2019 EXHIBITIONS


10th Annual
Self-Published Photobook Show

2 Venues, 2 Dates 4 Photobook Show
Juried by Paula Tognarelli,
Executive Director and Curator, Griffin Museum of Photography
& Karen Davis
Curator, Co-Founder, Davis Orton Gallery
Catalog: 10th Annual Photobook Show

 2nd Annual
Books and Readers Show
Catalog: Books and Readers Show


Exhibition Dates: November 30 to December 22, 2019
Please Note: The Gallery will be closing Sunday, Dec 15 at 1pm for Private Event
Davis Orton Gallery and Griffin Museum of Photography

 Dates for 2020 Photobook Show at
GRIFFIN MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY
to be announced 


Grid of 20 photobooks

Photobooks at Davis Orton Gallery and Griffin Museum
James Collins, Patio Life
Pamela Connolly, Cabriole
Melissa Eder , The Beauty of Bodega Flowers
Mark Erickson, Other Streets:
Scenes from a Life in Vietnam not Lived
Joe Greene, Don’t Shoot
Bootsy Holler, Treasures:  Objects I’ve known all my life
Oliver Klink, Cultures In Transition: Spirit – Heart – Soul
Dan McCormack, Photograms
Julie Mihaly, One Year, Five Miles
Kate Miller-Wilson, Look Me in the Lens:
Photographs to Reach Across the Spectrum
Tetsuro Miyazaki, HÄfu2HÄfu – a Worldwide
Photography Project about Mixed Japanese Identity
Linda Morrow, Caught In The Looking Glass
Fern L Nesson, Signet of Eternity
Nancy Oliveri, Flora and Fauna, Scorched Earth
Mark Peterman, These Years Gone Bye
John Puffer, A Photographer’s Album
Judy Robinson-Cox, Finding Lilliput
Tony Schwatz, Stories of the Batwa Pygmies
of  Buhoma, Uganda
Ellen Slotnick, Apparition
Ellen Wallenstein, NYC Diptychs – Art: Sanctioned or Found

Photobooks at the Griffin Museum
Steve Anderson, Faces-Surrealism book 3
Mike Callaghan, circling and finding
Roslyn Julia, Imperfect
Kent Krugh, Speciation: Still a Camera
Robert Pacheco, Downtown L.A. Who Needs It ?
Street Story Of A Fading Era – Early 1970’s
Nick Pedersen, ULTIMA
Thomas Pickarski, Snow, Sand, Ice
Lisa Seidenberg, Dark Pools: Historic Swimming Pools of Berlin
Thomas Whitworth, Constructed Scenarios
Sharon Wickham, Cuba Skin


2nd Annual
Books and Readers Group Show

Grid of photographs from the ten artists in this show

photographs by: (top to bottom, left to right) Ilene Africk, Liz Nealon, Ellen Feldman, Janis Hersh, Alan Weider,
Cassandra Goldwater, Charles Mintz, Jaye Phillips, Robert Coppola, Chris DeMarco

• Ilene Africk   • Robert Coppola   • Chris DeMarco   • Ellen Feldman
• Cassandra Goldwater   •  Janis Hersh   • Charles Mintz   • Liz Nealon,
• Jaye Phillips   • Alan Wieder


Thoughts of Family and a Feeling of Home
Plus Portfolio Showcase 

Reception: Saturday, November 2, 5-7pm
Show dates: October 27 to November 26, 2019

Moira Barrett Karen Davis
Ellen Feldman Cassandra Goldwater
Miriam Goodman

 Portfolio Showcase
Maureen Beitler & Robin Michals

Moira Barrett, Imaginary Homeland

Imaginary Homeland 2 by Moira Barrett

Karen Davis, Close to Home

Introductions in Vietnam from Strangely Attracted series by Karen Davis

Ellen Feldman, Separation Anxiety

Me In the Middle: My Parents (in the 1960s) and Me (in the 2000s) by Ellen Feldman

Cassandra Goldwater, Absence/Presence

Memory Marker from Absence/Presence by Cassandra Goldwater

Miriam Goodman,
“After a Certain Age” and “A Daughter Recalls Her Mother’s Advice”

She stopped looking into the mirror ….. by Miriam Goodman from her movie, After a Certain Age

Selected through our Portfolio Showcase International Call for Entries,
the gallery will also feature two portfolios

Maureen Beitler, Westernport

Westernport 3 by Maureen Beitler

Robin Michals, Our Neighborhood

Our Neighborhood 1 by Robin Michals

Our Neighborhood 1 by Robin Michals

About the Artists and Their Work

Moira Barrett, Imaginary Homeland

Imaginary Homeland 6 photograph

Imaginary Homeland 6 by Moira Barrett

Artist Statement:
“… do you know this idea of imaginary homeland? Once you set out from shore on your little boat, once you embark, you’ll never truly be at home again. What you’ve left behind exists only in your memory, and your ideal place becomes some strange imaginary concoction of all you’ve left behind at every stop.”   Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs

Your homeland becomes a combination of memories that are overlaid with every new place that you’ve been. You will never be able to go back to that place that you once knew; it will never be the same.

But what if your imaginary homeland isn’t some place that you’ve left behind and lost, but an ideal that you are traveling toward. Rather than looking back with regret over a lost home, you are moving toward a new destination. It is a combination of hopes, imaginings and bits of memories of a perfect place that may not exist, one that incorporates all the pieces of the places that you’ve been and all your hopes for a better future.

Bio:  Moira Barrett is a fine art photographer based in New England. She uses traditional and contemporary techniques including: photo-transfer, video, and construction to address issues of self, memory, relationships and aging. Her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and galleries, including the Cambridge Art Association’s BLUE, RED, Northeast Prize, and 2019 Open Photo Exhibit; the Davis Orton Gallery of Hudson, NY; the NAVE Gallery of Somerville, MA; the Susan Maasch Fine Art Gallery of Portland, ME; and the Boston Young Contemporaries juried show. Her work was reviewed in the Women’s Review of Books by Dana Hoey.

Originally from Rochester, New York, she has a BA in Art from SUNY Buffalo and an MFA in Visual Arts from Lesley University College of Art and Design. Moira is married to Johanna Schulman, a financial planner, lives in Cambridge, MA and is the parent of Annie, a Senior at NYU.

