Organic Light

Organic Light features Bob Capazzo (photographer), Jane Cowles (sculptress), and Mahtab Pedrami (installation). This trio will be transforming Gallery One with whimsical and botanical inspired works which blend sculptures with fanciful function.  

Through May 27

Bob Capazzo: I am a photographer, owner of a photography business and senior photographer for Moffly Publications. Over the last thirty years, this role has given me the privilege of shooting events, celebrities, musicians, top chefs and many fascinating people. These images have been on over 100 magazine covers and featured in countless articles. My photography and the people meet in my travels, inspire me to pursue other interests. I play guitar in my own rock, pop & funk band, not to mention I build most of the guitars I play. I study dance and have a black belt in the martial arts of Tae Kwon Do & Hapkido. I also enjoy golfing and skeet shooting. I volunteer for with many charity organizations as photographer or as a lending hand. Business wise, I currently sit on the board of The First Bank of Greenwich. I have been married to my wife Georgine for 32 years and our daughter, Ashton is a graduate of Skidmore College.

 

Jane Cowles: I consider myself a self-taught artist, even though I received a BA in fine art from Drew University. My desire to create began long before then with my need to reconstruct the images I imagined while reading fanciful stories as a child. The processes I use are methodical, thoughtful and intentional. Like the plot of a novel unfolds, each design evolves detail by detail. My idiosyncratic, sometimes overly ordered style is influenced by growing up in a chaotic household and my training as a tax attorney. Organization is my way of making sense of it all. So most, if not all of my work, is done in series, a set of squares and reflected on stark white backgrounds.

 

Mahtab Pedrami: My interest in art and design began in the suburbs of Tehran, Iran. I was 8 years old, serving as a very enthusiastic assistant to my geologist father, who was working with microscopic fossil specimens. He would extract iron-rich clay deposits, soak them in water for days, then pour the resulting mud onto a sieve and gently rub it until only the microscopic sediments remained. Regardless of the weather, I would sit with him in the yard to “wash dirt.” It was an arduous and time-consuming task – I had to be careful not to damage the delicate fossils – and my family and friends often wondered why I was so interested in helping. While part of the allure was simply spending time with my father, there was also a very real attraction to the feel of the clay in my hands, between my fingers. I relocated to the United States in 2003 and settled in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I enrolled at Louisiana State University and was majoring in jewelry design when I had to take a ceramics class for the first time. The first day of class, I opened my bag of terra-cotta clay and cut off a section with my wire cutter. I carefully removed that piece, stared at it, then started forming it. I immediately felt the same softness I’d felt in my dad’s fossil-rich clays. From that point on, I was more and more drawn to ceramics. It was during this time that I began to understand the importance of my relationship with materials and their inherent properties, and how to trust my intuition and allow myself to be guided. As a ceramicist, I’ve made a lot of ceramic dish-ware, much of which ended up in people’s china cabinets as precious objects rather than kitchen cabinets as everyday tools. This was interesting to me: the distinctions that arise between objects of beauty and objects of function. I did not think they had to be mutually exclusive, and I began to consider ways in which I could design pieces that were both functional and pleasing to the hands and eyes.These reactions led me to pursue a graduate degree in industrial design at Pratt Institute. After matriculating in 2010, I became increasingly interested in patterns and designing furniture and home goods. Since graduating, I have worked with various brands such as Giorgio Armani, Yves Saint Laurent, and Anthropologie as well as working on personal projects. In 2016, I founded Albesque, a multi disciplinary company that focuses on creating unique and one of a kind objects and spaces.