On a recent sunny Sunday afternoon, several reporters from the Simpson Street Free Press visited the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan. The museum is currently hosting a special exhibit called “Stretching the Truth.”

We were there to check it out.

The artwork in this exhibit steered away from traditional methods of photography, and pushed the medium into new, innovative territory. Many of the artists’ work used different forms of media and included collage, sculpture, and painting.

****

One artist’s work in particular stood out to me. The artist was Chambliss Giobbi, and I found his work fascinating.

Giobbi was not originally an artist, but a classical composer. When Giobbi tried art, he decided he wanted to steer in that direction, instead of music.

 One interesting piece, called “Head of Fisher Stevens III,” had many different aspects to it. There was a man in the picture that was distorted and had several noses, a few pairs of eyes and an oddly shaped head. Giobbi took pictures and pasted them onto the canvas. He would mold clay under portions of the photograph to give them more depth.

 To me, this way of working seemed to push the limits of photography in ways I had never thought of before. I looked at these pieces of strange looking art for quite some time. I even went back several times to look at them again. They made me imagine what else might be possible in making this kind of art.

Another exhibit that caught my eye was by an artist named Abelardo Morell. Morell works with a traditional technique called “camera obscura”, but with a modern twist.

In traditional camera obscura, a photograph is created through a box, or camera, with a tiny pinhole. The pinhole allows light to enter the box. But as the light travels it is refracted, causing the image to appear upside down.

Morell creates his own camera obscura by using an entire room for the box or camera body. He then combines the images of the interior of the room and exterior into a single image. This large format camera, in combination with the artist’s unique technique can take up to eight hours to yield a single image. I was just amazed by the whole process. Talk about “thinking outside of the box.”

                        *                        *                        *                        *

In the “Stretching the Truth” exhibit we saw many variations of photography. It became very clear to us that photography has evolved in many ways from its traditional methods. With all of the different types of distortions artists can make with images, today’s photographs and today’s photographers   now depict a more fiction as well as reality.

I think we all learned a lot about art from going to see this exhibit. On they way home I told my fellow reporters that the exhibit felt like we were watching people think. We thought that was pretty cool.  We learned that photography can be more than a depiction of what truly exists; it can be a “stretched truth.”

The “Stretching the Truth” exhibit is open through May 3, 2008. The Arts Center is open Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Tuesday and Thursday from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. For more information, call (920) 458-6144 or visit www.jmkac.org.

Whether you go to Sheboygan to see the “Stretching the Truth” exhibit, or for some other reason, always take the time to visit the Kohler Arts Center. This is a fantastic place full of things to explore. This was my second visit to the Kohler as a member of the Simpson Street Free Press museum team. The Kohler Arts Center earns my highest recommendation.