2013 Davis Orton Gallery Exhibitions

Thank You to the Exhibiting Artists, 2013

Exhibiting Artists 2014

Left to Right, Top to Bottom: Stephen DiRado, Bob Avakian, Miska Draskoczy, Susan Bowen, Benjamin Dimmitt, Debi Milligan, Keiko Sono, Anna Beeke, Kent Krugh (below), Tamara Staples, Rebecca Doughty, Dianne Yudelson, Jim Nickelson, Janet Sternburg, Barbara Kilpatrick, Pavel Romaniko, James Bellucci, Ellen Feldman, Charlee Brodsky, Stefan Petranek, Tony Bowen, Carla Shapiro, Kate Sterlin, Andi Schreiber, Shane Welch



November 15 to December 22, 2013

PHOTOBOOK 2013 

Davis Orton Gallery PHOTOBOOK 2011 Exhibition and Sale call for work

20 PhotoBooks in Exhibition
Photographs by Four Best of Show (bos)

Steve Anderson, Dorothee Deiss,
Andy Mattern, Ellen Wallenstein

Davis Orton-Photobook2013

Twenty PHOTOBOOKS

davis orton gallery 20 photobooks 2013

Surruralism, Steve Anderson (bos)
Moving With the Seasons: Portrait of a Mongolian Family, Liza Carter
A Minha Casa e Onde Estas (My Home is Where You Are), Filipe Casaca
Visible Invisible, Dorothee Deiss (bos)
Rivington, Carlos Loret de Mola
Can You Dig It? A Chromatic Series of Floral Arrangements, Melissa Eder
All the Girls, Erica Flood
Nihil Scitur, José M. Gómez-Ros
Postcards From Zero Hour, Michael Hunold
Web of Uncertainty, Irene Imfeld
We Buy Gold, Nikki Johnson
PISS, David Lykes Keenan
Kenwood Ave Adam Long
Driven Snow, Andy Mattern (bos)
Body Light: Passages in a Relationship, Dan McCormack
The Middle of Nowhere, Thomas Pickarski
La Dolce Vista, Betty Press and Philippa Stannard
Columbus Day, Mireille Ribière
Sastriagraphs, Isabelle Sastre
Respecting My Elders – Age and the Creative Spirit, Ellen Wallenstein (bos)


October  11 to November 10, 2013

Reception: Saturday, October 12, 2013  6-8 pm
also ARTSWALK

Carla Shapiro

Kate Sterlin

portfolio showcase Andi Schreiber & Shane Welch 

Carla Shapiro,  Memory and Longing

Halloween by Carla Shapiro
Halloween, Platinum/Palladium Print and mixed media by Carla Shapiro

Kate Sterlin, Family

Untitled 1 from Family Album by Kate Sterlin
“Marc and Zsela in Chair, Brooklyn 2004” from Family by Kate Sterlin


Portfolio Showcase  Andi Schreiber and Shane Welch

Summer's Idyll by Andi Schreiber
“Summer’s Idyl” by Andi Schreiber

Security by Shane Welch
“Security” by Shane Welch


Carla Shapiro, Memory and Longing

Lady With Veil by Carla Shapiro

As a photographer I have taken countless pictures, but for this body of work I have been purchasing the photographs of others. Combing through the seemingly endless archives of forgotten and unwanted family snapshots at flea markets, yard sales, and online, I find that certain images have an unexpected personal resonance—an emotional connection that draws me to them. The familiarity of universal themes elicits my own recollections and longings. The discovery of these particular old snapshots becomes the source of a deep exploration of the nature of memory and of image-making itself.

I find the experience of searching for the images utterly pleasurable as I glimpse the lives of others. The snapshots that I ultimately choose impact me in a subtle, yet profound way, evoking feelings so real that it sometimes seems as if the picture could actually be of my siblings, my parents or me.

I scan these photos and alter them digitally.  The alterations seem to mirror the act of remembering itself— some elements remain crystal clear, others fade to an indeterminate blur.  I enlarge the images and print them in platinum/palladium, a beautiful 19th century technique that yields classic results.  Finally, I add paper, fabric, and bric-a-brac to their surfaces to create a collaged effect.  Throughout the process of working with these images, I experience memory, longing, and joy. The photos, while easily identifiable as remnants from another era, become timeless. (above: Lady With Veil by Carla Shapiro)

bio   Carla Shapiro of upstate New York has been a visual artist working in photography for over twenty-five years. Her portfolios include photographic, mixed media and multi-media explorations about woman, aging, longing, 9/11, beauty and decay.

Carla’s work has been shown nationally and internationally.  She has received many awards including The Center for Photography at Woodstock, The Golden Light Awards at Maine Photographic Workshops, New Jersey Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, (2 times), and The O’Conner Foundation. She has attended many artists’ colonies including The MacDowell Colony (6 times) and Yaddo.

Carla teaches graduate school at Pratt Institute.

Kate Sterlin, Family

Jenny, Brooklyn 2006 by Kate Sterlin

Artist Kate Sterlin is a visual storyteller.

“Created by choice or necessity, love or obligation family, is sharing a life. At the beginning, middle, and end it is shapeless and unplanned. There is an intimacy of shared time and space – moments inside of moments. If you get close enough, remain quiet enough, or stay long enough you can see them and be apart of them. Growing up inside my own family, raising my children, spending time at an orphanage and a nursing home I found these moments.”  (Jenny, Brooklyn 2006 from Family  by Kate Sterlin)

bio: Kate Sterlin is a New York based artist living in Hudson NY.  For twenty-five years she has been creating a body of work in black and white which includes documentary street photography and intimate portraiture. Primarily self-taught, among those who have influenced her work is Mary Ellen Mark with whom she studied in both New York and Mexico.

