Richard Trenner's Show is on view at Gallery 125, through Aug. 2.
The photograph of an abandoned farmhouse surrounded by a veil of fog evokes the feeling of an early summer morning, still cool because the sun hasn’t yet burned through the mist. Ironically, photographer Maia Reim says the image was captured closer to the winter than summer solstice. It was in January that Ms. Reim took the picture, part of an ongoing project.
The longtime Skillman resident takes her camera with her on bike rides in the area, taking pictures of the many abandoned buildings and barns that teeter on the brink of being bulldozed.
”That farmhouse has been demolished but I wandered through it for years,” Ms. Reim says. “It’s now a sod farm — I call it a ‘field of dreams.’ What’s interesting is that I showed (that image) at the Mary Jacobs Library and the librarian said, ‘I know the people who used to live in that house.’ It’s the recent past.”
Structures are disappearing and land is changing hands so quickly in central New Jersey, that you might drive past something beautiful and old in the winter, then pass through again in the summer and it will be gone. Part of Ms. Reim’s artistic mission is to make a visual record of this vanishing rural lifestyle of New Jersey.
”You can still find abandoned homes and camps and things, especially in the Sourlands,” she says. “These are smaller homes that don’t have the amenities people are looking for now.”
Ms. Reim’s photograph is part of the group show The Art of Summer, at Gallery 125 in Trenton, through Aug. 2. The exhibit features 31 painters, photographers and mixed media artists and was curated by Margaret O’Reilly, assistant curator of Fine Art Collections and Exhibitions at the New Jersey State Museum.
In addition to Ms. Reim, central New Jersey is represented by Princeton Junction resident Michel Jean Paller, Hamilton residents Bill Fitzgerald and Madeliene Celeste Lumen, Richard Trenner of Princeton, Plainsboro’s Alan Beck, Susan Pitak Davis of Lambertville and Lawrence resident Leigha Cohen.
Ms. Reim had originally titled her image “Disappearing House” — it is currently titled “Farmhouse in Fog.” She revisited the site many times, including the summer, when the structure was surrounded by fields of flowers.
She names Walker Evans and Imogen Cunningham among her favorite photographers. Ms. Reim also admires Andrew Wyeth and especially Edward Hopper, the latter for the way he used light.
With a considerable background in black and white photography, Ms. Reim currently shoots in digital color, “creating still lifes and landscapes that reveal the intrinsic beauty of fading New Jersey life,” she writes in her artist’s statement. “Not merely studies, my images suggest stories; viewers will make their own interpretations from the visual cues.”
Ms. Reim grew up in Chicago, earning a bachelor’s and master’s degree in fine art, majoring in photography at the University of Iowa’s School of Art and Art History. She did additional study at the Art Institute of Chicago and the School of Visual Arts in New York.
With a career as a graphic designer for the publishing industry, Ms. Reim has been advertising art director at Princeton University Press since 1989. She is a member of the Princeton Photography Club and a friend of Gallery 14 in Hopewell.
While living in Chicago and Iowa throughout the 1970s, Ms. Reim mounted numerous solo exhibitions of her black and white silver print photographs, participating in juried group shows as well. After a long hiatus during which she raised a family, she began showing digital prints in 2006. Since then, her involvement in the photographic arts has escalated rapidly.
Just a sampling of her shows includes Remnants, visions of our rural past, a solo exhibition at Gallery 14 that ran in March and April; the Ellarslie Open; and the Phillips Mill 16th Annual Juried Photography Exhibition in New Hope, Pa., recently closed. Ms. Reim currently has images on view at the Marie L. Matthews Gallery of the D&R Greenway Land Trust as part of the show Our Historic Landscape. Her design for a “water lily clock” was part of Time for TASP, a benefit exhibit and auction for the Trenton After School Program.
In August, Ms. Reim will again exhibit Remnants, visions of our rural past, a slide presentation and solo show curated by Maria Evans, in the Arts Council Gallery at the Princeton Public Library.
This is the first time Ms. Reim has shown her photography at Gallery 125 and she is delighted to see the caliber of work on view.
”I’ve known a lot of other photographers (who have shown there) and they told me about this wonderful gallery,” she says. “When I brought my piece to the gallery I was pleased to see such a renaissance going on in Trenton.”
The Art of Summer is on view at Gallery 125, 125 S. Warren St., Trenton, through Aug. 2. (609) 989-9119; www.gallery125.com
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Field of Dreams
