Patrick J. Cicalo is Kent Library's featured artist for October

A group of chemigrams  by  Patrick J. Cicalo, entitled "REACTANT" , will be on display at the Kent Public Library through Oct 31.  In simplest terms, without the use of camera or lens, the chemigram process marries everyday household ingredients with light, traditional silver gelatin photo paper and common darkroom chemistry. But perhaps more importantly, a large dose of trial and error, with the latter being most necessary in giving birth to REACTANT.

 

According to Mr. Cicalo, "Necessity may be the mother of invention, but it is necessity’s child that interests me most. All too often the cycle of life and art reach an apex only to become predictable and stagnant. But out of boredom something grows.

Recently, with idle hands and a head filled with doubt, I took up a project that was partially triggered by a challenge but mostly on a whim. I needed to add a bit of the random to what I’d been doing in my photography and fell headlong into the chemigrams on display at the library."

 

Mr. Cicalo is a photographer in the contemplative surrealistic style and more recently chemigrams, an alternative camera-less & lens-less photographic process.He is a founding partner of Red Circle PhotoArts Collective and an exhibiting member of Soho Photo Gallery in NYC, as well as current president of Ground Glass, a fine art photography group established in 1975 and based in the Metro NY/Westchester/Fairfield County area.