David Wing: “A San Diego Retrospective”/ A Solo Show
Opening Reception: Friday, October 2, 2015 6pm – 9pm
Exhibition on view October 2, 2015 – December 6, 2015
RSVP required for the opening reception – RSVP on Facebook or call/email the gallery to be on the list: (619) 696-1416 / events@sparksgallery.com
// Storefront installation by Gail Schneider
// A chance to revisit San Diego Landscapes Group Show
David Wing was born in California in 1947 and has been photographing the life and landscape of the American West for the past fifty years. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Museum purchases of his work include the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Getty Research Library. In addition to several limited-edition portfolios, he has published the monograph “Death Valley: The Ambiguous Landscape.”
After organizing a visual arts program for Sinte Gleska College in Rosebud, South Dakota, and making stereo photographs for the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, Wing was appointed to the art faculty at Grossmont College (San Diego County) in 1973. Over the next thirty years, he taught basic through large-format photography, and then inaugurated a digital photography curriculum in 1991.
Wing also offered a wide range of specialty courses such as “Photographing Public Events.” Prior to his retirement from teaching in 2003, Wing squeezed in two more semester-length seminars, “The Creative Process,” and “Why People Photograph.”
Wing is now devoted to photography full-time, working up new material and printing from his substantial archive of past projects.
“At first glance, my photographs seem to show me where I have been. But in the best work that I do, there are substantial clues about where I am going. The camera is facile and intensely intuitive, so my pictures can be far ahead of my mind. A year, or perhaps a generation later, I can make sense of them, and I can see much more clearly now, what my quick eye reached for then, when I was in the scene.
In this way, my eye and heart can lead me. If my mind catches up later, I am fortunate to feel whole, keeping my path in sight, following it faithfully. As I work, I pluck slices of time and space from my world, hoping for good pictures. Later, these treasured bits fit together and help me to understand and live my life. Photographs show me the way.” – David Wing