To capture the rippling interplay of light and waves in the waters around Martha’s Vineyard, photographer Jeanna Shepard shoots when the setting or rising sun casts a honeyed light across the sea.
Her gleaming images, rendered as high-definition color prints on metal, are on display through Sept. 12 in Golden Hour on the Vineyard, her current solo show at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Society lobby gallery.
It’s rare on-Island opportunity to view a collection of fine art photography by Ms. Shepard, a Vineyard Gazette photojournalist who also maintains a Connecticut-based portraiture practice.
The four close-ups in her tranquil, yet absorbing Heading Home series easily achieve abstraction in their swirls of liquid blue and gold. At the same time, they convey both the restlessness and the timelessness of the sea.
The effect of each — and especially of the four together — is soothing and meditative, like gazing at the waves over the rail of a small boat at the end of a sunny, satisfying day out on the water.
More exuberant reflections fill two further abstracts, Sun Dance and Ocean Park Awakening, with sweeps of movement and gilded sparkles that explode like fireworks across the frameless images.
A red bell buoy, with on-board gull, centers the show’s largest work, It Tolls for Thee. But we know it is red only because of its shape and even number (6): The just-rising sun, blazing across a calm sea, has driven all other color away except for the remnants of night still darkening the gently-moving surface.
Presented at the film center in collaboration with Featherstone Center for the Arts, Golden Hour on the Vineyard opens along with the box office at 7 p.m. nightly.
The film center hosts a reception for Ms. Shepard Sunday from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
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