The Last Stand – Photography Solo Show

The Last Stand Opening (Review)
Richard Trueman
David Ellingsen’s „The Last Stand” opened Friday to a large crowd. This show continues on:

Saturday and Sunday August 16, 17, 2-6 PM
Friday August 22, 6-9 PM
Saturday and Sunday August 23, 24, 2-6 PM

This is certainly a show for Cortes with our interests in and organizations to sensibly manage and save the forests for posterity. Many of us have walked the woods and have come upon a “stump”, But now with David’s show at the Old School House Gallery on Cortes, everything has changed.

David, through his singleness of vision and through repetition of this vision, has co-opted these stumps and iconized them into haunting Stelas, grave stones, or skulls that bring sad thoughts of depletion, and abandonment. The image of the stumps with the sacks over them remind me of atrocities, renditions and firing squads. Many of the images with „step holes” in them are anthropomorphized into the anguish of Edvard Munch’s “The scream”. (These step holes were for the loggers to stand on to man the double handled large saw.)

David makes a lot of us question the practices of our predecessors as we cry with these standing dead to make sense of the world that requires this for a man to make an „honest living to support his family”.

David‚s photography, craft, and presentation is superb. From sharp 2 1/4s and 35mms, to beautifully printed and hung limited edition prints, this show has a professional exquisite feel to it.

Warning:
David should be arrested for „stealing” our stumps for I guarantee that after you see his show you will not be able to walk the woods without sadly saying in your mind, “Oh, there is another David Ellingsen’s”

(from Tideline)