Karen Davis, Close to Home

Strangely Attracted 24 by Karen Davis

Strangely Attracted 24 by Karen Davis

Artist Statement:
In Close to Home, my photographs focus on family relations—on the passage of time and inter-generational pairings. In the series of six images from my project “Strangely Attracted,” I foreground correspondences between fleeting moments of my family’s everyday life and the timeless details of fine art painting (here capturing multiple hands in a single frame). In this exhibit, I also present an assemblage/box and three books, each with a different approach to family and storytelling:  Aidila, an archive about my mother (interactive—please touch!); The McCann Family, a book about my childhood family told through captioned photographs of my sister’s dolls; Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: A Family Portrait, a twenty-year story of my brother-in-law and his family as it confronts the challenges of mental illness— with their words and my images. (A Family Portrait is a book dummy – I am looking for a publisher.) And the fourth, Pretension: All About Us, is a takeoff on art, relationships and, well, pretense, by my husband Mark Orton and me.

Bio:  Karen Davis is a photo-based artist and co-founder/curator of the Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson NY where she and her husband Mark Orton exhibit photography, mixed media and photobooks.  Her work is featured at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) and is in the collections of the Center for Photography at Woodstock (CPW); the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art; Lishui Museum of Photography (China); the Houghton Rare Books Library of Harvard University, and in corporate and private collections. Recent exhibits include Exposure 2018, Photography Resource Center (PRC), Cambridge MA and Protest Art, TSL arts organization, Hudson NY. She was the 2009 recipient of the Artists Fellowship Award from CPW and was a 2018 Finalist in Critical Mass.  Davis teaches portfolio development and marketing to fine arts photographers. Her book, Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: A Family Portrait, awaits a publisher.

Ellen Feldman, Separation Anxiety: Mother and Daughter

Persona by Ellen Feldman

Persona by Ellen Feldman

Artist Statement:

Artist Statement:
As I sip a cup of coffee or apply lipstick, I feel I’m channeling my mother’s gestures. I’ve had these sensations for decades, generally wanting to shake them off. But as time—and my mother—have passed, I now embrace these “invasive” feelings. I’ll even fling my arms high above my head in abandon, just as she did, to keep alive a gesture that I loved so much.

Most of these images include two photos and a quotation: I juxtapose a photograph of my mother (or both parents) that I took in the recent or distant past, with a more recent photo of me adopting a similar pose, often in the same location. I include a quotation that obliquely refers to the scene, to our mortality, or to an emotion.

The theme, “identity over time,” carries over to diptychs of me “then and now” and to fragments of letters and an early autobiography.

Bio:  Ellen Feldman is a fine arts photographer, whose work includes prints and photobooks of street photography and long-term projects. Feldman’s photographs have appeared in solo exhibits at Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA, the Davis Orton Gallery, Hudson, NY, and the French Cultural Center, Boston, MA; and have been shown in many juried group exhibits. Among her photobooks are: “We Who March: Photographs and Reflections on the Women’s March, January 21, 2017,” with contributions by thirty photographers and comments by twenty marchers; a photo-comic “The Dancer as the Invisible Girl”; and two books of street photos: “Les Mystères de Paris / Paris Mysteries” and “A Week in Prague: Wall People / Street People.”

Feldman is the photography editor of Women’s Review of Books (Wellesley College) and holds a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from NYU.

Cassandra Goldwater, Absence/Presence & Histories of Self

photograph - Mount Fuji - Black Beauty by Cassandra Goldwater

3  Mount Fuji – Black Beauty by Cassandra Goldwater

Artist Statement:
My father was dead at 36; my mother widowed at 37. How his absence and her presence shaped my understanding of self and other is subtle and revealed by reflection. These images are a dreamed world of my imagined parent and some evidence of history with my living parent absent the story line to give that evidence meaning.

Histories of Self: a series of 3 mixed media works
The Saboteur: An archetype of destructive power, this figure also has a light side. To sabotage someone or something, the saboteur requires intimate knowledge of a person or thing to succeed in its destruction. Making this figure clarified the role of family systems that sabotaged parts of my journey and my own self-sabotage. Materials: Clay, found objects, fabric from family clothing, mud cloth, wire, copper beads, branch.

Devil’s Claw: This piece reflects a wish that every child be treasured. The devil’s claw is an ironic response to my mother calling the two pigtails she tied on top of my toddler head as “your devil horns.” Materials: Devil’s claw, clay, hand felted “swaddling,” found objects, root.
Coming/Going: Materials: Root, wire, found object.

Bio:  Cassandra Goldwater uses photography to wrestle with current events and histories both personal and political.  While many of her images combine found objects, she is also drawn to the interplay of the natural environment and imagination. Her photographs have been shown in multiple Photography Ateliers, at the Davis Orton Gallery, a juried student show at the deCordova Museum, the Bedford Library juried show and Lexington Open Studios.

Bio: Goldwater studied photography at the deCordova Museum, the New England School of Photography and the New Hampshire Institute of Arts and Science.  She has also taken workshops at the Santa Fe Workshop with Cig Harvey, the North Country Workshops with Sean Kernan, as well as the Griffin Museum of Photography.  Her commentary on the photographic work of Jennette Williams and Hellen van Meene appeared in the Women’s Review of Books.

Miriam Goodman, After a Certain Age &
Daughters Recall Their Mother’s Advice

(Group-Sourced mini-movies)

Mothers Advice 6 by Miriam Goodman

Mothers Advice 6 by Miriam Goodman

Artist Statement:
Miriam Goodman’s photographic and word and image series began with ideas, which she pursued with intensity until each was complete. Engaging her friends and relatives in the development of her photographic projects, they shared their experiences of getting older forAfter a Certain Age, and recalled their mothers’ advice and admonitions for her short movie, Daughters Recollect Their Mothers. It was a joy to watch her process as she honed her compositions into spare, powerful works, often tinged with humor.

Bio: Miriam Goodman (1938-2008) was a poet, editor, photographer, and teacher. She was the author of three books of poetry, including Commercial Traveler, 1996, Garden Street Press; Signal: Noise, 1982; and Permanent Wave, 1977, Alice James Books. Her photographs have appeared in solo and group exhibitions, on book jackets, in literary magazines, CD packaging and on the web.

She was the first photography editor of the Women’s Review of Books and founder/co-coordinator of the Word & Image Lecture series sponsored by Lesley University, Cambridge MA and New England School of Photography.


Portfolio Showcase: A Feeling of Home
Selected through our Portfolio Showcase International Call for Entries

Maureen Beitler, Westernport

Westernport 10 by Maureen Beitler

Westernport 10 by Maureen Beitler

Artist Statement:  Deep within the Allegheny Mountains, Westernport is the birthplace of my ancestors and is a town steeped in family legend. Although it is a real place, for me growing up in urban Baltimore, it was a mythical place. Once thriving it now has a population of less than 2000. It was the home of my great-grandparents and as a young child I heard many family stories about the mountains, the town and how our family survived hardship. My great grandfather was a coal miner who died from black lung disease. His death changed the trajectory of my family history. My great-grandmother and her children left the home that they loved and would forever long for. This project began as an exploration into my family history but evolved into a deeper photographic encounter with the region, the land and those who still call Westernport home.

