PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
The Arts Council of Tuscaloosa
Contact: Kevin Ledgewood
pr@tuscarts.org
205-758-5195, x6
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAY WATERS CONTINUES AT THE DINAH WASHINGTON CULTURAL ARTS CENTER IN SEPTEMBER
(TUSCALOOSA, Ala.) The Arts Council of Tuscaloosa will continue to host an exhibit of photography by Jay Waters now through September 24, 2021 at the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center in Tuscaloosa. Titled “The Fringe Quarter and Points West,” the exhibit is composed of Waters’ black and white images featuring the people and places of the American South and landscapes of the American West.
The exhibit is open to the public weekdays from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. The display will be open during the First Friday Art Walk on September 3 from 5-7 p.m., reflecting new Art Walk hours at the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center. Other galleries will continue to be open during their preferred times as listed on www.firstfridaytuscaloosa.com.
For complete gallery and artist information, visit cac.tuscarts.org/cacgallery.php. Visit www.jaywatersphotos.com to view more of his work.
Jay Waters is a native Alabamian currently teaching full-time in the Advertising and PR Department at The University of Alabama. Before joining the University, he pursued a career in advertising for over 20 years and was also in the retail grocery business.
With early influences including his mother, Mary, an accomplished commercial artist, and his father, Jerry, a construction worker with a serious photography habit, he has been interested in writing and photography since childhood. The early exposure to his father’s Bessemer darkroom was one of his most significant artistic inspirations.
Minimally processed landscape-oriented black and white photos are his preferred format, especially those taken with a mobile phone. Mobile phone photography of the images, scenes and stories that naturally appear during one’s day, whether at home or traveling, is the focus of his work. This style reflects his artistic influences, drawn from various fields including Edward Hopper, Randy Newman, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Evans, Ansel Adams and Alfred Bierstadt. The black and white photographs from the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and photographers such as Gordon Parks, Spider Martin, and Charles Moore have also played a major role in his style development.
Credits include many online and print journals including The Lincoln Review, The Arkansas Review, The Wondrous Real, Straight Forward Poetry, The Broken City, and Reunion, The Dallas Review.
“The Fringe Quarter” is a collection of photographs from New Orleans that focuses on the people around the fringes of one of the most visited tourist attractions in America – the French Quarter in New Orleans. The waiters, street buskers, vendors, homeless and musicians often fall into the background of New Orleans’ image as one of America’s most romantic cities. This collection of photographs seeks to focus attention on those usually overlooked when walking through the Quarter.
“Points West” is a collection of landscape photographs from the American West, including Alaska and Hawaii. In many of the black and white photos, the emphasis is on showing the interaction of people and their scale with the landscape.
The Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center is located at 620 Greensboro Avenue in downtown Tuscaloosa. For more information about The Arts Council, Bama Theatre or CAC, patrons should like the Facebook page “The Arts Council – Bama Theatre – Cultural Arts Center” on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram @tuscaloosaartscouncil. Call 205-758-5195 or visit tuscarts.org for further information.
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