Braving the Elements

Believe it or not, some of us love winter and its simple pleasures like taking a walk during a snowfall, making snowmen and warming up with a mug of hot cider.

Winter is also an interesting subject for art, as is proven by “When Winter Comes,” an exhibit running at the Gallery at the South Brunswick Municipal Building through Dec. 26. The show contains snowy scenes of forests, parks, homes created by more than 30 area artists.

John Sandstedt’s “Great Falls On Ice” is a photograph of the Great Falls in Paterson, taken in 2009. In the black-and-white image, cloud-like streams of ice are frozen as they hang over cliffs. Sandstedt says he goes to the falls about four times a year with friends and camera clubs.

“The Falls take a different character each season,” he says. “When it’s cold, the ice builds up because the spray forms and as the spray goes up, the water freezes and drops down and eventually builds into these blocks of ice, and it’s very interesting.”

Sandstedt is a retired environmental manager who snapped his first pictures when he a child. He got more serious about photography in the 1970s, and participated in a  New York Institution of Photography program when he approached retirement. The at-home course involved reading assignments, audio tapes and video tapes, as well as exercises that were critiqued by an adviser in New York. He says the program resulted in a significant increase of the quality of his work, and he continues to learn new things by reading photography magazines and websites.

“Great Falls in Ice” was shot in color, which Sandstedt adjust with Photoshop, framing and sharpening the image. Often, editing a picture, he’ll make a black-and-white print to see what it looks like.

“I love black and white,” he says. I always make a black-and-white of anything I spend time with, or something which I think might be a unique picture. And certainly the picture of the ice falls into that category.”

Other photographs in the show include “Still Snowing” by Sue K. Green. It shows what looks like a park, with snow gathering on tree branches and inviting light glowing from street lamps. It’s a peaceful scene but in wall text, Green writes that the viewer could also be thinking about the stressful commutes that happened after a snowfall like this.

“Second One Out” is a picture taken by Bill Hoo of Plainsboro. It shows a residential street covered in a foot of snow — even winter lovers are going to dread shoveling out of this mess. The title comes from the set of tire tracks that are already in the street, that driver was the first one out on this day, the photographer is the second.

Winter ties these works together, but that doesn’t mean they’re all the same. Robert E. Heyer’s watercolor, “Seasons Greeter,” depicts a bright and colorful scene at a train station in New Hope, Pa. The sky is a brilliant blue, the train is green and the snow is bright. The greeter of the painting is a snowman, bearing a big, charcoal smile, a pipe, a Santa hat and red scarf billowing in the breeze.

The colors in Bob Ambrosio’s digital photo, “Waiting For Spring” are more subdued. Here in Jamesburg’s Thompson Park, winter is more gray and bleak. The trees are empty and the snow is more gray than white. There are striking touches of red in the picture, from the two plastic swings and the top bar of the swing set.

Grace Chiarella’s “Skiing” is, as the artist describes it, a “pure water color.” It’s a playful image of people in a long, S-shpaed line for a ski lift. Everyone’s dressed in colorful ski outfits. The faces look similar, hidden behind dark ski goggles, but some people seem colder and less patient than others.

Chiarella’s skiers look chilled to the bone, but the girl in “Granddaughter and Winter in Princeton NJ” is comfortably warm. The painting by Necati Itez of Monroe shows a girl who looks about 7 or 8, lying on a coach and reading by light from the sun and bright snow that’s resting in the forest-like scene outside a large window. The girl is wearing a sleeveless shirt and shorts, or maybe a skirt, either way her legs are bare.

Truly, one of the joys of winter is protecting ourselves from it.

“When Winter Comes” is on view at the Gallery at the South Brunswick Municipal Building, 540 Route 222, Monmouth Junction, through Dec. 26. The gallery is open when the building is open: Monday.-Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and some evenings when meetings are being held. For information, call (732) 329-4000, extension 7635.