Mary Arnold: Nightlights

J.V. Rahilly was an engineering librarian in Ontario.

Mary Arnold is a 31-year-old West Coast artist who works and lives in Sidney, British Columbia. She creates images and special effects through the medium of cameraless photography. This catalogue records her fifth solo exhibit (all on the West Coast; she has also appeared in numerous group exhibits), which occurred April 5 through May 13, 1984. This oversized book contains 14 “papergrams,” all untitled, all linear and vertical in array. Through her use of the properties of paper, light, and chemicals (black-and-white tones, different drawing techniques and scratchings on paper), she quite often achieves a three-dimensional effect. Often she will do cutouts for a discontinuity of surfaces and for rotational positions of the lines. This is, of course, not photography as we know it but using the medium and the chemical processes to produce varied surfaces and visual effects. A useful catalogue, with a critical introduction by Bellerby, a curriculum vitae on Arnold, and substantial reproductions of the works themselves.