Recent solo exhibitions include Portrait of a Landscape, Basilica Gallery Hudson, NY and FINDINGS; A Waking Dream, Vernacular Press Gallery, NYC.  Her work has also been included in group shows:  Of Light and Dark, Hudson Opera House Hudson, NY,  Hudson Independent Artist Trail, Henry Hudson Studios, Hudson, NY ; Beyond The Fourth wall, Sensei Gallery, NYC and Night Junction Semiotics: 21, Triple Crown lounge, Brooklyn NY.


Portfolio Showcase “Family Pictures”

Selected through our Portfolio Showcase Call for Work, the gallery is also featuring outstanding portfolios by Andi Schreiber and Shane Welch


Andi Schreiber, “WonderLust”

Bombed by Andi Schreiber

“My photographs are small rewards; sublime bits risen from the everyday. I live here.“

Family life, while blossoming with promise can feel like slow suffocation. WonderLust is Andi Schreiber’s visceral response to her immediate surroundings – a world where she is an insider and outsider at once.  Her photographs which include the intimate, the mundane and the artifice of modern life are both pieces of her world and manifestations of inner life. (above: Bombed by Andi Schreiber)

bio: Andi Schreiber is a documentary artist based in Westchester County, New York.  Her images have been featured in galleries around the US selected by jurors including, among others: Caleb Cole, Aline Smithson, and Chris Verene and have appeared in online galleries and magazines including F-Stop Magazine Portfolio Issue, Photo/arts Magazine, and the influential photoblog,Lenscratch.. She is a finalist in Critical Mass 2013 and Review Santa Fe, 2013.  Schreiber is photographer, picture editor and designer for Eye Candy Editions, Scarsdale, NY.

Shane Welch “Home”

Workspace by Shane WelchOn January 17, 2010 documentary photographer Shane Welch’s younger brother left home without word or warning. Most of his clothes and possessions remained, and his room still appeared to be lived in. Months went by before anyone, friends or family, knew where he was or that he was even safe. “His notes, clothes, poetry, journal, miscellaneous objects and the images on his wall were nearly all we had to remember him by.” The events and issues surrounding and leading up to his sudden disappearance inspired this series of photographs. (above: Workspace by Shane Welch)

bio: Chicago-based photographer Shane Welch’s images have appeared in group exhibitions at Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chcago, Slideluck Potshow  Chicago, the Center for Photographic Arts, Milwawkee WI, Columbia College Gallery, Chicago, the San Diego Natural History Museum and online at SocialDocumentary.net.  His personal and commercial work has been featured in numerous online and traditional magazines.

September 6 to October 6, 2013

Reception: Saturday, September 7, 2013  6-8 pm
also 5 Gallery Stroll BeLo3rd

Charlee Brodsky

Ellen Feldman

portfolio showcase  Stefan Petranek & Tony Bowen

Charlee Brodsky, Monster and Other Tales
Photography and artist books

From Monster, hateful day by Charlee Brodsky

From “Monster” (Hateful day when I received life)  by Charlee Brodsky

Ellen Feldman, The Dancer as The Invisible Girl
Photography and comic book

From Invisible Girl by Ellen Feldman

From “The Dancer as the Invisible Girl,” Untitled 11 by Ellen Feldman


Portfolio Showcase “Word & Image” Stefan Petranek and Tony Bowen

Jade, Archeology Student by Stefan Petranek
Jade, Archeology Student from The Genetic Portrait Project by Stefan Petranek

whitechapel, call me by Tony Bowen
Whitechapel – call me from Scratch: The Urban Palimpsests by Tony Bowen


Charlee Brodsky, Monster and Other Tales

From Monster by Charlee Brodsky

 I didn’t start out as a dog photographer  When asked to describe what I do, I reply, I am a documentary/fine art photographer; my work deals with social issues and beauty.  I have worked on subjects ranging from breast cancer, to mental health, to the decline of a neighborhood steel community, to urban life in India.

Four years ago, as I was transitioning from analog to digital photography, I used my dogs to become comfortable with my new camera, software, and inkjet printing. As subjects, Sam and Max were superb. They never said no to photo shoots cloaked as walks, and responded well to direction when bribed with treats. With a stack of new prints, I shared this young work with colleagues. One earnestly asked, “But what have you really been up to?” Had I lost my marbles?

As I continued to probe what I wanted this work to be, I started linking photographs with photographs, and then added words. These words are not mine, however. My collaborators in these works—Herman Hesse, Mary Shelley, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, to name a few—are known for their insights into the human psyche, the beauty of their language, and their deep understanding of human heroics as well as human foibles.

Through artist books and prints I present these stories that grasp life, in humor, drama, and complexity, retold by a little white dog who looks like he needs a grooming.  What started as a fun way to become more familiar with digital photography has become a passion. (above: From Monster [“Why did you form a monster so hideous?”] by Charlee Brodsky)

bio   Charlee Brodsky is a fine art documentary photographer and a professor of photography at Carnegie Mellon University. In 2012 she was chosen as Pittsburgh’s Artist of the Year, an award given annually by the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.

Her books include: From Mall Town to Mill Town, with writers Jim Daniels and Jane McCafferty; I Thought I Could Fly… Portraits of Anguish, Compulsion, and DespairStreet, which won the Tillie Olsen Award in 2007; Knowing Stephanie, which was one of only eight books accepted in the illustrated book category of the American Association of University Presses’ outstanding books of 2004 exhibition; A Town Without Steel, Envisioning Homestead, with anthropologist Judith Modell. In 2002 Brodsky received a regional Emmy with three others for her work on Stephanie, a documentary video.

