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STEVEN J. MUELLER - PHOTOGRAPHER
Steven J. Mueller was born December 7, 1964, near San Fransisco, California. His first serious camera was a neighbor's Nikon F, which was always at hand during his stint on the editorial staff of his eighth-grade year book. After a long spell of personal introspection, he worked, in 1988, in the Soviet Union on a documentary film depicting Steven resolved that his career must involve art and technology. He transferred into the Applied Art and Design Department at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and began to excel. He won first place in an advertisement contest for Selectware Corporation . He was selected as Cal Poly’s Photojournalist of the Year, and as photographer for the University’s solar-powered cross-country car race.
Following graduation in 1993, New York City became his destination of choice for extending his experience in photography. Steven assisted many different photographers, and garnered a large collection of New York images. He became fascinated with country-western music and dancing and parlayed his interest into a job where he photographed Johnny Cash for the February 1997 cover story for New Country Magazine.
Steven always knew he would return to the West. He had a love for the desert which arose with a trip to the Grand Canyon with his Grandparents when he was four, and strengthened during a raft trip down the Colorado River when he was twelve. The West was now in his blood. After a trip into the great southwestern desert where he watched a full moon rise to create a rainbow in a distant night storm, Steven became a fine art landscape photographer. He had captured the feeling of being there on film. The image is a favorite of his and of any who hear him tell the story of its creation. Steven is committed to capture the grand scale beauty of the earth we all share, and his detailed images convey a sense of discovery and awe. Steven has created poetic expressions to accompany some of his photographs. With poetry or in silence, it is a feeling captured.
Artists Statement
Driven by the beauty of the vast world and unlimited universe in which, we live, feel, work, emote, and ponder in, I am compelled to image the eternal, and the fleeting. Life is a communion of syntropy and entropy where creation and dissipation walk hand in hand along a long lonely beach, where love wings in touching us with angelic repose and just as often tips up and away long before the earthbound heart is ready to understand.This body of work emerged from a realization that landscape was most compelling to me. After completing an image of a moon- caused rainbow in the middle of the desert with lighting and vastness apparent in the emulsion, I became finally directed in my photographic quest. The image “Night Full Moon Rainbow” depicts a bit of man and lots of nature- elements of each which seem to go on forever and have ephemeral qualitie s with a proper exclamation point to set a commanding tone. The prints I have created are mostly forged which a heavy tripod and with a large format “4x5” camera. These works often exude details which might be lost on a small sheet of film. However, the camera is not the creator, the mind and heart are. Knowledge and age simmer in the pot of creativity. Then out comes a road at the bottom of a cliff. It peaks from a landscape devoid of man. Other than its dusty twisting swirl, man is reduced to ancient petroglyphs on the shelf below. The trail of modern man arcs beneath the shadow of an immense and surely teetering boulder. A sedimentary rock the color of long rusting iron. Some images evoke such strong connections to thoughts that I have written a descriptive and enhancing poem. These are most often included with an image of a past loved automobile. One wonders where it has been and how it set up repose in such a predicament, or is it not a predicament but a wonderful trip into inevitable entropy.These images come together in a timeless story of nature and man. All things come and go, are created and then dissipate. Melting into an everlasting universe in which any one of us including bug and coyote, can go out and look up, up into the stars,beyond the terra and the sea, beyond need and anywhere upon any evening ponder the stars.
STEVEN J. MUELLER EXHIBITIONS
2006 Serendipity Fine Arts & Crafts Show, San Francisco, California
2006 Marin Art Festival, San Rafael, California
2006 Saratoga Rotary Art Show, Saratoga, California
2005 Art Under the Umbrellas, La Quinta, California
2004 Artist’s Studio Show, Huntington Beach, California
2004 Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, California, solo show “As the World Turns”
2002- 2003 Azo Gallery, Covina, California: Large framed landscapes
2000 Palm Springs Desert Arts Festival, Palm Springs, California: Images of cities, deserts, and storms
2000 Richard L. Vercruse, open house, Hermosa Beach, California: Images of deserts and storms
1997- present Vista Gallery, Tahoe Vista, California: Images of antique boats,mountains, storms, and deserts
1999 Trails West Gallery, Laguna Beach, California: Showing of Full Moon Rainbow over Cerro Gordo, California
1996-1997 Frames-by-Ryrie, Tahoe City, California: Images of high performance antique wooden power boats
1996 Tahoe Yacht Club, Tahoe City, California: Slide presentation of high performance antique wooden power boats
1993 Kennedy Library Photography Gallery, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, California: Gran Prix motorcycle racing photographs
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