SEDONA, AZ (Nov 2, 2009) - The Canyon Moon Theatre Art Gallery announces the opening of its latest exhibit, featuring the works of local artists Jim Peterson and Jerry Buley.  The exhibit can be seen through Nov. 22 in the lobby gallery of Canyon Moon Theatre (Village of Oak Creek, in the Oak Creek Outlet Mall at 6601 State Route 179, Suite A6, Sedona AZ 86351).  Sales from this exhibit will benefit the theatre, which is a non-profit arts organization.

The exhibit includes a broad sampling of vibrant, richly detailed works of the two photographers, and although the two artists share a common medium and sometimes choose similar subjects, their artistic vision and their respective approaches to their work are highly individual. 

Both artists have an experimentalist leaning and are willing to push the limits of their medium, creating works unlike any that have come before.  With the two artists exhibiting jointly for the first time, the room is a burst of color, design, and artistic diversity.

Jim Peterson grew up in New Mexico and has lived in Sedona for 2 ˝ years.  His degrees, from the University of Chicago (BA in Music and PhD in Biochemistry), pointed him towards an academic life, but he moved into industry (in computers and telecommunications) for the bulk of his career.  Throughout his technical and management career, however, his hyperactive right brain persisted in churning out the stream of ideas and visions embodied in his artistic works.

In photography (as in many things) he is mostly self-taught, though he received valuable early guidance from the late Byron Shurtleff of the University of Delaware.  His work includes a remarkable range of representational and abstract images, but always conveys a fascination with the ways that light’s infinite variability reveals – and alters - the universe of forms, textures, and emotions in which we are forever immersed.

Buley, who hails from the Midwest, moved to Sedona in 2005 after retiring as a Professor Emeritus from Arizona State University (The Hugh Downs School of Human Communication).  His work is unique in that it combines his beautiful landscapes with very brief stories and poems in an attempt to engender a broader range of human emotion than is possible with an image or text alone.  Buley believes some people have the mistaken notion that photography is the lesser of the fine arts.  They appear to hold to the idea that photography has to be "truthful."  Buley believes photographers must be able to tell a story without being questioned as to its veracity, (“has that picture been photoshopped?").

This photograph by Jerry Buley will be on display at the Canyon Moon Theatre Art Gallery through November 22, 2009.

“The fine arts,” says Buley, “are not about truth.  We do not question the fiction writer about the truth of his/her novel.  The assumption we should all make when viewing a fine-art photograph is that it is intended to engender emotion in the viewer.”  Near each of his photographs Buley has included an engraved plaque that contains a very brief story or poem that interacts with the photograph.

The exhibit is open to the public Monday through Thursday each week from 10AM to 3PM, and the gallery also opens one hour before show time on any day Canyon Moon Theatre is presenting a show.  Neil Simon's Barefoot in The Park is playing Thursday, November 5 through Sunday, November 22.  Also, an artists' reception is scheduled for Friday, Nov. 13 – more details will be forthcoming.  For more information, contact Canyon Moon Theatre (www.canyonmoontheatre.org) at 928.282.6212, Jerry Buley (www.jerrybuley.com) at 928 282-5499, or Jim Peterson (www.JamesPeterson.name) at 928-554-4340.