Brodsky has also curated exhibitions dealing with the history of photography in Western Pennsylvania. This work culminated in Pittsburgh Revealed curated with Linda Benedict-Jones, a major exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art in 1997, accompanied by the book of the same name. She exhibits her work nationally and regionally, has been honored with Pennsylvania Arts Fellowships and other awards. Brodsky received a Masters of Fine Art from Yale University School of Art, and a Bachelor of Arts from Sarah Lawrence College.

Ellen Feldman, The Dancer as The Invisible Girl

1 Dancer + 1 Comic book + 1 Photographer =
The Dancer as the Invisible Girl

From "The Invisible Girl" Untitled 13 by Ellen FeldmanThe Dancer as the Invisible Girl is a photo/comic book and a series of 20×30-inch prints. It places images of a modern dancer I’ve photographed for years into frames of a Marvel Fantastic Four (FF) comic book. The main character splits into FF’s Susan Richards, her alter ego Invisible Girl, and dancer Nicole Pierce.

Comic heroes are all about gesture and frozen motion. Dancers seem superhuman as they twist, stretch, and bend their bodies. In both media, meaning derives from gesture and illusion of motion.

Through the comic form I explore how movement is limited and fragmented by the frame. The primacy of the frame links comics to photography. Comic artists and photographers love cramming things into a frame, cutting the body off mid-limb, or keeping lots of space around the figure.

It is a paradox that invisibility, generally a mark of powerlessness, is the super-human quality for the only female FF. As a street photographer, I well understand the paradox of power that derives from invisibility. (From “The Invisible Girl,” Untiltled 13 by Ellen Feldman)

bio:  Ellen Feldman is a fine arts photographer. Her on-going emphasis is on photographs of spontaneity, reflected in street photography and her long-term project photographing a dancer. Recent work includes a series of images of toy characters in urban settings, and three books: The Dancer as the Invisible Girl (photo/comic), Les Mystères de Paris/Paris Mysteries (street photos, Paris) and A Week in Prague: Wall People / Street People.

Her photographs have appeared in solo and juried exhibitions at the Griffin Museum of Photography (Winchester, MA) satellite gallery; Davis/Orton Gallery, Hudson, NY; South Shore Art Center, Cohasset, MA; Photographic Resource Center, Boston University; and Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, MA.

She has studied photography at the Maine Photographic Workshops, Fine Arts Work Center of Provincetown, and the Photography Atelier, Lesley University. She holds a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University.


Portfolio Showcase “Word and Image”

Selected through our Portfolio Showcase Call for Work, the gallery is also featuring outstanding portfolios by Stefan Petranek and Tony Bowen


 Stefan Petranek “The Genetic Portrait Project”

Stephen, Magazine Editor by Stefan PetranekFrom the food we consume to the medical advice we receive, advances in genetics and genomics are being translated into things that influence a multitude of practical, social, and personal choices we make. In “The Genetic Portrait Project,” Stefan Petranek gives voice to how Americans from all walks of life perceive these rapidly expanding fields by photographing participants alongside their response to the question:

“How do you think genetic research will affect the future?”

Petranek presents a diverse range of American sentiment, from scientists, artists and thinkers with a deep understanding of genetics to average Americans off the street. Taken together his goal is to create a visual record of how Americans are grappling with an area of science that is on the cusp of changing how we all think about life and our power to influence it in the most fundamental way. (Above: Steven, Magazine Editor by Stefan Petranek)

bio: Employing photography, video and sculptural forms, Stefan Petranek explores the subtleties of how we perceive nature through the lens of contemporary culture, especially in response to technological and scientific advances. Petranek’s work has been exhibited widely in the U.S., as well as in Canada, China, and Bulgaria. In 2012, his Genetic Portrait Project was exhibited at the Rochester Contemporary Arts Center. His video and photographic work were also included in Beyond/In Western New York 2010 at CEPA Gallery and his Fossils series was included in the book Water published in 2009 by Alphabet City Media and MIT Press. In Toronto, he is represented by Circuit Gallery.

 Tony Bowen “Scratch:  Urban Palimpsests”

East Sussex Regret by Tony BowenTony Bowen’s (ongoing) body of photographs explores found glass surfaces in various locations in London and Sussex. Over time echoes of various narratives emerge, combining natural marks: detritus, moisture, weathering and deliberate ones: a tender and intimate declaration, a violent outburst, a confessional message, an incoherent gesture reminiscent of some kind of primal automatism.

“I am fascinated by the rawness, the ambiguity and the contexts of these natural palimpsests. Light reveals a mysterious calligraphy and trigger a sense of forensic curiosity.” At their best, two or more incidents combine to offer unintended juxtapositions, interpretations and potential meanings. Bowen’s work encourages exploration of the corners and recesses of our immediate environments – to see the richness and beauty found in the banal; the ordinary; the present, and  to find new ways of looking at landscape. (Above: East Sussex Regret by Tony Bowen)

bio:  Photographer Tony Bowen of Brighton, England divides his time between is personal projects and his work as an art and design educator. “Scratch – Urban Palimpsests” was shown at DPM Images in Brighton as part of Brighton Photo Fringe in October 2012 and work from the series has been shown in the Open House programme in Brighton; Brick Lane Gallery’s “Photography Now” show (London, Feb 2013) and the on-line “forexample.org” visual arts resource.

In the US, Bowen was included in the “Art of Photography Show 2012” at the San Diego Institute of Art (California) and was awarded an honourable mention in the 2012 Los Angeles International Photography Awards (California). “Scratch” photographs have been presented at: Dark Room Gallery, Vermont; Black Box Gallery, Portland, Oregon; and the Kiernan Gallery, Lexington, Virginia. In 2013, images from “Scratch” will be featured in the publication, MANiFEST, Creative Research Gallery and Drawing Center, Cincinnati OH and in the 58th edition of F-Stop Magazine.

