and art work on the effects of climate change — on their lives, their communities, their families and their futures.

On Wednesday, Feb. 12, at 6 p.m., former Belfast poets laureate Elizabeth Garber and Karin Spitfire and Camden photographer Jim Nickelson will join six other contributors at a reading event in Bangor at COESPACE, 48 Columbia St. Most recently, Spitfire’s poem “Liquidation” received the Outermost Poetry Award, judged by Marge Piercy, and Garber’s memoir "Implosion" was published in 2018. The recipient of many awards for his fine art photography, Nickelson has also served as artist-in-residence at Acadia National Park and Iceland’s Baer Art Center.

The collection is a complex mosaic of voices and visions, of thoughtful appraisals, careful observations, emotional responses, and scientific analyses, highlighting changes along the coast through the eyes of lobsterers and clammers, changes in the woods through the eyes of forest walkers and birders, images of natural beauty and its devastation through the work of poets, painters, photographers, installation artists, and sculptors. Edited by Meghan Sterling and Kathleen Sullivan and published by Littoral Books, the publication has a foreword by Governor Janet Mills.

Other presenters will include Kathleen Ellis, Annaliese Jakimides, Wendy Weiger and more. Singer/songwriter Lindsay Mower will perform new work, with refreshments and books for sale. Proceeds from all sales of the book benefit 350 Maine, a grassroots movement dedicated to solving the planetary climate crisis.

Book Artist in Residence

I feel like I’m at the beginning of a new adventure, as I’m excited to finally announce that I am one of the Book Artists in Residence at Maine Media Workshops + College for 2019-2020. I’ve been interested for many years in moving into the handmade artist book for my own work, and now I am finally actually doing it!

My residency extends until May 2020 and I’ll be working on a series of books related to my new Annals of the Former World project. Much more on this soon!

Pecha Kucha This Friday Night

I’ll be presenting on my Annals of the Former World project and my recent trip out West at this Friday night’s PechaKucha Midcoast Maine. The event will be at the Rockport Opera House — if you haven’t ever been to a PechaKucha talk, they tend to be very entertaining with a wide range of topics, each covered pretty quickly. Hope to see you there!

Here is the press release:

PechaKucha Midcoast will host an evening of visual storytelling Friday, January 31, at the Rockport Opera House, 6 Central Street. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m., the program will begin at 7:00. The snow date is Saturday, February 1, at 7 p.m. Tickets, $5 (cash), will be available at the door; a reception will follow the program.

PechaKucha (Japanese for “chit chat” and a registered trademark of PechaKucha, Inc.) features eight individuals who each share their work, ideas and creative process in a slideshow of 20 images for 20 seconds each.

Presenting will be Kerry Hadley, Worthington Scholarship Foundation; Patrick Manley, Masons on a Mission (MOM); Lisa Mossel Vietze, macro flower photographer; Jim Nickelson, fine-art photographer; George Pearlman, ceramist; Lynn Snow, community school garden; Amy Williams, artist and meditator; and Julia Einstein, Laura Dunn and Kathryn SB Davis, collaborative Instagram project titled “Maine Flora: Three Views.” The master of ceremonies will be Donna McNeil.

Favorites of 2019 and of the Last Decade

Every year I try to select my favorite photographs of the year and I have finally (and belatedly) finished that task for 2019. I was trying to catch up on all of my photographs from my Western trip in the fall and that task is mostly complete. You’ll find the twelve photographs below in this post — let me know what you think!

A necessary disclaimer of this type of list is that it is subjective — this is what I love the most right now, and someone else looking at the same body of work would likely come up with a different list. Similarly, my own preferences can change as well, and on a different day I might choose different photographs.

I realized when doing this list that I’ve actually been making these lists for ten years, making a nice tidy decade of favorites. Since these lists existed in a wide range of locations, I decided to gather them up and put them all here in my website. You can find my decade of favorites starting from 2019 and counting backwards here, and my decade of favorites going forward in time here.

I found this process even more fascinating than a single year of work as it allows assessment of artistic style, taste, subject, and skill over time. Hopefully you won’t see my path as one of long and slow degradation!

Jackson Glacier #1, Glacier National Park, Montana (Copy)

Jackson Glacier #1, Glacier National Park, Montana

Andromeda Glacier #1, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada (Copy)

Andromeda Glacier #1, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Andromeda Glacier #3, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada (Copy)

Andromeda Glacier #3, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Mount Burgess #1, Yoho National Park, British Columbia, Canada (Copy)

Mount Burgess #1, Yoho National Park, British Columbia, Canada

Emerald Lake #1, Yoho National Park, British Columbia, Canada (Copy)

Emerald Lake #1, Yoho National Park, British Columbia, Canada

Takakkaw Falls #1, Yoho National Park, British Columbia, Canada (Copy)

Takakkaw Falls #1, Yoho National Park, British Columbia, Canada

Badlands Snowstorm #2 (Copy)

Badlands Snowstorm #2

Illuminations #183 (Copy)

Illuminations #183

Biota, Bodega Bay #1, California (Copy)

Biota, Bodega Bay #1, California

Pale Fire, Canto One, III (Copy)

Pale Fire, Canto One, III

Pale Fire, Canto One, IX (Copy)

Pale Fire, Canto One, IX

Pale Fire, Canto One, XIV (Copy)

Pale Fire, Canto One, XIV

Pyrotechnic Expanded

Illuminations #183

I’ve recently updated my online portfolio to include two new expansions of my Pyrotechnic project. Pyrotechnic was one of my first two projects and I worked on it between 2011 and 2016 until it reached a natural stopping point. Last year I went back to it, though, to explore color in addition to form and line. You can find the two spin-offs, Illuminations and Pyrotechnic Redux, on that portfolio page with examples from the portfolios now ready to explore.