About the Artist • Jerry Shevick
Jerry Shevick’s photography is rooted in the Buddhist concept of impermanence and, even more specifically, Wabi Sabi. Wabi Sabi is difficult to translate—it’s more of a feeling than an actual concept; however, it implies simplicity and beauty as something ages, fades or changes. The perfectly imperfect.
Jerry has been photographing and printing for the last 40 years. In fits and starts, over the last decade, he has begun to exhibit and sell his work. In 2013, pieces from his series, “And The Past Reared Its Head” were juried into a number of shows and sold well, which prompted a more serious approach to his artwork. The series took vintage slides from Jerry’s past, as well as from many others, and through a process of re-shooting and re-imagining the photograph, looks at the impermanence of the image, of time, of family, of life. A follow-up show used vintage, amateur nudes in the same way. A review in Fabric Magazine said, “What looks like the faded slides of one prolific, if amateur photographer, is really Shevick’s heavily curated pickings of found objects in the photo sections of flea markets and estaate sales that he’s culled and rephotographed in a fresh, innovative way. The result is a re-framing of the entire experience in a campy, post-modern, tongue in cheek show.”
Further projects came. There is the on-going series of “Night”: subtle, almost abstract, Zen-like photos of the natural world at night, printed on Japanese mulberry paper. Handheld with slow exposures, they evoke the quiet and beauty of walking through nature after dark.
“The Other Worlds of Death Valley” was the result of a journey to one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. Jerry’s work took a left turn and embraced big, bold color and structure, revealing an otherworldly landscape in its ancient beauty.
Jerry is now back to exploring black and white landscapes, the kind of work he began in. And, while now working digitally, the prints are worked very much in mind with silver printing..
Tangential to Jerry being an accomplished gardener and garden designer, he is now producing large-scale botanical pressings. Mounted on fine Japanese paper, these pieces look at nature as design and architecture.
Jerry’s two children’s books, Maxfield & The Mixed Animals and I Was A Boy Zombie, with the former fully illustrated by Sam Booker, are looking for a home!
Jerry was also behind the launch of one of the world’s first green alternatives for cremating pets. Established in 2013, Peaceful Pets Aquamation, quickly carved out an environmentally sensitive position in the enormous Los Angeles market. After continued growth and forcing competitors to embrace greener practices, the company was sold in 2021.
For most of his career, Jerry was an entertainment executive, running a division of Hearst Communications and then founding his own company, Shevick*Zupon Entertainment. He created or produced over 1,500 episodes of non-fiction programming, winning quite a few awards along the way. He was also an executive on over 50 made-for-television movies. Not willing to leave his first love after establishing another company, Jerry became a professor at the Academy of Art in San Francisco teaching producing.
Currently, Jerry is working on several exciting photographic projects.