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 “Still Real Life” – [with artists Alicia Mordenti and Kari Herer] shows what happens when two ceramic majors from the University of Idaho (BFA’s ’01) collaborate on a shared idea (a year-long dialogue evolving over many visits, e-mails, and phone calls) and end up in a gallery space six months later showing the hard-wrought results.  Their friendship over the many years since college has grown in strength as they both met with the real life challenges of marriage, children, and careers.   The work shows a parallel in direction, impulse, and intent.  Fascination with light works its way into all of the images.  Formal approach to the flat surface they have placed before them to work with, to master (unlike the 3-dimensional world of their youth) mirrors in effort and difficulty their own always-in-motion moving-forward lives.  Flowers and their kids end up as both artist's subject matter; the momentary beauty and celebrated joy offered by these ----each day, and without stop– their content.  Both artists are inspired by their home environments; capturing moments in chaotic fragments with the snapping of a camera’s shutting lens.  No matter the final art medium used, (Herer, using photography – both digital and medium format Polaroids (one-of-a-kinds) and Mordenti, painting from photographs in oil and acrylic on panels and canvas) their combined work stems from that impulsive snap of the fleeting:  the flower that loses its petals far too early; the child that grows up far too quickly.  Both artists realize that “the moment will always trump the thought-over”; the camera’s capturing of chaos in progress the most direct path to the real.  The art image we are left with may be still, but the reality it reflects, the life it tries to show in painted or photographed form – is anything but.