August 2 to September 1, 2013

 Janet Sternburg

Barbara Kilpatrick

portfolio showcase Pavel Romaniko and James Bellucci

Janet Sternburg, PASSAGE

Laying on of Hand by Janet SternburgLAYING ON OF HAND by Janet Sternburg

Barbara Kilpatrick, Performance for Camera and Imaginary Audience

Venus Hum 31 by Barbara KilpatrickVenus Hum 31 by Barbara Kilpatrick


Portfolio Showcase “Staged”: Pavel Romaniko and James Bellucci

Untitled, 2008 by Pavel RomanikoUntitled 2008 by Pavel Romaniko

DO-Bellucci-PolyhedronETC600pxl“Polyhedron of Creativity Carried Away By The Pest of Logic” by James Bellucci


 Janet Sternburg, PASSAGE

Siren by Janet Sternburg“Janet Sternburg’s images can be understood as a school of seeing and an iconography of memory all at once.” Cultural critic Joern Jacob Rohwer.

“When I photograph, I layer. When I write, I juxtapose. In both, I am working with time.”

Janet Sternburg’s photographs are born from an inexhaustible desire to look; to meditate on intention and accident; to uncover the layers of time within a single moment.

 “I want to mingle inside and outside, layer past and present, create a fertile confusion sufficient to the richness of mind and experience.” She is attentive to those moments when everyday reality becomes charged and responds to that charge with images that convey elusive but potent meanings.

Sternburg works with disposable and iPhone cameras, exploring their special qualities. “The throwaway disrupts the normative way of seeing. What we usually see as separated visual tangents is mingled on a single plane. Preferences disappear as does three-point perspective. Everything within the frame, then, is of interest and value.” And everything within the frame is captured in an instant. (above, SIREN by Janet Sternburg)

 bio:  Janet Sternburg works across many art forms, in images and words. She is a writer of memoir, essays, poetry and plays, as well as a fine-art photographer. Her books include the memoir, Phantom Limb: A Meditation on MemoryOptic Nerve: Photopoems, an experiment in using photographs as stanzas; the classic two volumes of The Writer on Her Work described as ‘groundbreaking . .  a landmark; and, forthcoming, The Unfeeling: A Memoir of Love and Damage. Her play, The Fifth String was produced in May, 2012, at New York’s La Mama Theater.

In 1998, Sternburg picked up a camera and began another life as a photographer. Her work has now been shown at museums and galleries around the world, with solo shows in Berlin, Munich, New York, Los Angeles, Mexico, and Korea where she was commissioned by The Seoul Institute of the Arts to create a full-building installation. Portfolios of her work have been published in Aperture and Art Journal.  She is a regular contributor to the on-line cultural journal, Times Quotidian, writing on photography and words.

Her honors include fellowships and residencies, among them from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Embassy in Berlin, The MacDowell Colony, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Programs. She is one of forty artists from around the world selected by The Utne Reader as ‘movers and shakers. . . whose art will change the world . . . full of ideas and insights that challenge us to live more fully.’


Barbara Kilpatrick, Performance for Camera and Imaginary Audience

exuberance 1 by Barbara Kilpatrick

Barbara Kilpatrick is an interdisciplinary visual artist who unites elements of sculpture, photography and set / costume installation.

“When I first saw depictions of performance art as a student, the plain, grainy photographs and unornamented text seemed to draw attention away from the document and towards the transient event.  Beauty was suspect and inadmissible.”  Later, when Kilpatrick began to collaborate with choreographers, she recognized this viewpoint as a particular stance, one option among many.  Hoping to extend the experience of dance into the studio, she created performances for camera, in which the audience is absent but implied.  These  “aestheticized” performance documents link the fixed object with the temporal event, providing a memento or souvenir of the time-based action.

In the photographs from her series, Venus Hum, Kilpatrick creates a world within the confines of an 8’ x 8’ x 8’ wooden box or “room”, with apertures/windows facing East and West, in a meadow in Ghent, New York. She photographed during specific times of the day and certain light conditions, using a body-cast sculpture and herself as performers, and the camera as the audience. The photographs were later sequenced along with drawings and a sound score, by Elise Kermani, that recorded the sound of the work’s making:  heartbeats, sewing machines, scissors, and the strains of the tarantella. Shown here are selected gelatin silver photographs from an imaginary performance.

 Exuberance, in a sense, is the flip side of Venus Hum. Created collaboratively with sound designer Elise Kermani and vocalist Marty New, the work was composed in her Brooklyn studio at night, with long exposures. Here the performer “played” her body-cast sculpture as a musical instrument. By focusing a beam of light on the sensors, she activated a sound composition of pre-recorded songs and vocal texts. Video captured her live, improvisational performance; what is shown here are selected gelatin silver photographs from a performance for camera.

Both Venus Hum and Exuberance emerged in the interval between the waning of the analog and the waxing of the digital camera. Kilpatrick used a 1961 Speed Graflex camera and expired Polaroid 50 positive/negative film, knowing that the photographic process that she knew and loved was slipping away, and was as transient as the performance she was trying to capture and contain.  (above: Exhuberance 1 by Barbara Kilpatrick) 

bio:   Barbara Kilpatrick, of Ghent and New York City, has exhibited in solo and group shows and collaborated with numerous artists in a range of disciplines throughout the Northeast.  In 2012, her work, Bearskin, a performance for puppets and movement artists, was presented at FIAF (French Institute/Alliance Francais). Solo shows include Keep-Sake: a set and sound installation for camera and imagined audience at Ancram Opera House, Ancram, New York;  New Arts Program, Kutztown, PA; and On Floating Bodies, Dance Theater Workshop Gallery, New York and Embodiment:  Sculpture, Photographs, and Works on Paper by Barbara Kilpatrick, Construction Company Gallery, New York.

