[Updated to this blog format from original published in May 2024]

The May 2024 exhibit for the UCLA Emeriti & Retirees Art Show showed some of my recent work in Spain. This was my second exhibit. The first was in the mid-1970s when I organized a Faculty-Staff Art Exhibit for the Graduate School of Management (GSM) as it was then called. I showed some of my photo-serigraphy, linocuts, and woodblock prints. Organizing community around our creative sides was in vogue back then. I also partnered in an art gallery with my father on the side, The Cooper Gallery. Partly as a result, I was recruited into the leadership of the Arts Management Program, a joint MBA program between GSM and the UCLA College of Fine Arts, which I ended up directing until I left for sabbatical in January 1979. On Mykonos, where round-trip correspondence with my prime reseacher partner in Japan took two weeks, I reconnected with the academic agenda that brought me to UCLA in 1969 and added 15 more years of joint research. We developed mostly tactical models of how to justify management decisions in information-rich environments. In the mid-1990s Intel urged me to think about how to do strategic planning for radically new products. The two streams merged when I founded Strategic Data Corp. (SDC), which was funded in very early 2000. Seven years to an overnight success…I had been back teaching new-venture initiation for over five years before SDC sold to News Corp (Fox Interactive Media). By 2009 I had begun efforts to scale student engagement with outside allies to address problems locally and in the world. I retired from that in March 2023. This is at least my third retirement, since becoming emeritus in late 2004. It’s taken this long to get me back to visual arts. I’m enjoying it.

I see the most beauty in my family. But this writing and exhibit aren’t about them. I’m captivated by the beauty I see without the familial exposure. In that sense I’m more interested in reflecting what I see around me -- my eye for beauty and bringing it out through photography, digital processing, and fine-art printing. I am not a nature photographer although seeing nature when it presents beauty provides the shot that begins my process. A photo tour is in the Vistas de Cádiz Gallery.

My son and his family spent time in many regions of Spain before deciding to fashion a vacation home in Cádiz. They made a wonderful choice. And when a great apartment became available a six-minute-walk away, we snapped it up. Spending quality time with kids and grandkids is well worth the price of admission. They deserve their privacy and there is more than enough beauty left over to fill this exhibit.

The sunsets are rightfully famous in Cádiz, having been called the best in Spain. Sunset at La Caleta is probably the most famous viewing spot. For winter sunsets at La Caleta crowds gather on the south side of the long causeway out to the deserted Castillo de San Sebastian.

The album-cover/first-image shows the La Caleta sunset as seen from the patio deck of El Faro, a well-known restaurant of long good standing. The sedimentary stones that form the wall befit a port village partly cut out of the sea, with history dating back to the Phoenicians. The low tide exposes the beach surrounding the causeway. This image has such a sense of place to me that I felt it merited leading the exhibit.

Summer sunsets move north to Castillo de Santa Catalina at the other end of the little bay that the two forts create. Here, we are more acutely aware of the shifting geography behind the sunrises and sunsets. Here, too, we are aware of the daily tides that float or strand the small barcos that anchor in this baylet. In some of my pieces from La Caleta you see views of the white building that juts out onto the beach with a small pavilion at the end. The woman at the frame shop recounted diving off the end as part of summer-school activities long ago. The tide never reaches near there anymore. It is the first west facing beach on the peninsula of the old town. I’m not sure how that would account for the inflows of sand.

Fans of the sunsets line up on the promenade above La Caleta as well as off on the distant causeway. Christmas Eve is a particularly popular time to watch sunset. The panorama below of Buenanoche also captures the bay guarded by the two forts.

The winter sunrise and sunset we can see from different ends of our front balcony facing due south onto the Atlantic. The late-night activities of most in this town means fewer people see the sunrises. With the fiery red sprayed across the morning clouds against the intense blue sky of the time, the beauty changes moment to moment. The earliest in one series in December 2023 was 30 seconds after the most spectacular sunrise I’d seen. That’s not enough time to get from the breakfast table through the two sets of double doors needed to get onto the front balcony and open a window in the glassed-in balcony.

Later in the morning, the balcony is a wonderful solar heater for the living room. At dawn on a winter morning, it’s cold. I have a summer image of the early sun peering through morning clouds with rays brightening the blue of the early coolness. I took that from the window in my study in the northeast corner of our apartment.

My wife took the two photos of the morning fog over the peninsula while walking to the market along Campo del Sur. I stitched them together into the panoramia seen below.

Whenever I think that I’ve seen enough brilliant sunrises, but I find one more irresistible, I cite Monet at Giverny as an ego ideal. The sunsets are even more enticing. And every different vantage point presents a new opportunity for discovery. One of my first visits to Playa Santa Maria provided a sunset view when it set on our apartment in the far distance.

Then there’s the Cathedral. Worthy of solo study – as in the image taken from Torre Tavira it is also a frequent reference point for many broader views, summer dawn, in particular.

The cathedral changes as the light changes.

A cadre of local churches add color and diversity.

