100 Colorado Creatives: Mark Sink
All photos courtesy of Mark Sink. Mark Sink prepares for The Big Picture, a citywide wheat-pasting project for MoP 2013.
#88: Mark Sink
Mark Sink's pedigree as a fine art photographer and arts mover in Denver goes way back, more than thirty years. And its roots sink even deeper: His great-grandfather James L. Breese founded the Camera Club of NY and before that, Breese's uncle, Samuel Finley Breese Morse, not only invented the telegraph but was also known in his time as "the father of American photography." It's no wonder, then, that the young Sink was so fascinated with his toy camera as a boy that his relationship with the unsophisticated instrument continued well into adulthood.
He went on to fraternize with Andy Warhol and made his name snapping pictures with a plastic Diana camera; over the years, Sink also founded the Denver Salon, played a role in the early formation of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, ran his own Sink Gallery and continued to explore the historical techniques and technologies of analog photography. These days, he continues in the lo-fi tradition in collaboration with his photographer wife, Kristen, producing haunting colloidal wet-plate images using Victorian-age techniques.
Mark Sink, "Jillian," colloidal wet-plate image.
Sink is also the man behind the curtain for the city's Month of Photography, pulling strings and serving as head cheerleader for a Front Range photography takeover that happens every two or three years. The 2013 venture -- the biggest MoP ever -- officially kicks off this weekend with a flurry of gallery openings all over town. Stay tuned to Show and Tell for more about the magnificent maze that is MoP.
Mark Sink (holding broom) with Big Picture wheat-pasting main man, Peter Davies.
In the meantime, we asked Sink to take our 100CC quiz; continue reading for his thoughts about the artist's life, here and around the world.
Mark and Kristen Sink with their work, at Robin Rice Gallery in New York.