Kilpatrick’s work with dancer-choreographer Vicky Shick extending some seventeen years, culminated in a BESSIE award (New York Dance and Performance Award) for their body of collaboration. Her collaborations with sound designer-multi-media artist Elise Kermani have led to projects in performance, installation and video.

She has received support and numerous grants including the MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation (with Shick and Kermani); the New York Foundation for the Arts SOS Grants; and from the Cill Rialaig Artist’s Residency in Ballinskelligs, Ireland.


Portfolio Showcase “Staged”

Selected through our Portfolio Showcase Call for Work, the gallery is also featuring outstanding portfolios by Pavel Romaniko, “Nostalgia” and James Bellucci, “Anecdotes”


 Pavel Romaniko “Nostalgia”

Untitled 2011 by Pavel RomanikoPavel Romaniko, born in a small town outside of Moscow, emigrated to the United States at age 17. Nostalgia, an ongoing body of work begun in 2008, is a reflection on the topic of exile, home, and developing a relationship with one’s past and belonging. Here Romaniko depicts politically charged yet simple interior spaces through miniature sets he constructs out of paper and then photographed. These spaces are in a transient state. They are not specific to their own location; they are not geographically defined. Instead they become symbolic reflections on exile, blurred memory, and Romaniko’s longing for a relationship with his personal and cultural past. The empty, melancholic interiors are not only paper constructions, they are reconstructions created from Romaniko’s recollection of the past and found photographs. The nostalgia Romaniko feels for his personal past mirrors his native Russia’s attempts at reconciliation with its tumultuous history and its uneasy relationship with a rapidly changing present.

Romaniko notes that in the act of building the Soviet myth, facts from history texts, documents, photographs and even the consciousness of people were violently eradicated. In the process, a new history was fabricated, thus creating a new order, a new collective memory, and turning and entire country and its many cultures into exiles in their own land. In the years since, artistic efforts to reconstruct the past have turned into, among other things, an anxious preservation of memory. Nostalgia has great impact on constructs of cultural memories. At the same time we are reminded that the images produced and circulated within that culture need to be carefully examined. Perhaps, they have no ability to tell a story of their own but can only remain in a form of melancholic nostalgia.  (above: Untitled 2011 by Pavel Romaniko)

bio: Pavel Romaniko was born in Pereslavl-Zalessky, a small town outside of Moscow, Russia, in 1980. He came to the United States at the age of seventeen. Romaniko completed a BA in Studio Arts from Northwestern College in Saint Paul, Minnesota (2002), and an MFA in Imaging Arts from the Rochester Institute of Technology (2009). Recent solo exhibitions include Nostalgia at Tyler Gallery, Northern Virginia Community College; Art Center, Orange Coast College, Costa Mesa, CA, and Glory at Gallery Kunstler, Booksmart Studio, Rochester, NY. His work has been featured as part of Museum of Contemporary Photography Midwest Photographers project. Romaniko is currently on faculty at the University of North Texas, Denton, TX.

James Bellucci, “Anecdotes”

DaVinci Battles Celestial Fossil Matter! by James BellucciJames Bellucci’s Anecdotes is a series of tableaus that illustrate stories derived from Biblical text, scientific discovery and self-created narratives. Each three-dimensional set,  constructed with paper, cardboard, string, and fabrics then photographed and represented as a two-dimensional image, question the authenticity of the grand narrative. The images explore scientific discoveries along with religious beliefs revealing Bellucci’s reservations, perceptions, and sentiments toward both.  “As my knowledge and beliefs changed from childhood into adulthood, Anecdotes deconstructs these conflicting narratives and subverts, parodies and internalizes each text.” (above: DaVinci Battles Celestial Fossil Matter! by James Bellucci.)

bio: James Bellucci has exhibited most recently at ISIS Gallery, University of Notre Dame, the Midwest Museum of American Art, Elkhart IN, Sage Art Center, University of Rochester and, Pingyao International Photography Festival, Pingyao, China. He currently works at University of Notre Dame teaching within the College of Arts and Letters, managing photographic studios and equipment and providing academic support. He has been an adjunct professor at University of Rochester, SUNY Brockport and Monroe Community College and has also worked at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, located in Rochester, NY, where he initiated a museum-wide digitization protocol for permanent collection materials by way of a federal grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services. Bellucci received his B.F.A. in photography from Shepherd University and M.F.A. in Imaging Arts and Sciences from the Rochester Institute of Technology.


June 28 to July 28, 2013

Tamara Staples

Rebecca Doughty

portfolio showcase Dianne Yudelson and Jim Nickelson

Tamara Staples, “The Magnificent Chicken”
Photography and Book (Chronicle Books 2013)

Blue Cochin Bantam Pullet by Tamara Staples
Blue Cochin Bantam Pullet by Tamara Staples

Rebecca Doughty, “Ink”
Ink on paper

inky14-590vpx
Inky #14 by Rebecca Doughty


 Portfolio Showcase: Dianne Yudelson and Jim Nickelson

Snowy Egret by Dianne Yudelson
Snowy Egret by Dianne Yudelson

Hope Elephants 1 by Jim Nichelson
Hope Elephants 1 by Jim Nickelson


Tamara Staples, The Magnificent Chicken

Silver Duckwing Modern Game Large Fowl Hen by Tamara Staples

Tamara Staples celebrates champions of the chicken world.  Her intent is to create a portrait of each bird that shows it’s unique qualities and commands respect. Staples styles each portrait using light and backgrounds of lush fabrics and papers to elevate her subjects in the same way that Dutch painters used such materials to denote wealth and prestige in society. She spends between ten minutes to a half an hour for each portrait session. Of course, it all depends on the mood of her models.