Walking the perimeter of the old town we see that it is a walled city, with seawalls and fortifications all around the entrance at Plaza de la Constitucion. Seawalls extend way down the peninsula behind broad, sandy beaches. The fortifications at the north end of the peninsula include a row of cannons waiting to be photographed.

I try to capture dynamism with the receding volume of walls, the shape of the beaches, the dazzle of sun and clouds, and then there is this mainly static view from our living room looking south through the double layer of double doors. Only the shadow from the afternoon sun adds a touch of dynamism. Its very stillness appeals to me. It’s a beautiful view.

Every local restaurant has its own version of Tortillitas de Camarones – a simple batter, fast-cooked with small shrimp. The version at Aponiente shows the length their staff go to creating innovative designs and uses of the sea. If I did an exhibit on that alone, I might start with the delicious deep green butter they make from algae. They merit their three Michelin stars.For an excellent video tour of Cádiz see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdsbd5TFJYg:

I now shoot in Apple’s version of RAW on an iPhone 15 ProMax. The iPhone camera started as inferior goods and innovated more rapidly than professional-quality cameras, thus showing the innovator’s/attackers’ advantage and following the classic pattern of TALC (Technology Adoption Life Cycle) I taught about in the 1990s. The instant accessibility of my phone squeezes the time between what I see worth capturing and getting the shot. Depending on what postproduction I think is needed I use Lightroom for basic adjustments, Topaz.ai to enhance and upscale images. In other contexts I use Tapaz.ai to recover faces from old photos. Photoshop insures my prints have the desired image size with 360 ppi resolution optimal for Epson fine-art printers, and stores all results as 16-bit .tif files. The photo captures what I saw. In the final image I try to convey the beauty I saw and what it felt like. I find doing that successfully is very rewarding. And I don’t find mistakes frustrating at this point on the learning curve.

I’ve learned a lot about digital fine-art printing from Eric Joseph -- first through his videos for the LA Center of Photography and later with his help setting up my Santa Monica studio, calibrating monitors, selecting papers, and understanding Epson Print Layout through his store www.freestylephoto.com. I will continue to avail myself of his guidance. Epson Print Layout connects my .tif files to the Epson SC P5000 in Spain or the Epson SC P5370 in Santa Monica. In Spain I print A2, which doesn’t quite match the 17” x 22” format of the fine-art papers I use in Santa Monica. My current favorite is Canson Infinity Arches 88. They have been making paper since 1557. I have begun trying 17” roll-paper Arches 88 for more panoramic images. To help ensure that what I see on the screen is what I see on the paper I use a BenQ monitor, and Freestyle Photo color-calibrated the monitor and printer by creating a custom ICC profile for Arches 88 on my P900, which I've now upgraded to the SC 5370. I mount each print in a museum-board sandwich with the matting cutout close to the paper size. I hinge my paper to museum board with wheat-paste linen tape from a roll I acquired in the early 1970s when I was doing the analog version of my visual art.

Before the first show I felt that framing from that point is more a matter of personal tastes. What I learned from the show is when properly lit the light seems to come from within the paper, not a reflection, but as if the paper was backlit -- akin to how I feel when viewing William Turner's paintings of sunlight. More architectural pieces acquire a 3-dimensionality of sorts. 5000-Kelvin sunlight (also called museum light) from small goosenecked clamp lights worked in my case. There are many inexpensive options.

In Spain in 2023, I chose simple mahogany frames and museum glass that I am using throughout the apartment with its own many mahogany accents. What I learned in the show is these works are best seen properly lit without glass. So now, each piece is framed and ready to hang on the wall. Anything less would not be a whole-product solution that I taught about for a few decades.

These are limited editions. Each one I print has my LGC-chop embossed on the paper. They are signed and numbered in pencil. Many are named and identified by the year first printed. I am a collector of graphic art. This is the provenance I want for my collection. In the early 1970s I used photos in producing silk-screen images that I would print manually in limited editions. I did the same back then with linocuts and block prints. It was captivating and deeply enjoyable. At Workshop I.E., the cooperative artists workshop I used for this work I met the love of my life and still wife over 50 years later. Coming back to visual artistry after half a century pursuing my academic agenda has been wonderful for both of us. I find the digital extrapolation of that analog-70s process just as rewarding. My real joy is when looking at one of my pieces, I say, “If I could paint that, I would.”

The development of inkjet pigment inks that supposedly last 200 years provoked me to look back into fine-art printing. I’m glad I did.

This first exhibit is a fundraiser for the three performing-arts organizations I’m so glad survived the pandemic: The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (contact Laura Goodall <[email protected]>), The Los Angeles Ballet (contact Danielle Bearden-Mead <[email protected]>), and The BroadStage in Santa Monica (contact Nina Hadži-Nešić <[email protected]>). Images are available in exchange for notable donations to these arts organizations. 100% of the donation goes to the designated organization. Use the email links for more information.

Thank you for your interest in my art.

Lee

Lee G. Cooper. Professor Emeritus