For Immediate Release

Contact: Carol O’Sullivan

July 20, 2010

412-681-5449

Filmmakers Announces Divided Sky,

a Photo/Video Exhibit by Michael Sherwin

(Pittsburgh, PA) – Filmmakers Galleries presents, Divided Sky by artist Michael Sherwin, on view from August 16 through October 17, 2010. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, September 30. An Artist Talk is from 6:00 – 7:00pm; reception begins at 7:00pm. They are free and open to the public.

Sherwin, a native of Southwestern Ohio, incorporates both still and moving images in his work. He says he is interested in “making art that reflects on the experience of observing nature through the lenses of science and popular culture.” – whether they be webcams or waves. “Recent developments in technology are expanding the ways in which we experience the concept of distance,” he explains. “Webcams, online mapping, and video sharing websites are allowing artists, amateurs, and armchair cartographers to chart the intangibility of place.” According to Sherwin, the work in this exhibit uses appropriated web-based imagery and recorded video to explore “extended and redefined conceptions of landscape, distance and place.”

This solo exhibit features It's All Relative, an immersive 50-channel video installation, with audio. Using the video-sharing website YouTube.com as a resource, he appropriated 25 versions each of the most recent total lunar and solar eclipse and combined them into composite videos. From the professional astronomer to the amateur stargazer, the installation reveals a collective interest in the universe.

Also featured is World Wide Web, a photographic installation. For this piece, Sherwin circumnavigated the world – virtually – appropriating various web cam images as he went. In a grid created on the wall (which references longitude and latitude lines) he’s placed each image in its approximate geographical location.

Sherwin received his BFA in Photography from Ohio State University and his MFA in Photography from the University of Oregon. After an eight-year stint in the Northwest, he recently accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Photography and Digital Imaging at West Virginia University. He has won numerous grants and awards, and has exhibited regionally and nationally. His website is: www.michaelsherwin.com

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