Mary Randlett Photos at Tacoma Aart Museum

From Marilyn,

Mary Randlett, NW photographer, was featured in the Sunday October 28 Seattle newspaper. Her photos show the possibilities when working with our winter light.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2003973028_randlett28.html


An insider outdoors
By Sheila Farr
Seattle Times art critic

Now showing
"Veiled Northwest: The Photographs of Mary Randlett":
10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, noon- 5 p.m. Sundays, extended hours to 8 p.m. the third Thursday of each month, through Jan. 28 at Tacoma Art Museum (253-272-4258 or www.tacomaartmuseum.org).

PHOTOGRAPHER MARY RANDLETT shoots landscapes drenched in the quintessential Northwest palette — a thousand shades of gray. A glint of sunlight might break through to sparkle on a beach shrouded in mist, or erupt from trees like a geyser from the Earth's core. In many of Randlett's prints on view at Tacoma Art Museum, the sun seems powerless, a cool disk suspended in a froth of thick overcast.

The late poet Denise Levertov, responding to a Randlett photograph, described "nuanced grey/ flowing to black." Even the license plate on the Explorer parked in Randlett's Olympia driveway proclaims her fascination with the minute gradations in Northern light: NUANCE. But let me tell you: That's not a word you'd use to describe the photographer herself. Randlett's as straightforward and outspoken as they come. Her voice has a raucous tinge, and her laugh escalates to a gleeful cackle. Even on her best behavior, Randlett can't help spiking her conversation with a little profanity. Thinking back on how long she spent in the darkroom making prints for her Tacoma show, she grumbled: "Oh God, it practically killed me off!" And that's the stuff that can go in a family newspaper.

Daughter of the late curator and art dealer Betty Willis, Randlett, 83, has been entrenched in the Northwest art scene since childhood. She is best known for her photographs of notable local painters, sculptors, poets, architects, dancers, actors, patrons and assorted celebrities. Her mother not only introduced her to many of them but instructed Randlett (a camera buff since childhood) to take their pictures, pushing her gently into a career.

As a young woman, Randlett went with her mother to visit actors Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester in Los Angeles, then drove her new '49 Chevy north on Highway 1. When they got to San Francisco, they spent a day with renowned photographer Imogen Cunningham. "Mother didn't tell me to take her picture, so I didn't," Randlett says, chortling at her own foolishness.

Fortunately, Willis did ask her daughter to snap some photos earlier in the trip, when they'd stopped in Big Sur to visit novelist Henry Miller. Thinking back on that day, Randlett veers off to explain the dynamic quality of the light, the quick leap from hot white to deep black, so different from the filtered sunshine of the Northwest. I had to press her to talk about Miller: What was the notoriously risqué author of "Tropic of Cancer" like?

"He was friendly as could be!" Randlett said. "Of course, I hadn't read any of his books ... "
That's typical Randlett. It doesn't bother her that she often went cold into photo shoots with famous people. She was never a big reader and chafed at the confinement of school. Sitting in her living room recently, surrounded by a clutter of artbooks, papers, boxes of filing envelopes, paintings by her artist friends, family photographs and the creative detritus of her long life, Randlett is clear about her real passion: "I've always been happiest outside."