Staples’ love for these birds began over twenty years ago during visits to her favorite uncle, a chicken breeder who lived in Athens, Georgia. He invited her to her first poultry show.  While today we equate chicken with food, there is an existing culture that aims to perfect these birds through breeding based on a book entitled, The Standard of Perfection, first published in 1874.  At poultry shows all over the world, known as The Fancy, chickens of all shapes, colors and sizes await their judgment. Each breeder spends years creating a work of art, where genetics is key.   And each bird IS a work of art, from the amount of toes on each foot to the wingspan, from the color to the weight.  These birds are bred solely for show and live luxuriously into old age(above: Silver Duckwing Modern Game Large Fowl Hen by Tamara Staples)

bio Tamara Staples began her career as a stylist for print and television commercials. As a commercial and editorial photographer, her work has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Time Out NY, New York Times, Men’s Journal, O Magazine, New York Magazine and Town and Country to name a few. In 2001, Staples published her first photography book of personal work, The Fairest Fowl, Portraits of Championship Chickens (Chronicle Books). Her second book of portraits, The Magnificent Chicken, was published in 
2013 (Chronicle Books). Interviews and featured stories have appeared in The Daily Beast, National Geographic Weekend, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, LA Weekly, Modern Ink, The Huffington Post,” and The Atlantic. She is the recipient of a NYFA Grant and a
PDN self-promotion award.  Recently, her work inspired a play that ran off-Broadway, entitled Still Life. Staples lives and works in New York City.

About the birds: While today we equate chicken with food, there is an existing culture that aims to perfect these birds through breeding based on a book entitled, The Standard of Perfection, first published in 1874.  At poultry shows all over the world, known as The Fancy, chickens of all shapes, colors and sizes await their judgment. Each breeder spends years creating a work of art, where genetics is key.   And each bird IS a work of art, from the amount of toes on each foot to the wingspan, from the color to the weight.  These birds are bred solely for show and live luxuriously into old age.

Rebecca Doughty “Ink”

profile9-590vpx Rebecca Doughty’s work is distinctive for its comic and tragic animal figures. In these new drawings she departs from her narrative line-based work, and brings her character companions to life in graphic ink silhouettes. The animals appear as anonymous and shadowy, and at the same time their edges carefully articulate the peculiarities of each individual.

In one group, Inkies, hybrid animal figures exist in white space, appearing either to act or be acted upon, as they tumble, contort, are pushed, pulled, or struggle to move forward. Her Profile drawings are oddly reminiscent of 19th century silhouette portraits, honoring and poking fun at traditions of portraiture. Decorative picture frames add to the formality, but the artist paints them uniformly white, giving a ghostly sense of disappearing tradition. (above: Profile 9 by Rebecca Doughty)

bio: Rebecca Doughty’s drawings and paintings have been exhibited in many places since the 1980’s, including The Drawing Center in NYC, The Boston Drawing Project, DeCordova Museum, Rose Art Museum, The Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown and the Davis Orton Gallery(2010). She has received fellowships and awards from the Ucross Foundation, The Ballinglen Arts Foundation, The Massachusetts Cultural Council, and a Best Show Award from the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) Boston. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, DeCordova Museum, Simmons College, and private collections in the US, UK, Mexico and Japan. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband, poet Edison Dupree.


PORTFOLIO SHOWCASE: Animals Real and Imagined.

Selected through our Portfolio Showcase Call for Work, the gallery is also featuring outstanding portfolios by Dianne Yudelson, “From the Antique Aviary” and Jim Nickelson, “Hope Elephants.”

Dianne Yudelson, “Antique Aviary”

Great Blue Heron by Dianne YudelsonAs a young girl one of Yudelson’s fondest memory was sitting on her grandmother’s porch while she showed her tintypes of her great grandmother and other loved ones. “Holding these tintypes and gazing into the eyes of my ancestors while hearing stories of my grandmother’s childhood was an experience I hold dear to my heart.”  Yudelson’s series Antique Aviary is a melding of her lifelong passion for birds, wildlife photography and deep appreciation of the tintype image.

bio: Award winning artist Dianne Yudelson has exhibited her photographs internationally.  Six of her images from Antique Aviary will be exhibited throughout the summer on both THE FENCE in Brooklyn Bridge Park as part of the Photoville Festival and THE FENCE in Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway as part of the Flash Forward Festival. Yudelson’s most recent awards include “Photographer of the Year” Honor of Distinction at the 6th Annual Photography Masters Cup and Grand Prize Winner in the New York Center for Photographic Arts Winter Exhibition.

Jim Nickelson, “Hope Elephants”

Hope Elephants #10 by Jim NickelsonJim Nickelson photographs elephants residing at Hope Elephants, a home for older and injured elephants in Hope, Maine. Elephants and their ancestors have existed since times primordial, and close study reveals echoes of those primordial times. The richly textured folds of their skin conjures up visions of both dinosaur-trodden landscapes both real and imagined.

bio: Photographer Jim Nickelson, based in midcoast Maine, has exhibited his work widely including the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport ME; Three Columns Gallery at Harvard University; Center for Photographic Art, Carmel CA and Gallery Photographica, San Francisco.  His work is held in corporate, public and private collections across the United States.  Nickelson is a master digital printer and teaches workships privately and at Maine Media Workshops.  Before committing himself to photography he was a NASA engineer and corporate lawyer.

