Going Home: Andy Giordano, Rockwell Visiting Artist
Going Home: Andy Giordano, Rockwell Visiting Artist
October 14 to December 1, 2016
Opening reception Tuesday, October 25, 2016
5-7 p.m.
"Artists seek to transcend technical strength. They seek meaning, emotion, and connection."
—Andy Giordano
As an educator, photographer and outdoorsman, Andy Giordano is driven by a passion for connecting people to the wonder of the natural world. He is inspired by the views at doorstep, and surrounding his home in the Sierra Nevada. Giordano's photographs feature landscapes and wildlife images feature scenes from the American West and the Intermountain West. His goal is to create pieces that not only look like the moments he is experiencing, but also allow the viewer to feel what he was feeling in that moment.
Artist's Statement:
“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity”
—John Muir, Our National Parks
In Going Home I seek to share my grounding spaces and the emotion that they evoke via my explorations throughout my home range.
Sierra Nevada peaks are familiar to me; they are anchors in my experiences. This does not mean that they are static. I seek to connect with the viewer in time and feeling. My images are composites of the seeming permanence of the landscape, the shifting truth of weather and the perspective of the observer. Perspective is everything in photography. I am the observer: among giants, reliant on the features of the landscape, pursuing instinct or desire, creating images to reveal and share my intention.
From the age of 12, the mountain environment inspired me to seek and discover adventure. I pushed deeper, traveled and climbed peaks, paths and passes in order to understand these places, to make them a part of me. Internalizing my environment is now an active pursuit, but it wasn’t always. Paths often appear under our feet without our intention. We seek a fulfillment, and it becomes a passion, a driving force in our lives.
My passion for landscape photography emerged from these experiences, and I moved to Lake Tahoe, the Northern Sierra Nevada. Unique in length, location and scale, the mountains that compose the Sierra are austere, surprising and at times, reclusive. It has been said that one can’t be disappointed when turning down a road into the Sierra. I have made many and fully support this position.
Going to the mountains, for me, is truly Going Home. Throughout my life, travel in the mountains shifts my thinking, stripping away all of my concerns and replacing them with anticipation and serenity.
—Andy Giordano