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Plant and flower photography is a passion of
mine that the digital camera has made more enjoyable, due to the
gratification of seeing the results instantly.
When I first met Carol Rollick, my admiration
for her incredible flower images was matched with amazement when
she told me she did not use a camera.
Sure, lots of people have put flowers and leaves
on the platen of a flatbed scanner with some remarkable
resulting images but generally, they look liked pressed flowers
from a Civil War family bible.
Rollick's unusual technique involves putting
individual live flowers or small groups on a scanner with a deep
box lid to allow the blooms to "pose" in full dimension. And
dimension is what makes Carol's work spectacular. Her images
have a rich fullness that brings to mind Audubon's fantastic
bird prints, qualities that I find hard to reconcile with the
flat lighting of a scanner.
She then turns to Photoshop to extract the
blossom images from their backgrounds, "change their angle and
perspective," and, I suspect, doing a lot more with filters and
blending layers. The images are saved in layered .psd files to
become components of her rich flower montages.
Before flattening, the files must be huge as
Carol mentioned storage challenges, only "getting one or two
compositions on a Zip disk." She prints the images on an inkjet
in limited editions for sale.
She supplies the following artist's statement:
"Carol's career as an interior designer and
professional member of A.S.I.D fostered her love for the
"decorative fine arts." Coupled with her passion for nature, the
resulting floral images are a natural progression. Now, working
with the artist's newest tool, the computer, Carol creates her
floral images to brighten the home. Though neither photography
nor traditional medium, her images extol the beauty of form and
color. She produces her original images as limited edition
prints, signed and numbered by the artist.
"Throughout the ages, man has used tools to
express his vision of the world about him... a stick traced in
mud, a quill in berry juice, a brush dipped in pigment, a chisel
in stone... each tool has revolutionized art, but none, Carol
feels, as dramatically as the computer. Using this newest of
"paintbrushes," Carol's original floral images pay tribute to
nature's dazzling display, capturing their fleeting freshness
for year-round pleasure in the home."
In the 1920's, the painter-sculptor-photographer
Man Ray startled the world with his "Rayographs," found objects
placed on a sheet of photo paper, then painted with light. His
1921 "Bunch of Flowers" was just that, a small bouquet in shades
of black and gray showing dimension and detail.
It would be pretentious for me to compare Carol
Rollick's work with the acknowledged "genius" of the late Man
Ray. Different times. Different techniques. Different goals.
Man Ray's goal was to startle the art and
photography worlds with his daring experiments. Carol Rollick's
images are startling in their richness, their depth and their
color. I prefer Carol's work.
Carol Rollick, who splits her time between St.
Petersburg, Florida, and Franklin, North Carolina, can be
contacted by email at:
rollick@gte.net.
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