“The engine is the heart of an aeroplane, but the pilot is its soul.” ~ Greg Brown
If we could see the world from the edge of a flying carpet, how could we ever measure it again? On September 21, Sharlot Hall Museum will take visitors to a world rarely visited by humans. For 40 years, Greg Brown – flight instructor, photographer, artist, and author – photographed the world from 7,000 feet above. From his personal Flying Carpet, Missouri fields become crazy quilts; the edge of the Painted Desert is a beaded buckskin sleeve, and Lake Tahoe becomes a chalice suspended over an unknowing village below.
Brown writes a popular column in Flight Training, a magazine produced by AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association). He also has written five aviation-related books that reach an international audience. Brown’s talent and Masters Degree in Fine Art is matched by his flying expertise. Besides his flying credentials, he was awarded the 2000 National Flight Instructor of the Year. His truly magical gifts are an artist’s eye and a pilot’s advantages. Brown’s images are not documentary photographs about ground features or weather conditions; they are earthly paintings snatched from the air above.
Accompanying Brown’s spectacular images is a short video that begins as the Flying Carpet is rolled from its hangar and takes to the air over northern Arizona. Over red cliffs that reach above Sedona, he always finds something new and exhilarating to shoot. Snap! The photograph begins. The video also opens the technological door behind the images, showing how nature’s hues and shadows are matched in the final prints.
Sharlot Hall Museum will be pleased to present Greg Brown’s world in Views from the Flying Carpet, an exhibit of his aerial odysseys. The exhibit opens to the public in the Museum Theater on Saturday, September 21, and runs until March 2, 2014.
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