Artist creates cities, photographs with imagination

It’s not surprising that Mike Cullom, who was born in Vader and lived in western Washington during his life, loves fog and finds it a subject for his photos.

From his home on Puget Island, he takes pictures of what he sees. “Fog hugs the ground or it puffs in the trees,” he said. He enhances images digitally until he has created the impression he experienced.

An exhibit of Cullom’s digitally enhanced photographs and miniature buildings begins Saturday at Redmen Hall in Skamokawa.

Cullom, who has lived on the Island for seven years, retired from a second career as a healthcare educator last May.

He has exhibited his photographs at the Vista Park celebration, Tsuga Gallery and his miniature buildings at the Koth Memorial Gallery in the Longview Public Library and RiverSea gallery among other places.

“Everyone takes pictures, don’t they?” he said. ”I had two kids. I took pictures of them, and then when you’re out in nature, you can’t help but be struck by the beauty and to try to capture it.

“I’m not sure when I began to take photographs. I evolved.”

Cullom began taking and printing black and white photographs, and became interested in the flexibility that enhancing photos digitally gave him.

A high school English teacher for 18 years, Cullom draws on what he called “the poetic side of teaching,” in his photography, seeking to interpret and capture his impression in the prints he makes.

On a recent trip to Astoria, Cullom was inspired by the colors and textures of a bale of aluminum cans ready for recycling. At another time, Cullom found inspiration in oil drips dispersing onto black asphalt.

“It was pollution, really,” he said, but he found the rainbow effect an intriguing pattern.

Cullom’s collection of 200 miniature buildings began when his granddaughter was born, and he decided to make her a set of blocks for Christmas.

The buildings come from Cullom’s imagination, except for one six-block set inspired by the Biltmore mansion in Asheville, North Carolina. He uses drift wood or scraps from a cabinet shop he happened upon.

The buildings range from spare American farmhouses to Victorian homes with intricate widow’s walks.

Cullom liked seeing children at the library “pressing their noses to the glass to see” the buildings when he exhibited in Longview.

After he carved cathedrals, he decided “to be more ecumenical,” he said, and added a Buddhist temple and a mosque.

“I’m just like a kid setting these up,” Cullom said, as he set the railings between the Buddhist temple. He keeps the collection in a large trunk and lifts out tray after tray of the miniatures, which look like a classic San Francisco landscape.

Cullom had already created a model of Captain Cook’s ship the Endeavor when he began to make the small-scale buildings. He sailed from Gig Harbor to British Columbia on a replica of the Endeavor and took photos of the ship’s accoutrements for his model.

Cullom will be at Redmen Hall for an opening reception on Saturday from 2 until 4 p.m. Redmen Hall is open Thursday through Sunday from noon until 4 p.m.