Bio:  Maureen Beitler is a documentary and fine art photographer. Her work explores the symbiotic relationship of men and women within the environments they have created and the impact that each exacts upon the other. Before turning to photography she worked as a trauma nurse in Baltimore city, which greatly influenced her photographic practice. She studied at the International Center of Photography and is a NYFA recipient for her project, Faith in Harlem. She continues to work on projects in the US and abroad and divides her time between NYC and the Hudson Valley.

Robin Michals, Our Neighborhood

Our Neighborhood 10 by Robin Michals

Our Neighborhood 10 by Robin Michals

Artist Statement:
Our Neighborhood juxtaposes homes with the infrastructure of industrial production or as Jedediah Britton-Purdy writing recently in the NYT has called it, “ the technological exoskeleton for the species.” If you live near a factory or refinery, you hear it, you smell it, you know it is dangerous but you accept it because either you have no choice or it is your best choice. You can’t leave. No one will buy your house or the rent is low. We all live in this house, this is our neighborhood.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report last fall stating that the global temperature will rise 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit over pre-industrial levels by 2040, causing calamitous worldwide damage. Our grandfathers built this house and really there is no where else to go.

Bio:  Robin Michals is a photographer whose work explores explores the specificity of place. Since 2010, she has been developing Castles Made of Sand, a series about communities in New York City impacted by sea level rise. More recently, in Our Neighborhood, she has been looking at resignation in the face of climate change in the series Our Neighborhood, shot in communities living with industry. Her work has been seen in The Fence, the Brooklyn Historical Society, St. Peter’s Church, the Alice Austen House among other venues. She was a visiting artist at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 2015. In 2009, Michals photographed over fifty sites in the borough with legacy pollution for the series Toxi City: Brooklyn’s Brownfields, which was exhibited at the Brooklyn Lyceum with support from the Brooklyn Arts Council and the Puffin Foundation. She teaches photography at New York City College of Technology and lives in Brooklyn.


Salon Salon
Plus Portfolio Showcase

SALON SALON

Reception: Saturday, September 21, 5-7pm
Show dates: September 21 to October 20, 2019

This Exhibition is
dedicated to the memory of Richard Edelman

Carla Shapiro Elaine Mayes
Jeff Jacobson Karen Davis
Kay Kenny Ken Tannenbaum
Richard Edelman Ruth Wetzel

click here
for 
SALON SALON Catalog

 Portfolio Showcase
selected through international call for entries
Evy Huppert & Cindy Weisbart

Carla Shapiro, To Capture a Shadow

Sparks by Carla Shapiro

Elaine Mayes, Red Red

Red Swath by Elaine Mayes

Jeff Jacobson

Sunny, Mt Tremper, NY 2013 by Jeff Jacobson

Karen Davis, Timeless Attraction

Timeless Attraction 9 by Karen Davis

Kay Kenny, Rural Night: A Poetic Tribute

Tent Meeting by Kay Kenny

Ken Tannenbaum, Commentary and Other Quandaries

Underpass by Ken Tannenbaum

Richard Edelman, By Oneself

Durham NC by Richard Edelman

Ruth Wetzel, Pool Noir

Going for Gold by Ruth Wetzel


Selected through our Portfolio Showcase International Call for Entries,
the gallery will also feature two portfolios. The theme was open:

Evy Huppert & Cindy Weisbart

Evy Huppert, Wild Spirits

Supplication by Evy Huppert

“We are fallen in mostly broken pieces…but the wild can still return us to ourselves.”
~ Robert Macfarlane

I made this work on journeys south to untamed places in the sea islands of Georgia with a tribe of like-minded artists. The images and characters come from dreams and memories the land drew out from my personal mythology. Timeless, yet inhabited for millennia, the islands carry a spiritual presence of deep wildness palpable in the light and shadows; the ancient alligators and birds, the feral pigs and donkeys, and the artifacts of their existence lying everywhere. My photographs explore the emotions and spiritual experiences that the land and the light evoked: vulnerability, captivity, lost-ness, sanctuary, and wildness set free.

Bio: Evy Huppert is a fine art photographer whose black and white film-based work explores emotional narratives in both landscape and portraiture. A native of Minnesota and long-time resident of New England, she considers herself to be a true ‘child of the North.’ Permanently light-deprived, her remedy for personal and collective seasonal affective disorder is making images that are often about light itself.
Her work has been included in juried exhibits at the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Vermont Center for Photography, the Center for Fine Art Photography, PhotoPlace Gallery, and A Smith Gallery. Her photographs were featured on Lenscratch in July 2019, and have appeared in numerous print publications, including The Hand Magazine, SHOTS Magazine, where Evy was the first featured Emerging Photographer, and in Diffusion Annual X, forthcoming. Her work is in private collections in the US and Europe.

Cindy Weisbart, Three and Six!

Three and Six! no. 12 by Cindy Weisbart

I am an urban public high school history teacher in Cambridge, MA. My colleague and friend Nkrumah Jones coaches the nationally-ranked Bunker Hill Community College men’s basketball team in Boston. I visited the gym last fall, and witnessed his gifts and passion for mentorship. Coach and players showed humor, outrageousness, loyalty, political awareness and maturity.

The images in “Three and Six!” contribute to more comprehensive, fresh representations of Black masculinity. Throughout the winning season, I documented a wide range of emotional expression and tenacity in this team, when African American young men continue to suffer traumatic and deadly consequences of implicit bias, misjudged to be more adult, more responsible, more criminal than white young men. 

My photographs pay attention to the team paying attention. The metaphor is basketball, the lessons are for life, the model is interdependence. “Three and six,” Nkrumah intones. “1-2-3 Bulldogs! 4-5-6 Family!” the players shout.

Bio: In San Jose las Flores, El Salvador, Cindy Weisbartobserved coyunturalanalysis, where a community analyzes the political moment by including every point of view and transforming that collective understanding into action. In her documentary work, Cindy looks for moments of coyuntura— representations of our common humanity. She is inspired by the collaborations in The Photo League, the Kamoinge Collective and the Bronx Documentary Center. Cindy’s documentary work has been exhibited in solo shows in the Boston area at Somerville Public Library, Bunker Hill Community College, and Social Documentary Network, and in group shows at Gallery 263, Somerville City Hall, the Griffin Museum of Photography, Cambridge and Plymouth Art Associations, and Massachusetts General Hospital. She is a loyal student of Stella Johnson. Cindy lives and works near Cambridge, Mass., where she is a public high school history teacher.


