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October 4, 2002/Tishri 28 5763, Vol. 55, No. 6
'Desire and delusion' drive local artist
ALISA SLOAN
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 "Artist's Proof," a self portrait by Ken Storch, is a 17x22-inch carbon pigment print. Photo by Ken Storch |
After seven years without publicly showing his art, Storch is about to commence a one-man show at The Katherine K. Herberger College of Fine Arts' Northlight Gallery on Arizona State University's main campus.
Friends and associates have been pressuring him to show for some time, yet despite their pleas, the desire to show again arose only after an important win in a juried competition. But more on that later.
"I've always had an interest in photography," says Storch. "When I was a little kid I would cut pictures out of magazines and my mother, being an indulgent Jewish mother, put up with my making of a four-wall montage of my favorite pictures, so the room was covered with photography."
His interest in art was varied and sophisticated.
"As a child I would drag my parents to the Metropolitan Museum (of Art) or MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) - rather than the other way around," he recalls.
A childhood gift of a small Kodak box camera led to an important realization: "I discovered the discrepancy between what you think you see and what the camera sees.
"I was out in a field early in the morning, and a rabbit came out into the field... I took a picture, and then when I got it back, it was a little brown dot in a field of green."
Storch didn't become seriously involved in photography until years later, when a fateful cross-country trip led him to Arizona. With a 35-millimeter camera and no knowledge of photography, he shot 20-30 rolls of film.
Disappointed more by the mistakes at the photo lab than by his amateur status, he decided to learn how to develop film himself.
"I'm a self-starter," he explains. "If I'm interested in something I just plunge in ... When I get up in the morning I start warming up the monitors before I make coffee. That's how bad it is."
A "serious transplant," Storch, a native New Yorker, has been in Phoenix since the late 1970s. He taught photography and related classes at a number of schools in Arizona, including 13 years with Scottsdale Community College. He currently teaches all levels of photography, digital imaging and Photoshop at SCC and Yavapai College in Prescott.
Storch has never taken a photography class himself.
"At the time (in my early 20s), the colleges and universities really didn't have photography programs," he says. "I did research to find out what the professionals were using. I went out and bought the things and self-educated."
Storch is a self-taught artist in many mediums - digital and conventional photography, oils, watercolors, pastels, inks and traditional drawing media. As he admits, "I've pretty much built my life around my artwork."
Themes in his artwork - which often combine all of those mediums - have diverse inspiration, including his Judaism.
"I use iconography from various religions and mythologies and so on and some of the work I've done contains Jewish themes."
Though his themes vary, he says, other recurring elements include architectural details (especially from classical ar-chitecture), people, and specific aspects of nature such as plant life and the Southwestern landscape.
"I would have to say that throughout all of what I'm doing, the sense of light that I'm trying to record is kind of infused with my feelings about life and metaphysical questions of life," he opines.
Storch has amassed a 25-year body of work which, he says, friends have encouraged him to show publicly. He decided to send out his new work to a number of competitions and open calls, and received a mixed response.
"I got one piece in a show and then the next five entries were rejected outright," he admits. "Then I won the grand prize at the Northlight Southwest 2002 that was juried by the curator of photography at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts."
That new work is the subject of his one-man show at ASU, titled "Evidence of Desire and Delusion." Roughly 16 pieces will be shown that call on the physical and metaphysical to express Storch's ideas about perception.
"It seems that there is an aspect of the universe that is self-reflecting," he says. "In other words, everywhere you look you see some aspect of yourself - the way that you're looking at the world determines, in part, how you see the world."
Seeing your own perceptions everywhere you look makes it difficult to determine the "truth," says Storch.
"If you have a particular intent - if you are looking to ask a particular question - where is God, for an example - you are going to get back some reflection of your intent in that answer."
This, notes Storch, is where he finds it difficult "to draw the line between desire and delusion." The artwork in the show reflects that conundrum, he adds.
Currently he is working on a large-scale photo mural, and the work in this showing is a study for that piece.
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Details:
- Who: Ken Storch
- What: "Evidence of Desire and Delusion"
- When: Through Oct. 15 Times: Tuesdays-Thursdays, 10:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.; Mondays 7-9 p.m.; Sundays 12:30-4:30 p.m.
- Where: Northlight Gallery in Matthews Hall on ASU's main campus, at the corner of Tyler and Forest
- Cost: Free
- Call: 480-965-6517