Gallery presents Singer
Rick Singer’s first photography show at the Chase Gallery in 1981 came at the start of what’s become a long and productive career capturing portraits of the people and places of Spokane.
More than a quarter-century later, Singer has returned to the Chase Gallery with a remarkable series of portraits of the people who make Spokane’s visual arts shine.
His series of 159 portraits – including a self-portrait – shows these artists, supporters and educators holding objects that bring meaning to their creative lives. It’s like a who’s who of the visual arts scene, although Singer said it was not possible to include everyone who is making an important contribution to art here.
If you ever wanted to see the faces behind the art of Spokane, check out Singer’s show in the gallery in the lower level of City Hall.
“I wanted to thank Spokane for supporting me all of these years, and I wanted to do something to support the arts in Spokane,” Singer said at his studio in the upper two stories of a storied 1904 brick building at 415 W. Main Ave.
Spokane Arts Director Karen Mobley, who is hosting Singer’s work at the Chase, described the portraits as “astonishing and wonderful … really fun.”
Community college art teacher Bernadette Vielbig is pictured lying in a heap of Easter peeps. Four arts writers for The Spokesman-Review peer out from behind newspapers, and one artist is wearing a large pottery piece over his head.
All of the portraits were taken with natural light in the upper floor of his studio – a former hotel with single-occupancy rooms that has been left largely intact. The torn wallpaper and exposed plaster walls offer a curious backdrop that is distinct to much of Singer’s work.
He said his eye was inspired by two photographers whom he considers his heroes – Irving Penn and Robert Newman. Penn specialized in exotic images of far-flung people wearing traditional dress and adornments.
Natural light, Singer said, has a way of bringing out clarity and truth in the people being photographed while being soft and luminescent at the same time.
A graduate of the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, Calif., in 1979, Singer said he has been shooting photographs since he received his first camera, an Argus 3-C, while in the third grade and while working at the family music store on the ground level below his studio. He graduated from Lewis and Clark High School.
The Chase Gallery show is dedicated to Singer’s parents, Bob and Pearl Duitch Singer.
“I still take pictures. I still play music, and I work above the family business,” he said. Singer plays in two bands, Sidetrack, a country-swing band, and Chutzpah, a Jewish soul music group.
His brother, Gary Singer, runs Dutch’s Inc., which was started by their maternal grandfather, Melvin Duitch, in 1915.
Prior to Dutch’s, the ground floor was one of Jimmy Durkin’s downtown saloons. Singer has a 1910 photograph of the old saloon that shows beer prices at 5 cents for domestic brew and 10 cents for German beer.
In fact, much of Singer’s life is housed inside the historic building. The walls of his studio are decorated with dozens of his portraits as well as black-and-white photos of Betty on her last day as a short-order cook and Leo at a downtown pharmacy. He has an extensive collection of vintage advertising signs hanging there, too.
Atop the roof deck at the rear of the second floor, Singer grows a tropical garden. He has small lemon, lime and grapefruit trees, habanero and sweet peppers and unusual herbs such as lemon eucalyptus.
“As long as I’m a photographer, I see this staying as my studio,” he said, scoffing at any notion of converting the upper floors into condos or loft apartments. “I’ve tried to maintain what exists here.”
He said that his Chase Gallery show initially began as an effort to photograph winners of art awards from the Spokane Arts Commission, and then expanded to art faculty at Spokane’s colleges and universities before evolving into a wider study of visual artists and their supporters.
Singer wants to continue the effort with another show honoring leaders in the musical arts.
In his own self-portrait, Singer is shown with several of his cameras, including an 8-by-10-inch studio camera from the early 1900s.
He said the show couldn’t have been done without the cooperation of subjects. “I’m grateful of all the artists and benefactors who gave their time to pose for me,” he said.