Women and Incarceration
Also Portfolios
Narratives: Environmental Portraits of Women

Sara Bennett

Olivia Gay

Maureen McNeil & Luz Minerva Muniz 

 Portfolio Showcase  Narratives: Environmental Portraits of Women
Joan Lobis Brown & Geralyn Shukwit

Exhibition Dates:  August 17 to September 15, 2019

Reception for Artists: Saturday, August 17,  5-7 pm  

Sara Bennett, The Bedroom Project

Tracy, 51, in her own apartment three-and-a-half-years after her release. Jamaica, NY (2017), pigment print, 20×24″ by Sara Bennett

Olivia Gay, Incarcerated, Interior Views

Maisons d’arrêt/Detention Homes 1, pigment print, 13×19″ by Olivia Gay

Maureen McNeil and Luz Minerva Muniz
NYS Training School for Girls and Life After

Handmade fabric book, 14 leaves, 13x13" by Maureen McNeill, also available as 7"x7" photobook

NYS Training School for Girls, Handmade fabric book, 14 leaves, 13×13″ by Maureen McNeill, also available as 7″x7″ photobook

Life Wall, photo quilt, 57×59″ by Luz Minerva Muniz

Selected through our Portfolio Showcase International Call for Entries,
the gallery will also feature two portfolios theme: Environmental Portraits of Women

Joan Lobis Brown, Women of an UNcertain Age:
Indomitable Baby Boomers Challenging Cultural Norms

Baby Boomer Women 5 by Joan Lobis Brown

Baby Boomer Women 5 by Joan Lobis Brown

Geralyn Shukwit, Portraits of Bahia

Natalia by Geralyn Shukwit

Natalia by Geralyn Shukwit


About the Artists

Sara Bennett, The Bedroom Project

Carol, 69, in a communal residence four years after her release. Long Island City, NY  (2017) by Sara Bennett, pigment print 20×24″

Artist Statement

For the past five years, Sarah Bennett has been photographing formerly incarcerated women in their bedrooms. All were convicted of serious crimes — mostly homicide — and spent fourteen to thirty-five years in a maximum-security prison. By the time they came up for parole they were all profoundly changed, yet most of them were repeatedly denied release because of the crimes they had committed decades earlier.

These women were open and trusting enough to allow Bennett into their most private spaces — their bedrooms — and to share the handwritten comments that accompany the photos. Like Bennett, they hope this work will shed light on the pointlessness of extremely long sentences and arbitrary parole denials, and thus help their friends still in prison: women (and men) like them who deserve a chance at freedom.

Bio
Sara Bennett has been a public defender specializing in battered women and the wrongly convicted and she is the author of The Case Against Homework. Her photo essay, Spirit on the Inside: Reflections on Doing Time With Judith Clark, was selected for the 2014 INFOCUS Juried Exhibition of Self- Published Books at the Phoenix Art Museum.

Her first Life After Life in Prison exhibit examines the lives of four women as they returned to society after spending decades in prison. It has been exhibited more than fifteen times, and featured in, among others, the Metropolitan Section of the New York Times, PBS New Hour/Art Beat, Variety & Rolling Stone’s American (in)Justice, and theMarshall Project.

The Bedroom Projectis the second in the Life After Life in Prisonseries. It has been featured on, among others, the FENCE 2018, Photoville 2018, the 10th International Organ Vida Photography Festival, the 2018 Indian Photography Festival, Feature Shoot, and PDN’s Photo of the Day. Bennett is a Top 50 Finalist in the 2018 Critical Mass Competition.

Looking Inside: Portraits of Women Serving Life Sentencesis the third in the series. It has been featured in the Metropolitan Section of the New York Times.

Like the women she photographs, Bennett hopes her work will shed light on the pointlessness of extremely long sentences and arbitrary parole denials.

Olivia Gay, Incarcerated, Interior Views

Two portraits of Grace, each 19″x13″, pigment print by Olivia Gay

Grace – Journal Entry, pigment print by Olivia Gay

Artist Statement
Olivia Gay works inside two prisons, both in Normandy, (France)—Rouen and Caen.  All of the portraits are a result of a collaborative process. She and her subjects search together, take time to experiment, look at, try again, until they are both satisfied.

In Rouen Gay worked alone with the women in a workshop we have called “Atelier de soi”  (self-workshop). She invites the women to represent themselves with photography, videos, paintings, writing, collages.  In Caen the same workshop happened, but she also had the opportunity to work in collaboration with the theatre and the museum of arts; on a special day they organize “Discover Opera.” The theater and opera people brought in costumes, a make up artist, and a singer. Gay made two portraits of each woman in costumes: one with visible face so they could have a “souvenir”. This one the women painted; then one with invisible face for me to record and keep in my series.

In both cases and places, it is always clear to the incarcerated women—she makes two portraits—one is for her with visible face (which she will never show) and one for her. While not everyone could join the theater workshop, she has six pairs—both in costume and in typical dress. In this series there are six pairs of portraits, in costume and not, and a page from their respective journals.

Sometimes, the women feel like showing more intimacy; It’s something important for them this sensation of being “looked at”. So while we do the non-visible face portrait for me, two suggested exposing their backs instead, especially when they have tattoos.

Bio
For more than two decades, Olivia Gay has photographed women at work and women living in separate societies. Workers include waitresses, cashiers, prostitutes,  factory workers, domestic workers; women in separate societies include incarcerated women, nuns and women living in refugee camps. She takes her time, often seven years or more—allowing mutual respect, trust, and understanding to deepen. And from that process the photographs emerge. Gay’s interest is not to capture the most vivid gestures. Instead, she and the woman she is photographing face each other with all that they have gained in their shared experience.

Olivia Gay, lives in Normandy, France. She received the prestigious Prix HSBC for photography (Prix Joy Hendreriks) in 2018. Her work has appeared in solo exhibits throughout Europe and in Brazil, in venues including Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, 2018 and Fondation Mast, Bologna, 2015. Gay teaches photography (history and technique) at the University Panthéon – La Sorbonne, Paris.

(Thank you to Ellen Feldman, Photo Editor of Women’s Review of Books. Ellen introduced us to the work of Olivia Gay and has translated our correspondence and journal entries from her series.)

Maureen McNeil and Luz Minerva Muniz
NYS Training School for Girls and Life After

NYS Training School for Girls, Handmade fabric book, 14 leaves, 13×13″ by Maureen McNeill, also available as 7″x7″ photobook and Life Photo Quilt by Luz Minerva Muniz

Artist/educator Maureen McNeil says “This story of Luz Minerva Muniz’s solitary confinement is told here for the first time in fifty-five years, releasing the shame, guilt, and anger that destroyed her life as a teenager”.

