Distinguished SSCC Member Charles Bowers Talks about His Work
In this 65th anniversary season of SSCC, we continue our celebration of accomplished club members at the “master photographer” level. Charlie Bowers is among these outstanding members. Here’s the narrative he tells about his experience as a photographer and the reasons he took up photography initially…
“I am a practicing Landscape Architect who specializes in residential gardens. The motivating force to choose photography as an expression of my art was to document and feature the gardens that I design and build. Over the last fifty years, I’ve won more than 300 national and local awards for our gardens. In the process of photographing these gardens, I discovered another way to express my art, first in the darkroom and now in the digital darkroom.
“When I moved into the digital image capture photographic world, I followed my previous footsteps in the film world by including alternative processes in my repertoire. The digital realm allows me expanded exploration into digital painting, digital texturing, and collaging. Additionally, I do emulsion and image transfers and various forms of mixed media. My results are printed or transferred onto canvas, wood, watercolor paper, and other media using state of the art archival-pigmented inks.
“My imagery includes people and their relationship to their environment, architecture, landscapes, gardens, flowers, and the natural world. I have built extensive collections of work in these and other areas of subject matter over my years of experiences and travel. I also have numerous portfolios of ideas currently waiting to come to fruition.
“My art has appeared in several one-person and numerous group exhibitions over the years, and in many local and national and international magazines, commercial publications, and newspapers. Often, I’ve written articles to accompany my images for these venues. And I produced a photography book about a garden through the seasons and the years.
“My art hangs on the walls of private homes and corporate offices.
“My most recent shows include:
- November 2014 my “Faces of Cuba” show consisting of twenty-six images was featured co-solo show at The Artists Gallery in Frederick, MD.
- September 2015, into October, my “Nature’s Colors Textures Patterns” show was the featured solo show at the Howard County Conservancy.
- September 2015 the “Faces of Cuba” show was a solo exhibit at the Full Circle Gallery in Baltimore, MD.
- March/April 2016 my “Nature’s Colors Textures Patterns” show will be the featured solo show at the Bernice Kish Gallery in Columbia, MD.
- July 2016 my “Nature’s Colors Textures Patterns” show will be the featured co-solo show at The Artists Gallery in Frederick, MD.””
If you’re curious to learn more about this distinguished SSCC member and his work, you can visit www.cwbowers.com to see Charlie’s art and www.gardengate.net to see his gardens.