 

May 17 – June 23, 2013

Benjamin Dimmitt

Debi Milligan

Keiko Sono

portfolio showcase  Kent Krugh and Anna Beeke

Benjamin Dimmitt: Primitive Florida

from Primitive Florida by Benjamin Dimmitt

Palm Hammock, Titusville, Florida  silver gelatin print by Benjamin Dimmitt

Debi Milligan: First Light, Last Light

#1 from First Light Last Light by Debi Milligan
First Light, Last Light #1 silver gelatin print by Debi Milligan

Keiko Sono: 110 Days of Winter

Keiko Sono, 110 Days of Winter

From 110 Days of Winter, single channel video, 40:20 min on a seamless loop, 2011 by Keiko Sono

Porfolio Showcase: Kent Krugh and Anna Beeke

Heritage Park Mulbury by Kent Krugh

Heritage Park Mulberry by Kent Krugh

The Woodsmen

The Woodcutters by Anna Beeke


Benjamin Dimmitt, Primitive Florida

Benjamin Dimmitt from Primitive Florida

Creek Opening, Malone Island, Florida, silver gelatin print by Benjamin Dimmitt

Benjamin Dimmitt is a native Floridian who has been living in New York City for over 30 years. The Florida of his youth had abundant undeveloped areas and animated wild places that he took for granted and that are now gone. The remaining primitive places have been put at risk by unwise land use policies, nearly unfettered development and environmental degradation. Several years ago, he began photographing the wetlands, palm hammocks and low-lying forests of Florida in a process of exploring, reacquainting himself and finally interpreting the unique and fragile beauty there.  He seeks out lush and fecund places where land merges with water. “I am most attracted to scenes of animated and layered growth that exhibit the urge for survival and the persistence of life.” 

bio Benjamin Dimmitt’s photographs are in the collections of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, Tampa; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and in corporate and private collections. He has exhibited internationally with solo exhibitions including Clayton Galleries, Tampa; Eckerd College Gallery, St. Petersburg and Florida Museum of Photographic Arts.  His work is represented by Clayton Galleries in Tampa and the Hagedorn Foundation Gallery in Atlanta. Dimmitt’s photographs have been featured in South X Southeast Magazine, Photo District News and The New Yorker: Photo Booth Blog. He has taught at the International Center of Photography, New York since 2001 and will also be teaching at the Bascom Art Center, Highlands, NC this year.

Debi Milligan, First Light Last Light

#3 from First Light Last Light by Debi Milligan

First Light, Last Light #3 silver gelatin print by Debi Milligan

I stand at a portal, holding the beginning of day in my hand for a moment; and the beginnings of night. Within chaos and beauty, capturing the light’s gesture is my small, ecstatic victory. The photograph is the lasting pleasure of this brief moment”

At dawn and dusk, Debi Milligan observes the conversation between light and form – the way everything is transformed through the light; now here, then suddenly gone forever.  She waits, watches, and works to claim a specific moment.  Day into night, night into day, the minute movements of the light and air.

bio Debi Milligan, portraitist and fine art landscape photographer, has exhibited her photographs in group shows including Art Institute of Boston, Newton Art Center, Folklore Museum – Rome Italy, Wooster Gallery, New York and New England School of Photography, Boston. Her portraits of authors and musicians including Marge Piercy, Tom Perrota, Mameve Medved, Alice Hoffman, Sue Quinn and Jill Stein appear on book jackets and CD covers. Debi has taught photography at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS) in Cambridge MA since 2004. Among her numerous teaching awards and grants, she is the recipient of the Power of ART Award from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.  Prior to CRLS she taught Classical and Contemporary Portraiture at the New England School of Photography in Boston.  She holds an MFA from University of Massachusetts and BFA from University of Denver.

Keiko Sono, 110 Days of Winter

keiko sono from 110 days of winter

Still #63 from 110 Days of Winter, HD Video by Keiko Sono

Keiko Sono’s 110 Days of Winter is a high definition single channel video installation. It follows the formation and evolution of an ice layer on a Catskill boulder, beginning and ending with a bare rock wall from December to April, condensing the five-month-long process into a 40-minute loop. The slow change is barely perceptible at first, yet once the eye is settled, the morphing of ice and shift in light manifest from within. “My goal in this project is to provide the audience with a space where one can slow down and be immersed in the sensory experience, while being mindful of the changing environment we are in.” 110 Days refers to how many days there were in 2007, when the original photos were taken, from the first sign of ice to its disappearance. But last winter (2011–12), there were about 70 days. While the video on a seamless loop repeats the process endlessly, the actual ice layer may cease to return in the coming decades. 110 Days of Winter is sponsored by Artspire, a program of the New York Foundation for the Arts.

bio: Keiko Sono designs contexts. She uses visual media, video, blogs, and social media, to create events and projects that focus on connections rather than elements. She evaluates her works in terms of how many new connections are made, how much the existing ones are strengthened, and how many people or things benefit from them. Her works range from deeply personal and contemplative, which deepen her connection with the natural environment (110 Days of Winter) to widely accessible and interactive, creating robust networks within the community. Highlights in her artist’s career include: a fellowship from the Pollock-Krasner; a solo show in the project room of Art Tower Mito (the Museum of Contemporary Art in Mito, Japan); featured artist represented by Gallery Side 2 (Tokyo) in Art Forum Berlin.  She is a NYFA MARK 2011 artist and received NYFA fiscal sponsorship for her video project, 110 Days of Winter. Recent shows include After the Trace at KMOCA in Kingston, NY; MARK on MAIN in Catskill NY; and The Sky is Falling! at Kleinert/James Gallery (Byrdcliffe Guild) in Woodstock. Her upcoming shows include a window project at Imogen Holloway a solo show at Roos Arts in Rosendale (October 2013). Sono is an adjunct instructor in art at Empire State College, and owner of Flick Book Studio, an open studio for connecting artists of all ages through learning and producing stop-motion animation.


PORTFOLIO SHOWCASE: Landscape

Selected through our Portfolio Showcase competition, the gallery is also featuring outstanding portfolios by Kent Krugh, “Inside the Gate” and Anna Beeke, “Sylvania.”

