ARTIST STATEMENT –
I was always drawn to cities, and the variety of architecture on display. Side streets in the Village at night with their chunky old buildings and thin filigreed iron rails surrounding them, played a significant part of my college years. Alone or with friends, cameras and film dangling from pockets, from street to street, I saw history on every corner. It was a panoply of structural delight. I found beauty in the sometimes jagged, sometimes flowing lines of the street furniture, the lamp posts, and the sculptured facades that graced the edifices of the past. All architecture to me. All something I needed to record with my lens.

I’ve culled from years of travel, several images that represent my fascination with architecture: from the distinctive San Francisco bay windows of an apartment complex, to the row of metal slatted delivery doors on the commercial area of Red Hook, Brooklyn; the crisp lines of a warehouse across from oil tanks in Bridgeport Connecticut; graffiti on an ancient building in NYC’s Soho.

I hope my images offer a new approach to the word Architecture. And that one can see not just the hard cement surfaces, but also the rhythm, sensuosity, and spirit that each individual design imbues. 

Artist’s BIO

Aronda Xystris has been an Artist/Photographer for almost 60 years. Creating for her has always been about seeing beyond the obvious image to find a unique way of expressing it. She has photographed everything from architecture, to landscape, to the unexpected in street photography. Her influences in this genre include Vivian Maier, Mary Ellen Mark, and Berenice Abbott. 

During her many summers in Provincetown, MA, she was exposed not only to the vast, seductive landscape of the Cape, often referred to  “Cape Cod Light,” but to the inspiration of photographers, artists, and writers who lived there. Spending one summer taking classes with photographer Joel Meyerowitz, was a huge influence on what she saw and how she continues to see the land and sea. 

Aronda graduated from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, with a Bachelor of Fine Art, and furthered her art and photography education at C.W. Post, School of Visual Arts, NYIT, Truro Center for the Arts in Cape Cod, and Women’s Studio Workshop, Rosendale, NY. She has been a member of Mills Pond Gallery in St. James, and Stepping Stone Gallery in Huntington, where she has lived since1994. Her photographs have been exhibited in galleries in Queens, NY, Babylon, NY, Lincoln Center, NY, and in studio settings in Fire Island, NY, where she exhibits her photographs and paintings at the Artist Tour of Cherry Grove every spring. Her work has been featured in Newsday, New York Times, and Fire Island News. She currently exhibits her work at   fotofoto gallery in Huntington, NY, where she is a member.