Beta Fictions
Andy Bloxham

February 11-Mar 21, 2009

Andy Bloxham won 1st Place in the 1078 Gallery’s juried show last spring. The juror was Scott Shields, a curator at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. Bloxham was born in West Monroe, Louisiana. Growing up, he used creative writing, theater, and photography to share his imagination. Now, Bloxham works to fuse all three elements for a concentrated approach to photography. He received his BA in psychology and is currently working on his MFA in photography at Louisiana Tech University.

Bloxham’s statement about Beta Fictions: “My imagination runs ever so wild, keeping me up at night with potential story characters and sidetracked during the day with moments of their interaction. I frequently take walks to find locations where my imaginary movie cameras suddenly turn on and I am cast in the leading role of my introspective film. Inspiration for stories originate from anywhere. Beta is a series of photographs inspired by actual dreams. These scenes raced across my mind as short films, highlighting my sleep and interrupting my mornings. I often woke to sudden gasps of reality to wash away the subconscious compositions. The ideas were translated onto paper, and then into physical sets and locations.

“My background in theater and stage performance was the organic element needed for each image. Once all of the location variables were locked into place, I was freed to live inside a story and respond to my created setting. The circumstances defined what took place, while my actions in front of the camera defined how. Lighting and post‐production were used to enhance the sensation of fiction by replicating the look and ambiance of cinema and stage. In this series, every photograph is an entire event’s culmination. The Beta images are orphaned from their larger story and by creating them, I give them a chance to become the starting point for future fiction in the viewer’s imagination.
“In the end, I am a storyteller....”

You may find more information at www.andybloxham.com and by reading some of his explanatory notes: “The dreams originally were experienced while wearing the nicotine patch at night as I quit smoking. I kept a thick notepad that listed, in vivid detail (like a short story), each dream. They served as inspiration or starting points for the body of work, and as the series matured, I started crafting stories from the old fashioned imagination. I have a BA in psychology, in addition to a background filled with creative writing, theater, filmmaking, and as a drummer for six years in a punk band. I feel all of that poured in to these images, both in how I approached creating them, in addition to the manner in which the stories are told from one image to the next. I don't view the series as one big story. Rather, I view myself as an actor playing a new role for each short film that exists as one frame. There's also the element of humor that I like to maintain in images. I love the idea that people can enter a gallery and smile, laugh even, at the images they see. Humor helps keep me at ease. Maybe it does for others, too. I enjoy entertaining people.”

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