Oklahoma City artists Rea Baldridge and Joseph Mills make creative couple
Husband-and-wife artists Rea Baldridge and Joseph Mills of Oklahoma City pose with some of their works at JRB Art at the Elms. (Photo by Bryan Terry/The Oklahoman)
From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
Husband-and-wife artists featured in dual show
Rea Baldridge and Joseph Mills don’t believe photos must be confined to single frames, that paintings are required to be pretty, or that art should be limited to what can be created on paper or canvas.
“We just have fun,” Baldridge said.
The Oklahoma City husband-and-wife artists will be featured in their first dual show this month at JRB Art at the Elms. gallery in the Paseo Arts District. The exhibit will open with a reception from 6 to 10 tonight. during the monthly Paseo Gallery Walk.
The show includes Baldridge’s bold abstract paintings and Mill’s evocative black and white photographs. Baldridge, 59, said the oil paintings she has created the past few years represent a departure from the conceptual art projects she’s known for. For instance, she and Mills once produced a mini magazine called the Tiny Town Crier that required a magnifying glass to read it.
“I’ve always been involved in either unusual media or multimedia. I’ve done everything from a lot of film stuff to music to … to products that may or may not exist,” she said.
Nowadays, she paints her abstract canvases from specific subjects; recently, she’s based her works on movies, particularly John Ford Westerns.
“Ideally for me what I’m working towards is for a painting to require one to look at it for a long time and see what they want to see,” she said. “I’m trying to not control what’s seen as much as allow to viewer to make it their own thing, like (with) clouds.”
Unreal photography
For his art photography, Mills, 64, uses a Diana, a plastic toy camera first produced in Hong Kong in the 1960s. Working with it is the antithesis of the high-tech equipment he uses in his commercial photography business.
“It’s a very simple little device and it kind of takes it back to just the primal seeking of a photograph,” he said. “Also, it’s a challenge: What can you do with this crude little device.”
His stunningly layered panoramic photos of Oklahoma City and Paris aren’t created with Photoshop or any computer tricks. He takes multiple shots of his subject, but doesn’t roll the film fully to the next numbered frame. So, instead of creating separate photos with spaces between them, the camera produces a single multi-exposed image where the shots have overlapped on film.
“This is kind of like the roll of the dice. You don’t have a lot of control, you don’t know how much exactly you’re overlapping, you don’t know if the two images when they’re overlapped and intertwined if they’ll work or not,” he said.
The results can vary dramatically: While his view of Notre Dame tilts crazily, his layered Louvre panorama is more subtly distorted.
“It’s something that doesn’t exist but was caught on a camera,” he said.
Couple collaboration
The couple, who have been together more than 20 years, sometimes collaborate on projects, but always influence each other’s work.
“With this work, even though it’s in two different genres, we kind of collaborate just by proximity,” Mills said.
“We feed off each other,” Baldridge added with a laugh.
The artists have separate studios in their home. But they work together in their commercial business, Joseph Mills Photography.
“We respect one another’s judgment and we can be pretty …” Mills said.
“Brutal,” Baldridge interjected.
“… brutally frank. But somehow it works,” he said. “We seek each other’s confidence in our work all the time; in a way, there’s always that collaboration.”
They understand each other’s creative quirks and share a love of art that dates back to childhood. They met at Classen Grill in 1987 and developed their friendship – and later romance – through the arts community.
But there is one disadvantage to marrying another artist.
“That means both of you will not make money; both will be penniless, instead of one of you being the backer or the patron,” Mills said, getting a laugh from his wife.
On exhibit
Art by Rea Baldridge & Joseph Mills
When: Today-July 25.
Where: JRB Art at the Elms, 2810 N Walker, Paseo Arts District.
Opening reception: 6 to 10 p.m. tonight during the monthly Paseo Gallery Walk. The gallery walk continues from noon to 6 p.m. Saturday. Go to www.thepaseo.com to learn more.
Information: 528-6336 or www.jrbartgallery.com.
- BAM
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