Discussing the origins of the Project, McNeil explains: “In 2017, I was introduced to Luz Minerva Muniz by Tracy Huling, Founder/Director of Prison Public Memory Project.  Huling had found that some formerly incarcerated women found it too painful to participate in oral histories and asked if I would be interested in engaging Luz in an art-based project about her time at the Training School for Girls. This process gave Luz courage to remember ‘the lost girl’, as she called herself. Luz was 16 when she was sentenced in 1964. Two years later, she was bussed back to NYC, and became homeless in Central Park. “

For a year and a half, Luz (now 70) and Maureen met every week to share a meal, visit a museum and discuss art and Luz’s life. Visiting a Louise Bourgeois exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in Manhattan inspired them to collaborate on the content of McNeil’s artist book to tell Luz’s story of surviving 28 days in solitary confinement for swearing.  Luz then created her Life Wall photo quilt documenting better days in her life to now.

Portfolio Showcase

Joan Lobis Brown, Incarcerated, Interior Views

Baby Boomer Women 1 by Joan Lobis Brown

Artist Statement
“Women of an UNcertain Age: Indomitable Baby Boomers Challenging Cultural Norms” is a portraiture series—accompanied by text culled from interviews—that focuses on American baby boomer women of diverse races, religions, sexual identities, professions and socioeconomic backgrounds.

These women born between 1945 and 1964 were the first generation to expect that they could “have it all”: equality, family, careers, health and prosperity. Now, they face challenges brought on by the demands of growing older while continuing to enjoy those same meaningful and evolved lives.

Women still are the targets of sexism and ageism. Older women are often invisible, remaining largely unseen by members of a youth-oriented society and underrepresented in popular culture and imagery. They are often euphemistically described as being “of a certain age,” as though an acknowledgement of maturity might be taken as an offense.

These photographs bear witness to a generation that never gave up.

Bio
Joan Lobis Brown is a visual activist whose portrait and landscape photographs have been widely shown in group and solo exhibitions in the United States, Europe, Australia, the Middle East and Africa. She has five solo exhibitions scheduled for 2019–2020. Since 2013, she has been selected for 95 international juried competitions. Her work has been published online and in print magazines such as The Huffington Post, Zeke, Mic.com, Hyperallergic.com, The International Photo Review, Featureshoot, POZ and others.

Her portrait projects highlight members of our society who have been subjected to intense stigma. Her landscape projects include subjects as diverse as global warming, the creation of a phantasmagorical world and the extinction of African animals.

Brown studied photography in the advanced studies program at the International Center of Photography and has continued studying with today’s influential photographers and editors.

Geralyn Shukwit, Portraits of Bahia

Avo Deja, Portaits of Bahia by Geralyn Shukwit

Avo Deja, Portaits of Bahia by Geralyn Shukwit

Artist Statement
These images are a selection from Geralyn Shukwit’s long-term project, “O Tempo Não Para (Time Does Not Stop).” Beginning in 2011, she has returned to families throughout Bahia exploring customs and relationships within their small, often marginalized, communities, layering daily life and rituals to create intimate, poetic portraits that reflect their unwavering strength and character.

Bio
Geralyn Shukwit is a photographer with a passionate interest in humanity and our connections to the space around us. Since 2002, she has traveled to South America and the Caribbean where she intimately photographs daily life, straddling the line between documentary and fine art photography.

Geralyn’s photographs have been exhibited in the United States, Spain and Ethiopia; published in National Geographic, Progresso Fotografico Italy, BIG Magazine, New York Daily News and Post. She is a winner of the Julia Margaret Cameron Award, Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50, AI/AP Latin American Fotografîa, APA/NY and International Photography Awards (IPA) and was nominated for the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award this year.

She is based in Brooklyn, NY with her cat Marley Pants.


Women & Incarceration

Special Evening Program
Saturday, Sept. 7, 5-7pm
Talks begin at 5:30pm

Come join the conversation 
Presentations
by

Sara Bennett & Olivia Gay

Karen Davis will present
The Fabric Project**
by Maureen McNeil & Luz Minerva Muniz.

**The Fabric Project begins with the experience of a young girl
at the NYS Training School for Girls, Hudson NY


Sara Bennett and Olivia Gay, artist talks Saturday, Sept 7, 5-7pm
Above, left: from Sara Bennett’s “The Bedroom Project”, right: from Olivia Gay’s “Incarcerated, Interior Views, lower left: “The Fabric Project” – Artist book, “NYS Training School for Girls” by Maureen McNeil; Photo quilt by Luz Minerva Muniz

Fifth Annual Group Show
photography, photo-based works, video

Juror: Paula Tognarelli
Executive Director & Curator: Griffin Museum of Photography 

ONLINE CATALOG

Reception for Artists
Saturday, July 27, 5-7 pm

Show dates: July 20 – August 11, 2019

5th Annual Group Show Gallery Shots

5th Annual Group Show Gallery Shots

5th Annual Group Show, photography, photo-based works, video

•Amanda Dahlgren  •Gail Albert  •Mildred Alpern  •Zia Ayub  •Sue Bailey  •Terry Barczak  •Joan Barker  •Amy Becker  •Michael Bogdanffy-Kriegh  •Marilyn Canning  •Natalie Christensen  •Robert Coppola  •Anastasia Davis  •Chris DeMarco  •Ken Dreyfack  •Suzette Dushi  •Steven Edson  •Diane Fenster  •Kev Filmore  •Joan Fitzsimmons  •Steve Gentile  •Paul Greenberg  •Richard Greene  •Anna Grevenitis  •Charles Hall  •Susan Higgins  •Janet Holmes  •Leslie Jean-Bart  •Diana Nicholette Jeon  •Marcy Juran  •Jen Kiaba  •Karen Klinedinst  •Jack Laforte  •Rusty Leffel  •Laura Migliorino  •Lynette Miller  •Judith Montminy  •Kris Moore  •Liz Nealon  •Louise Pedno  •Thomas Pickarski  •Lauren Piperno  •Lisa Redburn  •David Reinfeld  •Russ Rowland  •Rebekah Schmitz  •Amy Shapiro  •Stephanie Taiber  •David Whitney  •Caren Winnall  •Cate Wnek

Juror’s Statement

It is my opinion that the photographs of the 5thJuried Exhibition at the Davis Orton Gallery are just perfect for this summer of 2019. There’s even a thrum as background if you leave yourself open to it. One might say this energy as an ensemble is a call to action. I tend to think it’s the rhythm of living just like the hum of a hive. The images assemble, arm in arm. Some just wait and watch like the appaloosa with her eye on the road. Other photographs glow, spin, swim and speed. Even the spoons are marching. In this crop of submissions, I sensed artists’ heightened awareness of their surroundings. It is summer after all. But in the submissions, I also sensed a broad swath of emotions from joy to anxiety as well as heartache.

