Gombey dancers as you've never seen them

Artist Theresa Airey loves cutting edge ways to create art and her ­upcoming exhibition is testament to that.

She is using a brand new Adobe program called Pixel ­Bender to skew the pixels in a set of photographs she has ­taken of Gombey dancers on the island. While they are ­photographs, they look like an impressionist painter has ­taken a brush to canvas as the photos appear almost textured.

“The technique is new and I’m real excited about it. It shows what the Gombeys are about — the jumping about and excitement. I wanted to use a texturing element throughout the image to pull the Gombeys forward from the image. I painted back in the masks on the ­pictures though because twisted up they looked grotesque.

“I do like to experiment, I like new things and I like surprises. It fits my personality.”

As well as the new pixel program, Ms Airey is also using pioneering aluminum plates as her canvass, which she did for her last exhibition — a photographic study of Casemates Prison. The inks are ­embedded into the metal and can be wiped directly with a wet cloth to be cleaned. The real benefit to using ­aluminum, though, is in the colour says Airey.

Enriched colours

“The colours are enriched and they glow — they pop off of the plates. With paper, the inks go into it and ­become a little subdued. These have a nice glow about them and a richness you don’t necessarily get on paper.

“They are completely washable which is great in Bermuda because if you get mould on them you can just wash them off with Windex. They are also scratch proof — it’s a very unique medium.”

One down side to the aluminum is the price — plates are far more expensive than paper and they had to be sent to California to get printed.

Ms Airey, a former university ­lecturer who has a Masters degree in Fine Art and Photography, said she wanted to focus on Gombey dancers for this exhibition because Bermudians often don’t realize how unique they are.

“I had guests come to stay here with me and I took them to see the Gombeys — they went crazy. The ­music is so hypnotic and everyone is dancing. I started on this exhibition in June and have photographed them everywhere they went.”

The exhibition opens toight at the Bermuda Society of Arts Gallery A from 5pm.

There will be 12 Gombey pictures on display all of which are for sale. If there is space she will rehang some of her Casemates photographs.