BY KATHY CHANG
Staff Writer
METUCHEN – The Metuchen Art Works is a place for local artists to showcase their work each month.
Mark Harris and Preeti Sahota, both of Edison, both got to do that recently.
Photography has been a passion for Harris ever since he was in middle school. In high school, he became photography editor for his high school yearbook and continued making photographs in college at Rutgers University.
For 11 years, he volunteered with the local Girl Scouts documenting events and working with local media to get the scouts publicity.
“I do this for fun,” said Harris. “I self-taught myself, shooting mostly black-and-white photographs.”
Harris takes photographs that catch his eye whether it is in Roosevelt Park in Edison or whether he is on vacation in Florida with his family.
“The photographs represent my view of part of our world,” he said. “As I walked around, I saw each of these collections of objects, light and shadow jump out at me.”
He decided in 2003 to study at the International Center of Photography in New York City.
“The class really opened my eyes,” said Harris. “Like what to take pictures of, and showed me better ways to print the pictures.”
Harris continued to take workshops and began taking a series of nature workshops with a local photographer, Brian Szabo.
“He is a proponent of traditional, silver and chemical-based black-and-white imaging, printed and processed with archival properties,” said Harris.
All Harris’ photographs are of real things.
“Often it is difficult to determine exactly what the viewer is seeing,” he said. “This is intended; they are all real views of real things.”
Sahota’s landscape artwork reflects her love of the colors in the United States.
“The United States made landscapes in me alive,” she said. “The fall colors are beautiful.”
Sahota received a bachelor of fine arts (applied arts), College of Art, from Punjab University in India, and master of arts in Painting from G.N.D. University in India. She was a graduate-level lecturer for eight years at Apeejay College of Fine Arts in India before moving to the United States.
She started painting landscape three years ago.
“My images are reflections of each scene that I find here and there, and collect as it comes in my view,” she said. “They center around expressions of people and nature. There lingers a kind of unpredictability of events about to happen or those which happened just a moment ago.”
Sahota has had numerous art shows in India and some of her artworks are featured in several private collections in France, England, India and the United States.
“I see a picture the way I encounter this limitless and inspiring panorama that engulfs me,” she said. “Each personality is a mirror in itself, reflecting whatever it has observed and experienced.”
Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday, noon till 9 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. till 5 p.m.
For more information, call Metuchen Art Works at (732) 603-9299, located at 15 Station Place, or visit www.metuchenartworks.com.