Marilyn Stevenson pushes the envelope in photographic art

There’s something extremely happy about Marilyn Stevenson’s photographs. A kaleidoscope for the eyes, her abstract works feature neon colors that seem to zip around the canvas, daring the viewer to try and follow. Visual energy seems to leap from corner to corner and colorful swirls appear to swoosh at breakneck speed.

Other photography features bands that bend color like a prism. The colors are set against backgrounds of shiny black. Other images resemble electric Rorschach ink blots or frames from a handheld kaleidoscope that were freed from their tiny parameters. Ms. Stevenson’s abstract photography feels like it’s channeling psychedelic poster art, in which changing colorful patterns stimulated and soothed the mind at the same time.

Then, there are the irises. Each photograph is a portrait that places a single iris front and center amid its natural settings. If the abstract works approach frenzy, the iris photographs channel serenity. The solo exhibition of Ms. Stevenson’s work at the Levitas Center for the Arts at the Southampton Cultural Center is filled with contrasts and images that suggest they were made by many photographers and not just one.

In addition to her photographs, Ms. Stevenson is selling, by donations, paintings made by elementary school children from Zululand, South Africa. Money raised will benefit the Ncepheni Primary School where Ms. Stevenson will teach photography and art in January. The stop is part of a safari excursion led by Hemingway Safaris, which makes its home at the Manhattan Art & Antique Center. Artist Susan Zises of Water Mill will teach painting while on the same trip.

The diverse range of work on view is by design: the images form a retrospective of sorts and were selected to appeal to a broad audience of viewers. Besides the iris and abstract series are images made at Coney Island that pop with light-filled color and energy. Sometimes the images capture the bizarre or depict carnival-like scenes infused with swirling lines of neon color. A video projected from a laptop computer sets the abstract work to music and creates movement as images appear in succession.

The show includes black and white images of Greenwich Village and an image of the American Hotel in Sag Harbor. Seemingly swinging from the lampposts that line the street outside are distinct lines of white. It is this image that holds the key to understanding the bridge between scenic photos and abstracts: Ms. Stevenson is drawing with light.

Using long exposures, she makes small gestural movements with the camera to make streams of light in the work. Ms. Stevenson surrenders the results to happenstance. She never goes out to make a specific image—it’s always an experiment to see what happens, the artist said.

Afterward, the negatives are scanned into a computer and processed in a similar fashion to darkroom processing. Then the magic kicks in: the negatives are flipped, folded and folded again. Sometimes pieces are removed in the way that children cut out snowflakes from white paper, she said.

In this way, Ms. Stevenson makes order from chaos and corrals motion and energy into the static surface of a photograph. As in her iris photographs, the compositions’ pivotal point is placed dead center to ground the shapes, colors and lines that characterize her work.

“I like a lot of motion and energy and I’m fascinated with working with light in my photographs because it’s so unpredictable,” she said. “Afterward, I make sense of the image and make some order out of it.”

Ms. Stevenson has been drawing with light for about 10 years. The exhibition at the Cultural Center spans her exploration from executing an assignment while taking a class with Harvey Stein at Southampton College (the American Hotel photograph) to her latest work, the large scale photographs that occupy opposite walls in the gallery.

She continued to pursue painting with light and adding the unknown to scenes unfolding before her at a workshop in Tuscany, Italy. There, she created a body of work set in a graveyard. A subsequent series focused on the Green River Cemetery in Springs.

In both cases, she tried to capture the essence of a sense of place. For the Green River Cemetery images, Ms. Stevenson tried to capture the artistic spirit of those who lay interred beneath the ground. In Tuscany, she explored the relationship between religion, faith and the high ceremony and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church.

By drawing with light through the movement of her camera, she created images that creep closer to painting and away from the documentary roots of photography. This allows her to make imaginative and subjective works that explore color, movement and spatial relationships, she said.

What follows next in her photography is left to spontaneity. For now, she’s looking forward to taking the safari to South Africa in January and photographing there. Teaching the children in the African school is another project she’s looking forward to. Ms. Stevenson has been knocking on corporate doors to try and receive donations of one-use cameras and developing for the images made by the children. After they are developed here, the images will be sent to Africa with the next trip made by Hemingway Safaris.

“Getting involved with the schools and collecting donations isn’t something that’s required,” Ms. Stevenson said. “I feel it’s important to give back and get involved with helping others. I’ve been fortunate in my life and living my life in a way that gives to others is important to me.”

Ms. Stevenson has exhibited in galleries in Manhattan, New Jersey, Texas, Pennsylvania and overseas in Austria. Her work has been shown at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, the New Jersey Center of Visual Arts and the New Century Artist Gallery in Manhattan. Locally, her photos have been shown at Gallery Merz in Sag Harbor, Ashawagh Hall in Springs, the East End Arts Council Gallery in Riverhead and other venues.

“Photographs” by Marilyn Stevenson remains on view through September 21 at the Levitas Center for the Arts at the Southampton Cultural Center, 25 Pond Lane, Southampton. The gallery is open Friday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. For information, call 973-906-1392. The exhibition includes drawings and paintings by the Ncepheni Primary School, Zululand, South Africa. with all proceeds from the sale of those works donated to the school.