Downtown Photos by Ric Rosow on Display in the SmartArt Rotating Art Program at the Convention Center
Wednesday, October 7, 2020 at 3:46PMArticle and photos by Mill District resident Ric Rosow
As a long-time resident in the Mill City area, I’m delighted to take part in the SmartArt Rotating Art Program at the Minneapolis Convention Center. The program “Call for Art” seeks to highlight the spectacular visual art created by local artists…with a cultural or geographic perspective that is unique or appropriate to Minneapolis. Art Force requested submissions of original, two-dimensional artwork by Minneapolis artists. I’m thrilled to exhibit four of my pieces: Brilliant Downtown on the River, Moon Hiding in Downtown, Brilliant Downtown Sky, and After the Game.
I live in the Mill City District and each photograph in the exhibit is a view from our neighborhood. While there are many lovely photographs taken every day in this area, I look for unique scenes that are unlikely to be replicated anytime soon. While sunset and sunrise occur every day, while the river and downtown buildings change only slowly, the time of day, the season, the temperature, cloud cover, and other factors affect what we see. I see the cityscape as the canvas and the editing software as my paintbrush. I combine both to create beautiful pictures that depict downtown Minneapolis.
In Brilliant Downtown on the River, above, I took a daytime river scene and turned it into a neon light show.
In this photograph named Moon Hiding in Downtown, my goal was to capture the moon in a position partially behind a downtown building. I did that. But I also captured a surprising element of another building that I did not initially notice. It was so surprising that I had to use my binoculars to make sure it was really there and not an unreal artifact in editing the photo. See if you can find it.
I edited Brilliant Downtown Sky to bring color to a foreboding cloud formation.
In After the Game, I concentrated on highlighting the glow of lights all around the city as that was what attracted me to take the photograph in the first place.
The photographs are each 54” x 36”, printed on canvas and mounted in a floating black frame.