Over the course of time generations have looked to the natural world for answers. The activity of squirrels is said to foretell the depth of winter. The thickness of corn husks and onion skins are other indicators of how tough a winter lies ahead. In my world, photographers are the beacons. And here in this Hudson gallery they’ve gathered at the ready.

My continued thank you to Karen and Mark for again giving me the opportunity to learn more about our photography community. And thank you to all who submitted to this call for entry. The experience of this sharing is more than I can describe in words. You’ve all been very generous this round indeed.

Paula Tognarelli
Executive Director and Curator, Griffin Museum of Photography


photocollage, photography, mixed media

see gallery shots here

Cheryl Lickona… 

& Friends: Mixing Media 
 Dea Archbold….Glass 
Lisa Breznak….Sculpture
Melanie Burrows…Jewelry
Patti Gibbons….Collage, Painting
Gretchen Kelly….Watercolor
Maria Kolodziej-Zincio….Encaustic
K. Velis Turan….Mixed Media Textiles 

Portfolio Showcase “Object(s)”
Laura Dodson and Malcolm Easton

click here for radio interview with 4 of the artists on WGXC’s Art of the Hudson Valley

Cheryl Lickona, photo collage & mixed media

Lady Earth, photocollage mounted

Lady Earth by Cheryl Lickona, photocollage, pigment print 10.75″w x 15.5″l, mounted on a painted canvas 16″x 20″

Dress, mixed media – memoir by Cheryl Lickona

& Friends 
mixed media curated by Cheryl Lickona

Top Row: Melanie Burrows / Gretchen Kelly / Patti Gibbons / K. Velis TuranBottom Row: Dea Archbold / Lisa Breznak / Maria Kolodziej-Zincio

Selected through our Portfolio Showcase International Call for Entries,
the gallery will also feature two portfolios – theme: object(s)

Laura Dodson, Old is New

click here for entry about Laura Dodson’s work in Mario Naves blog, Too Much Art

Malcolm Easton, Artifacts of Strangers

Celebration by Malcolm Easton from portfolio: Artifacts of a Stranger; edition size of 5

Cheryl Lickona, photocollage and mixed media

Moon Dreams, photo collage by Cheryl Lickona

Moon Dreams, photo collage by Cheryl Lickona

Cheryl Lickona’s works turn architecture into fabric, sculpture into models, and simple settings into magical environments.  Her digital collages combine a love for vintage images and objects with alove of photography and storytelling.  Many of the elements in her collages are from Art Deco and Classical sculptures and vintage photographs.  Using these and other found imagery from a wide range of sources, she takes unconnected objects and combines them into something new and unexpected.  With a touch of fantasy, and certainly a romantic viewpoint, each collage suggests a story. Sometimes obvious; sometimes requiring the viewer’s invention and sometimes suggesting a world not quite explainable.

Bio: Cheryl Lickona is an illustrator, artisan, photographer, and writer. A Hudson Valley native, and a resident of NYC for 30+ years, she began her professional career as a fashion illustrator, working for such notable names as Elizabeth Arden, Bloomingdales, Henri Bendel, Bullocks, Glamour Magazine, Estee Lauder. Her designs have been included in the Museum of Modern Art Christmas Card Collection. Moving to Columbia County in 2006, Lickona began to explore other media including photography, writing, and digital collage.

Recent exhibitions include several curated group shows at Emerge Gallery, Saugerties NY. Her work has also been exhibited at The Gallery at The Fashion Institute of Technology NYC, Columbia County Council of the Arts, Greene County Council of the Arts, The Hudson Opera House, and an Arts Thirteen Exhibit at the Rhinebeck Public Library. One of her collages appears on the book cover of “Phantom Moon”(Hansen Publishing.)

Curator Cheryl Lickona & Friends Mixing Media

Curator Cheryl Lickona has invited seven mixed media artists to join her in this exhibition. She and the artists have two things in common, besides their friendships. First, they share a love for natural forms.  Second, their creativity is ever-expanding. They take their medium and push the boundaries.  

“I am honored to share the gallery with these talented women; below is a brief description of their work.”  Cheryl Lickona

K.Velis Turan, screen-printing her own images, creates quilted paintings of urban landscapes, architectural renderings, even portraits that are detailed, textured and filled with color and life.

Lisa Breznak, known for her small gold leafed sculptures, is now creating organic wall art—sculpted panels from the raw material of foam core.

Gretchen Kelly‘s watercolor paintings are spontaneous and beautiful whether she is painting a figure—as in this show—a flower, or plein-air landscape. She makes it look joyful and effortless as an accompanying video will reveal.

Patti Gibbons’ color and sense of design and form flow through each of the many mediums she works in.  An unstoppable powerhouse of talent, in this show we feature Patti’s collages and paintings.

Dea Archbold’sart glass pieces create magic as they catch light. Trained in painting and the traditional art of stained glass repair, she has evolved those talents into an art form filled with nature, color and small delicate paintings. 

Maria Kolodziej-Zinciouses her sense of history and family, and the love of her environment and her home, to create small, evocative photo-based encaustic pieces. Her subjects, so  exquisitely simple, lay frozen in that final layer of wax and paint.

Melanie Burrowsunique and inspired jewelry draw you in. Her use of color and natural forms create works that make you want to touch and wear them.

 

 

Portfolio Showcase

Laura Dodson, photography: Old is New

Silver by Laura Dodson, pigment print, 15×15″ on 22×17″paper, edition size: 6 + 2AP

In Old is New,Laura Dodson examines memory by revisiting Dutch still life painting, remastered for a contemporary audience. In Dodson’s images, observation gives way to imagination and fictional narrative; color, light, and the layers of time and space collide. She uses photographic montage to layer alternate states and abstraction to emphasize an edgy suspension between reality and dream. Water provides a stage that is infinitely malleable and suggestive of the irrational.

Bio:  Laura Dodson is a lens-based artist working in New York and Athens, Greece. She has been the subject of six one-person exhibitions (Kouros Gallery, NY and Gallery7, Athens). Her work has recently appeared at The Clemente Center, Lesley Heller Workspace, the New York Studio School and Elizabeth Harris Gallery in New York, the Godwin-Turnbach Museum in Queens, Five Myles, Sideshow Gallery and Schaffler Gallery in Brooklyn. Her photographs are in the permanent collection of the Contemporary Art Center of Thessaloniki and the American College of Athens.

