Bobby Izquierdo exhibited three still life light paintings in the Smelt Gallery exhibit at The Plant in Pittsboro, NC: Forsythia in Bud Vase Pottery, Simpson Meter, Rear Projection CRT, and Soldering Iron, and one of his Pittsboro Day-to-Night fine art photographs, Chatham County Court House, 2021. The Smelt Gallery exhibit ran from February 1st through March 26th as part of the Chatham Artists Guild’s rotating shows at The Plant.

Each still life light painting in the Smelt Gallery exhibit was built the same way as the rest of Bobby’s still life light painting gallery: a single subject, lit entirely by hand in complete darkness, one pass of light at a time. Forsythia in Bud Vase Pottery pairs a cut flower with a hand-thrown vase, while Simpson Meter, Rear Projection CRT, and Soldering Iron gathers three obsolete pieces of electronics into a single narrative frame.

The Pittsboro Day-to-Night photograph of the Chatham County Court House, 2021, took a different approach, blending day and night exposures of the same building into one image.

Showing both bodies of work together in the Smelt Gallery exhibit gave visitors a chance to see two sides of Bobby’s photography at once: hand-lit still life work built one light pass at a time, and long-exposure architectural photography built from multiple exposures of the same scene. Both approaches share the same goal of finding a single image that could not be captured in a single, straightforward exposure.