Elizabeth Shatner

The Museum's most anticipated fundraiser, Art in Bloom opens this Friday,  February 21 thru the 23  featuring over 50 floral interpretations of art from the Museum's collection.The public is invited to see the Museum in full bloom Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 12 - 5 pm. Admission is $8.

Photographer, Elizabeth Shatner is the Art in Bloom 2014 Signature Artist. You can meet Ms. Shatner on Saturday, February 22 from 1:00 until 3:30 pm. The price for this Meet the Artist event is included with the $8 Art in Bloom admission.

You can also meet Ms. Shatner Saturday night at the Night on the Town Cocktail Reception,  from 7:30 - 10:30. Tickets for this event are $100 / $75 and can be purchased online or at the door.


Ms. Shatner didn't realize it but, before she ever picked up a camera, she had already spent most of her lifetime preparing to become a photographer.She began a successful horse judging career at the age of fourteen, and over the next several decades accumulated a body of work that included nine different breed affiliate cards. She spent those years honing a unique skill set: the ability to observe a horse-rider combo, compare it to an ideal, and then pick the competitor that suits that ideal -- all in a short period of time.

"As the horses in the class are passing, my brain takes a snapshot of not only the shape, manners and presence," says Elizabeth, "but also of how are they working as a whole. I'll have to remember that and compare it to the others as well as to the standard… so my mind is capturing impressions and stationary images for comparison, in both real time and remembered time."

A few years ago, while on a photo shoot in Israel with her husband, actor William Shatner, she was inspired to pick up the camera and quickly found that her judge's eye was the pathway to becoming an artist. "When I capture a moment in time, for recording beauty or history, I tend to categorize the subject, or the thought it inspires. Looking through the lens seems to stimulate the same portion of my brain and consciousness that it takes to ride or to judge." She finds in her subjects not only visual aspects, but also themes, stories and meanings.

ELIZABETH SHATNER
Crystal Light 5, digital print

For Elizabeth, photography has led to a meditative relationship with time and permanence, the intangible and the tangible. What is at first a moment of reality in her eye, becomes a thought in her mind's eye, then becomes a reflection captured in her camera. Residing there on a chip, it is a ghost made of only potential, and will be lost forever should the image be erased. However, the ones that make it to a physical medium (be it hard drive, projection, or canvas) take on lives of their own. "To be moved by a sight, a thought, or a concept into taking a natural image from fleeting moment to archived "piece", is an action much like conception. To me, that's a form of miracle."