Malcolm Easton, photography: Artifacts of Strangers

Watching You by Malcolm Easton, pigment print, 21×14″, edition size 5

Malcolm Easton collects well-used domestic objects that were left behind by their former owners. Each manufactured item came from a stream of identical objects. But through wear, damage or decay, each became unique over time. In choosing from the artifacts of strangers, I’m drawn to those that connect with my own experiences. Inspired by historical approaches to bricolage, Easton creates temporary arrangements that exist only for the purpose of being photographed.

Easton’s approach to lighting suggests the passage of time. Working in a windowed studio, he uses a handheld mirror to reflect a beam of sunlight onto his subjects. While the shutter is open, he moves his hand, adding a gestural component to the illumination. If a subject is in motion, the fleeting light catches it at more than one position, creating a multiple exposure. 

Bio:  Malcolm Easton has been a collector and tinkerer all his life. Born in New York, he’s a longtime resident of Berkeley, California. His interest in photography began at an early age, and has included shooting stereo, 35 mm color slides, and monochrome landscapes. His still life photographs center on artifacts from daily life. Malcolm’s images reflect our consumer culture and the life cycle of objects that pass through it. His work has been shown in galleries across the U.S. and internationally.


Abstract Expressions
from Minimal to Complex

Debra Bilow photography

Maureen McNeil fiber art

 Portfolio Showcase 
John Fraser and Nicholas Luchenbill

Exhibition Dates:  May 11 to June 9, 2019

Reception for Artists: Saturday, May 11, 5-7 pm
  

Debra Bilow, Paper Studies, Material Studies

Paper Studies, Material Studies by Debra Bilow. photographs in studies 6"x6" ea

Studies Series: Paper Studies (l), Material Studies (r) by Debra Bilow. photographs in studies 6″x6″ ea

Maureen McNeil, Fiber Art – Wall Hangings

Hudson River Series, Kaaterskill by Maureen McNeil, 60"x40", pieced fabric wall hanging

Hudson River Series, Kaaterskill by Maureen McNeil, 60″x40″, pieced fabric wall hanging

Portfolio Showcase

Selected through our Portfolio Showcase International Call for Entries,
the gallery will also feature two portfolios

John Fraser, Material Witness

Grey Composition White Square by John Fraser, 17x22", pigment print

Grey Composition White Square by John Fraser, 17×22″, pigment print

Nicholas Luchenbill, Iraq Revisited

Day 442 by Nicholas Luchenbill, 16×20″, pigment print


About the Artists

Debra Bilow, Paper Studies, Material Studies

Debra Bilow, Paper Study, Untitled No. 5, 2016, 6x6" edition of 8

Debra Bilow, Paper Study, Untitled No. 5, 2016, 6×6″ edition of 8

Landscapes and still life compositions have constituted Debra Bilow’s recent work. Both genres are grounded in formality and restraint and exhibit her minimalist leanings.

The images presented in this show are from three of Bilow’s still life series.  The Material Study series, in stark black and white, is a study of manipulated forms of common household goods. The other two series, in a barely-there color scheme, focus exclusively on the shapes of different types of paper.  While the Material Study and Paper Studies are opposites in tonality and presence, the commonality is the use of simple materials coaxed into sculptural objects.

Bio: Debra Bilow’s photographs have been exhibited across the east coast of the US including group shows at University Art Museum, Albany, Sidney Mishkin Gallery, NY and The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls.  Her images have been published in The Photo Review and the Light Journal and acquired by private collectors. She will be the featured artist in a solo show at the Katonah Museums Artists Association, Spot Gallery in May.

Debra grew up at the edge of rural life in Upstate New York.  She holds a Master’s Degree in Urban Planning from Rutgers University and subsequently pursued a career in real estate.  She lives and works in Brooklyn and South Salem, New York.

Maureen McNeil, Fabric Constructions – Wall Hangings

Maureen McNeil, CloverReach 7, 49x54", sewn fabrics, metallics, plastics

Maureen McNeil, CloverReach 7, 49×54″, sewn fabrics, metallics, plastics

Fabric artist Maureen McNeil creates hand-sewn, often large tapestry-like art, layering opaque and transparent materials of various textures to tell abstract visual stories. Through her unique fabric constructions, McNeil works the dance between light, substance, the eye and the brain. While she has made fabric art since early childhood, for the past fifteen years, she has been adding to the depth as well as the expanse of her constructions.

By cutting, pinning, marking, layering and hand-sewing fabrics, metallics, plastics and other sources of color, pattern and texture, her visual stories capture the fleeting sensory experiences kindled by light infusing the material world. Complicated by historical, economic and gender-political views, her constructions live both within and outside conventions of an art and craft that go back millennia.

McNeil’s inspirations often coalesce into series, such as the Hudson River wending its way, an exploration of torsos, deep space and inner portraiture. Her prompts can be surprising.  Sunlight reflecting off skyscraper windows onto her downtown apartment walls connects her to the emotions, timelessness, and perceptual fascinations of childhood.  Long lost religious experiences of Latin chants, stained glass, marble folds, golden vestments and black habits somehow found expression in stitching, lines crisscrossing broad sweeps, small white dots penetrating saturated colors and undulating darkness. All of this as her constructions move toward abstraction.

Bio:  Maureen McNeil is an artist, writer and nonprofit consultant. She first exhibited her fabric constructions in a San Francisco arts fair in 1982. In 2011, Maureen exhibited her Torso Series at the Seattle Sunny Arms. Today, her art is in private collections in New York, New Jersey, California, Michigan, and Washington.

Her latest book is Dear Red, the Lost Diary of Marilyn Monroe. 

Originally from Seattle, she currently lives in New York City and makes art at her studio in Claverack, New York. She teaches a popular course in Creative Writing at the Hudson Area Library.

Portfolio Showcase

John Fraser, Material Witness

Composition Orange Red II by John Fraser, 17×22″, pigment print

John Fraser is an artist who works within a number of disciplines. His lens-based work is discrete and addresses the world in the most direct way.  Fraser’s photographs stem from a minimalist aesthetic. He is in pursuit of subjects that have a timeless clarity and order.

With an economy of means, he produces photographs that possess a formal rigor while being suggestive. They are simultaneously factual records and abstract construction. The reductive compositions he finds in the built world are equally concerned with the problems of photographic vision, and the perception of concrete reality.

