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ArtPop Street Gallery
Photographer Larry Hamill's 'Bhutanese Dance' a winner

by Margaret Marten
May/June 2019 Issue

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Larry Hamill's Bhutanese Dance, one of five artworks in the ArtPop Cbus Street Gallery on billboards throughout Franklin County.

The Greater Columbus Arts Council selected the works of five local artists to grace billboards around the city for its third annual ArtPop Cbus Street Gallery program.

ArtPop is a nonprofit organization based in North Carolina working nationally to promote artists while giving communities greater access to art. The GCAC adopted the program in 2017 as part of the Art Makes Columbus/Columbus Makes Art campaign. Artwork is currently being displayed on Lamar billboards throughout Franklin County – as well as on City Solution’s modular newsracks downtown – changing locations as space becomes available in rotation for about a year.

Freelance photographer Larry Hamill never misses the HighBall Halloween or Doo Dah Parade in the Short North, which he loves to document.
PHOTO | Gus Brunsman III

Award-winning photographer Larry Hamill is one of the artists selected to participate this year. A frequent contributor to the Short North Gazette, Hamill has specialized in commercial and industrial photography for over 40 years.

His entry, Bhutanese Dance, is a photo of a traditional dance taken during a festival while visiting Bhutan last September. Hamill said he submittted it because Columbus has the largest population of Bhutanese of any city in the United States. The photograph was taken at 1/4000 of a second with a long lens that froze the dancers. “It was so colorful, and it really fit on a horizontal format [for the billboards],” he said. A dozen or more men performed to a very simple background beat for about an hour before the next group came on. “All the clothing was handmade and very intricate.” Bhutan is a country relatively untouched by the West, he noted. “No Colonel Sanders, all just local people, mostly Buddhists.”

Over the years, Hamill has traveled extensively – trips to Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America, camera in tow, often posting his explorations online. “I’ve been self-employed my entire life,” he said. “What I shoot commercially gives me time to shoot for the fun of it, so I’m always out shooting for the fun of it.” His wife Jeanny shares in the adventure occasionally. They live in Reynoldsburg with their two cats, Zefke and Cleo.

Although he earned a degree in painting and drawing from Ohio State University, Hamill soon realized he couldn’t make a living off of fine art. “And I still can’t,” he said. A freelance job at Merrill Publishing introduced him to commercial artwork, providing the income to buy his first camera, a Minolta 101 in 1974. Within two weeks he had his first bookcover published. “It was a double exposure I took of a bridge,” he said. “I used it on the cover of an engineering book.” Gradually, he learned more about photography by reading books and taking advice from friends.

Working for MedFlight in Columbus for 23 years doing aerial photography gave Hamill a unique perspective of the city and its development. “I keep enjoying documenting the way Columbus keeps changing,” he said, “to see the different angles of the city.”

The Short North HighBall Halloween masquerade and the annual Doo Dah Parade provide plenty of fodder for fun photos, and Hamill hasn’t missed one, except for a couple in the mid-’90s after the Doo Dah water balloon incident that brought the parade to a halt. The nighttime setting at HighBall is particularly inviting. “It’s fun to see people’s creativity and then try to approach it creatively,” he said, “I’d shoot with an off-camera strobe, swirling the camera to add a more dynamic look to the pictures. I try to get permission to get on different roofs to get an overview, but that doesn’t happen every year.”

What does happen every year, at least for the past 29, is the wall calendar Hamill designs and publishes. “Each year I try to go to a different place [for the photo] and present Columbus in a different context and then I hide a bunch of images in the photo for people to find.” His world travels provide backgrounds for the calendar, typically mountainous regions. “It’s usually nothing from around here since it’s so flat.”

Hamill has maintained a studio in German Village for over 40 years where he works on his photography but also continues to paint and draw. “I try to make things that nobody has ever seen before,” he said. One project, now 215 yards long, consists of 979 paintings, each 8 x 10 inches, covering his studio’s second floor, and filling boxes. “The themes keep changing,” he said. “But one constant element is a flow of energy that goes from frame to frame – from realistic detail pieces to totally abstract; so it’s just whatever feels good at the time. I want to make sure that one follows the other, so there’s a continuity throughout all of them. I think I started in 1995.”

The opportunity to have his work out there in plain view day after day for everyone to see is exciting to Hamill who says he’s “terrible” at showing and selling things, although he occasionally exhibits at Marcia Evans Gallery and Barcelona restaurant.

Hamill’s Bhutanese Dance is currently showcased on a billboard at Noe Bixby and Refugee roads as well as the newsbox outside the Sheraton at Capitol Square downtown on South Third. Other works accepted into the ArtPop Street Gallery this year were those of Charlotte Belland, Ty P. Carroll, Alissa Renzetti, and Kim Rohrs. See their work at columbusmakesart.com/artpop and throughout the city.

Visit Larry Hamill Photography

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