Alexandra Wallace is a local photographer whose skills have already earned her work in fashion photography both in the area and for online publications. Her artistic style in the fashion world has translated over to the personal work she created for her first solo exhibition, which is showing for the month of May in the Santa Maria Public Library’s Shepard Hall.
“I’m often thinking in an editorial mindset, where you’re given a very limited number of frames to tell a story,” Wallace said. “It’s more fun for me when it’s more like a frame from a film, when you try and capture a story in a single frame.”
Wallace’s photos all include female models—mostly friends she met in the fashion world—and are often surreal portraits. Each frame, she hopes, will actively tell the story while also eliciting feelings unique to the viewer.
“I really try and take feelings and sometimes experiences that I have and through this, create an image with it,” she said, “not necessarily in the most straightforward way, but you can have a feeling of uncertainty, or excitement, or anger, and it’s kind of interesting to put that in a visual form.”
Surrealism doesn’t always lend itself easily to photography, but Wallace skillfully employs several techniques, including digital editing, to get the results she wants from her work: shots that immediately confuse and stimulate the mind.
“I do this as a personal kind of relief of feelings and ideas I have that I can’t do in my commercial work, so just doing it, I’m satisfied,” she said. “But if someone comes by and has a different interpretation, I would love to know what it is because I do that with other people’s work.”
Wallace’s prints at the show will be for sale, but the young photographer will also use her exhibition to gain donations for the Ian M. Hassett Foundation. Hassett was a Righetti High School graduate and skilled artist who passed away in 2012 from mediastinal non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. His parents have continued his memory with an arts foundation in his name.
“I knew him from my senior year at Righetti, but I remember every year at the student art show I would look at his pieces,” Wallace said, “and I’ll be honest, I remember feeling jealous because he was so good!”
There is no admission cost for the opening reception or the exhibition, but Wallace hopes that if viewers enjoy the show they will make a donation to the Ian M. Hassett Foundation. On hand there will be a donation box and information about the foundation, which awards scholarships and is currently coordinating an art supply exchange program to serve local art students.
“I remember when I was in school there weren’t very many opportunities for funding unless you were in sports or something, and in high school I was always involved with a lot of art,” she said. “I couldn’t think of a more fitting way of honoring him than doing something like this.”
Arts Editor Joe Payne enjoys artists supporting other artists. Contact him at [email protected].
