Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photograph by George Sakkestad

Nancy Jo Lopp, featured artist at Aegis Gallery this month, takes photographs and then plays with them.

Artist transforms her photographs

Polaroid process creates unique images

By Shari Kaplan

It's not the form most artists take: standing over a frying pan or griddle filled with hot water, carefully stirring and "cooking" the contents until they turn just the right consistency.

But Los Gatan Nancy Jo Lopp is unlike most artists, and her creations are likewise unique.

A resident of the Santa Cruz Mountains for the past 30 years, Lopp has been a prolific fine arts photographer for the last 20. She alters her photos--both color and black-and-white--into one-of-a-kind images through the Polaroid transfer process. Both her photos and Polaroid transfers are on display at Aegis Gallery in Saratoga, where Lopp is the featured artist for September.

Simply put, the process involves using hot water--about 165 degrees--to remove each photograph's top layer. Lopp uses a table knife or her fingers to remove the emulsion layer, which she then sticks onto other surfaces such as watercolor paper, rice paper or glass. This creates a three-dimensional quality and makes every piece slightly different.

A speech therapist by education, Lopp was bitten by the shutterbug when her husband, Larry, gave her a camera more than two decades ago. She immediately enrolled in photography classes at Cabrillo College to perfect her craft.

"I've been interested in art and theater most of my life, but I didn't feel technically competent," Lopp says. "When I took the photography classes with [instructor] Ted Orland, he saw my work and went, 'Wow!' I didn't know what I was doing, but I had an instinct."

Part of following that instinct is pursuing images that may elude a less adventuresome photographer. Once, Lopp developed a photo of her son walking through the woods in which he seemed to glow. Although she discovered the mysterious aura was due only to a broken lens, it intrigued her. "This otherworldliness interested me. I started using things like infrared film to see through the veil that photographs don't always show," she explains.

Another inspirational experience came during the 11/2 years the family lived in Hawaii. Lopp once took a black-and-white photo of some fresh lava that resembled a lithesome woman. For Lopp, the image and its propitious circumstances brought to mind Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire.

Among Lopp's other favorite travel photos are the standing stones, migrating birds and vast expanses of land and water found in Scotland, where she has ancestral roots. She is also rooted to the ground with her love for flowers, many of which turn up in the exhibit. Along with tulips, lotuses, sunflowers, zinnias, lilies and a cherry tree that also resembles a person, Lopp also includes images from her Guardian Angel series as well as still lifes of chairs and a breakfast table.

Aegis Gallery is located at 14531 Big Basin Way, Unit 2. Lopp will demonstrate the Polaroid-transfer process in the gallery on Sept. 19. Call 867-0781 for times.

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