It’s not about the gallery. His work has hung in the Smithsonian Institution.
It’s not about the art. He’s shot hundreds of museum-quality pictures.
For photographer Joe Triscari it’s about the “spirit.”
Those viewing his latest output must wend their way through Stella’s, a bungalow converted to a coffee shop at 1476 S. Pearl St., to find a small exhibition of eight prints on display through Christmas.
At first glance, the subject is birds. More specifically, the American white pelican, a magnificent creature, one of North America’s largest birds, with wing spans up to 10 feet. White with black wingtips, they can soar thousands of feet in the air.
In Triscari’s world they are much more. He first saw them near Windsor in 1987. “I had never seen them before that summer at the lake in Windsor,” said Triscari, a photographer for more than 30 years. “It was like I looked at that bird about 1,000 feet above me and I was in complete wonderment.”
He saw them again in Wyoming in 1993. “They are so gorgeous. Someone called them ‘the angels of Yellowstone.’ To me, it’s a transformation, a metamorphoses.”
In June, he caught up with them, or their kin, again in Denver at the old Aqua Golf pond in the heart of an industrial neighborhood on South Santa Fe Drive. They show the birds, individually and alone, as they circle higher and higher. To Triscari’s eye, they are “as going though a traumatic transformation. It’s a vignette, a suite of great birds.”
Joe Triscari
PHOTO EXHIBIT|A show of photos of the American white pelican; Stella’s, 1476 S. Pearl St.|FREE|6:30 a.m.-11 p.m., weekdays and Sundays; 7 a.m.-midnight, Saturdays; through Christmas Day.