Bio  John Fraser works within the disciplines of Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, and Photography. He is currently represented by galleries in Chicago, IL, Nashville, TN, Fort Worth, TX, Munich, Germany, Berkeley, CA, and San Diego, CA. His work in all media is held in public collections throughout the United States, Europe and Canada, and in private collections in  the US, Europe, Brazil and Japan. It has been featured in one-person and group exhibitions throughout the United States and in Canada, Europe and Japan.

Fraser has been awarded fellowships and grants from Arts Midwest / National Endowment for the Arts, and The Illinois Arts Council. He has been an Artist in Residence at YADDO in Saratoga Springs, NY, at Illinois State University, twice at The Robert M. MacNamara Foundation in Westport Island, Maine, at The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska, and at the Hafnarfjordur Center of Culture and Fine Art, near Reykjavik, Iceland.

Nicholas Luchenbill, Iraq Re-Visited

Day 145 by Nicholas Luchenbill, pigment print, 16×20″

Nicholas Luchenbill examines aspects of anxiety and memory. The images he constructs are based upon his perceptions of what happens when traumatic memories are created and stored in the brain. In his experience, memories are consolidated, stacked and stored on top of one another which results in lost and fragmented information and formatted in a skewed sense of time. In this series, he use images from his first deployment to Iraq, that are autobiographical, complicating them through strategies of overlapping, interruption and fragmentation to reflect the sense of anxiety that is the by-product of being placed in a war zone.

Bio  Nicholas Luchenbill is a Texas-based photographer and visual artist. After high school Nicholas joined the United States Army where he served ten years active duty, with three combat tours in Iraq. Nicholas uses his photographic practice to understand his own wounds from war trauma, and also to speak to other Veterans that are suffering from PTSD, with a primary focus on the mental health issues surrounding the Veteran Community.


Painterly and Abstract Landscapes in B/W and limited palette

LandEscapes

curated by

Carla Shapiro & Ruth Wetzel

 Portfolio Showcase 
Painterly Landscapes: Linda Cassidy & Elisa Keogh

Reception for Artists: Saturday, April 6, 5-7 pm
Exhibition Dates:  April 6 to May 5, 2019
  

LandEscape – DavisOrton Gallery Exhibition Catalog


The curators, Carla Shapiro and Ruth Wetzel, have selected artists that offer views of Landscape that are both painterly and abstracted. Each compositions’ tensions come alive through limited palettes. These painterly visions remove observation from the common place. Each piece exalts different types of landscape beauty. 

Photographs  • Lindsey Shaw Bardsley • Nicholas Bell • Niki Berg • Thomas Fleckenstein • Tom Hatlestad • Carmelita Iezzi • Vanessa Marsh • Wayne Montecalvo • David Nadel • Mirja Paljakka • Meryl Salzinger • Andy Todd • Tim Trompeter  Videos – • Matt Frieburghaus • Deborah Mesa-Pelly • Carla Shapiro • Ruth Wetzel

Tidal Delta by Lindsey Shaw Bardsley. Pigment print, 13"x19"

Tidal Delta by Lindsey Shaw Bardsley. Pigment print, 13″x19″

Untitled by Tom Hatlestad, pigment print, 8"x10"

Untitled by Tom Hatlestad, pigment print, 8″x10″

Diamond Beach, Still from video by Matt Frieburghaus

Diamond Beach, Still from video by Matt Frieburghaus

LandEscape Curated by Carla Shapiro and Ruth Wetzel, 17 artists: photographs and videos

LandEscape Curated by Carla Shapiro and Ruth Wetzel, 17 artists: photographs and videos

Portfolio Showcase

Selected through our Portfolio Showcase Call for Entries, the gallery will also feature two portfolios by Elisa Keogh and Linda Cassidy

Elisa Keogh: Moving 

Moving Image 1 by Elisa Keogh, pigment print, 9"x18"

Moving Image 1 by Elisa Keogh, pigment print, 9″x18″

Artist Statement: Shooting from a moving car window I sought to capture the evocative and everchanging winter landscape. I loved the abstracted softness that came from the motion of the car along with a slow shutter, creating imagery akin to flowing charcoal drawings. This series provides a variety of work that is both literal and nuanced.

Bio  Born in England and raised in Belfast, Northern Ireland during the height of political unrest, Keogh was drawn to the raw, underground street art that focused strongly on content and it ignited her passion to make art that carries a message.

At 19, Keogh arrived in the United States and took her first photography class. She immediately knew that she had tapped into a piece of herself that would be important to her future.

Subsequently, Elisa enjoyed a successful career as an art director/graphic designer in NYC where she collaborated with many creative photographers. During this time her interest in photography was reignited, and she began to exhibit her own work.

Since 2005, Keogh has been an exhibiting artist as well as a digital photography teacher and artist-in-residence in Norwalk Public Schools. Elisa currently maintains her studio at Firing Circuits in Norwalk, CT.

Linda Cassidy: Light and Matter 

the place where the story ended by Linda Cassidy

the place where the story ended by Linda Cassidy

Artist Statement: Things are often not what they seem to be, and through my current work I encourage the viewer to suspend assumption and invite the unanticipated.

Much as the natural world, defined by its randomness, can appear intentional and concrete, my work taps into a pulsation, expressed visually by compositional rhythm, that transforms those most ethereal of objects, photon streams, into palpable moments of inhabited being.

Arising suddenly and with its own agenda, these images require both viewer and artist to embrace not knowing. Through that embrace we can discover something altogether unexpected yet deeply longed for.

Light and Matter is about memory and time.

I’ve been reading TS Eliot’s poem “Four Quartets” and these images are commingled with Eliot’s poem, which is partly about the loss of land and origin. These pieces speak to a nostalgia which is similar in intent but different in source: we’re now threatened with the wide scale loss of all land, so every small pocket of beautiful landscape becomes increasingly precious. And yet we remember when nature and beauty seemed endlessly synonymous, thus the tension between what we hope for and what we know: the source of all nostalgia.

Bio: Linda Cassidy is an artist who currently lives and works on the East End of Long Island. A painter since her years at Bard College, her work is represented in private collections throughout the world.

Deeply influenced by the abstract expressionists and color-field painters of the 1950’s and 60’s, her current photographic work probes the boundaries between traditional art of the 3-dimensional physical world and the virtual realites of digital art.

Photographs that behave like paintings, paintings that become transformed into layered photos, light streams that transpose into perceived  matter, fractalization of common forms; all are part of her present inquiry.

LandEscapes, photography and video, curated by Carla Shapiro and Ruth Wetzel

LandEscapes, photography and video, curated by Carla Shapiro and Ruth Wetzel