People, Places & Things

This exhibition features three contemporary artists whose unique talents enable us to see through “new eyes” the people, places and things that may often be perceived as ordinary. Ben Aronson’s oils of cityscapes and the denizens who inhabit them have been described as impressionistic photorealism. With color, light and gestural brushstroke, Aronson brilliantly conveys the distinctive movement, luminosity and space that define the urban environment. Joel Babb’s woodland paintings of interior Western Maine and Florida are distinguished by a classic realism. Devoid of human presence, his large, meticulously rendered landscapes evoke a silence, grandeur and spirituality in the manner of great American landscapists such as Albert Bierstadt and Asher B. Durand. Alec Soth’s photographs include landscapes, interiors and portraits taken on his drives along the Mississippi River from Minnesota to Louisiana, as well as images from such incongruous locales as Niagara Falls and Bogota. Soth skillfully documents ordinary moments with photographs containing humor, pathos, uncompromising truth and quiet sensitivity.