Kent Krugh “Inside the Gate” Higher Ground Cedar by Kent Krugh“Another tree for the collection. Another window into creation.”   Kent Krugh’s portraits of trees are photomontages, and by virtue of the process used to create them, he considers them “inverse panoramas.” For Krugh it is as if he crosses through a gate or threshold into another realm, spiritual perhaps, where time and space are collapsed. From the perspective of the tree, they also represent a passage of events and time. When he selects an individual tree, his intention is to open a gate and allow the viewer to listen and explore and relate to the central figure in ways not before understood or realized. (Above,”Higher Ground Cedar by Kent Krugh.)

bio Kent Krugh is a fine art photographer, living and working in Greater Cincinnati, OH.  Krugh’s work has been exhibited at Fringe Festival 2010, Cincinnati, OH; FotoFest 2011, Houston, TX; and FotoFocus Biennial 2012, Cincinnati, OH.  In 2013 he will have solo exhibitions at the Carnegie Arts Center, Covington KY; Clifton Cultural Art Center, Cincinnati, OH, Cleremont College, Batavia OH and in multiple exhibitions at ZOOMFEST 2013, Medellin, Columbia, South America, where he will also teach under the auspices of the Universidad de Antioquia. Krugh has received numerous awards in national and international print and portfolio competitions, including 2012 Critical Mass Finalist.

Anna Beeke “Sylvania” The Tree of Life by Anna BeekeAcross cultures and centuries, there are countless histories and myths that involve humankind venturing beyond the structured limits of civilization into the chaotic labyrinth of the forest. Anna Beeke’s Sylvania is a composite photographic forest cultivated from the seeds of various American woodlands, as well as our representations of those woodlands in more urban spaces.  Sylvania began serendipitously: knowing she had been conceived in Washington State, Beeke had a strong compulsion to go to the Northwest, her place of genesis, sure she would find something there. As she began photographing the forest and her encounters within it, small clues, moments of magic and surprise, delight and fear, and chance encounters with strangers informed her direction. “My experiences in the forest are not quite mythic or the stuff of fairy tales, but I do seek the transmission of something more metaphoric: an appeal to the imagination and a suggestion to the subconscious.” (Above: Tree of Life by Anna Beeke)

bio Anna Beeke’s work has been exhibited at both Aperture Gallery and ClampArt in New York City and at international galleries and festivals including the Recontres d’Arles; Pingyao International Photography Festival and “reGeneration2: tomorrow’s photographers today” exhibition and book by the Musée de L’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland which has been traveling internationally from 2010 to 2015. Beeke is the recipient of the Humble Art Foundation’s 2013 WIP/LTI Lightside Materials Grant and the 2013 too much chocolate + Kodak film grant. She recently received her MFA in Photography, Video and Related Media at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and is a graduate of the International Center of Photography’s certificate program in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography.


April 5 to May 12, 2013
Reception: Saturday, April 6, 2013 
Also: Dine/Art Gallery Stroll BeLo3rd

Stephen DiRado

Bob Avakian

portfolio showcase:  Susan Bowen & Miska Draskoczy

Stephen DiRado, CelestialCelestial 17 by Stephen DiRadoComet Hyakutake, 03/24/96 4:20am, Martha’s Vineyard, silver gelatin print by Stephen DiRado

Bob Avakian, Between Night and DayNight 4 by Bob Avakian
White Barn pigment print by Bob Avakian

Portfolio Showcase: Susan Bowen and Miska Draskoczy

Susan Bowen: Legs and Feet #893
Legs and Feet #893 by Susan Bowen

DavOrt-Draskoczy-GowanusMist72
Gowanus Mist by Miska Draskoczy

Stephen DiRado, Celestial

From Celestial 20, (Hale-Bopp, 1997) by Stephen DiRado
From Celestial by Stephen DiRado  (Hale-Bopp, Martha’s Vineyard, 1997)

 “You’re out there driving around this island and there are the heavens and I’m eight years old all over again. The sense of awe never left me.”

While many of of Stephen DiRado’s projects are decades-long pursuits represented by thousands of sheets of exposed 8×10 black and white film, other subjects, such as “Celestial” are, by their nature, occasional. At 4:10 a.m. on March 24, 1996 on the island of Martha’s Vineyard in Edgartown, DiRado produced his first photograph of a comet, Comet Hyakutake, using a small camera on a tripod, fast film (and warm clothes.) “The heavens organized itself in a remarkable way and with that first exposure, I instantly had “Comet Fever.”  DiRado continued to photograph Comet Hyakutake for a several weeks.  When he learned that less than year later, Hale-Bopp, “the comet of millennium” would arrive, “I realized this was a wake up call to be prepared and I was already an astrophotographer in training.  I already knew how to do it.”

This is a project DiRado has returned to several times over the years. He finds a kind of humor in the structure of some of his images which may include mundane objects that are a few feet from him – for example a fence, a few yards from him – perhaps a building, a few miles from him – a fog bank, and 90 million miles away – a comet. His remarkable compositions represent a combination of intimate knowledge of the landscape, dogged persistence, passion for photography and technical decisions that come with a director’s eye.  For example, in Celestial he limits  exposures to 30 seconds or less to maintain the sense of the visual eye where stars hang still in the vault of the sky but other objects – satellites and planes – reveal movement.

bio Photographer and experimental documentary filmmaker* Stephen DiRado of Worcester MA and Martha’s Vineyard stays close to home where he relentlessly documents the world around him.  Many of his subjects span decades of scrutiny. Two of his major projects, “Dinner Series” and “Martha’s Vineyard Project” each represents almost 30 years of photography. His remarkable (insightful, informative and amusing) new film, “Summers Spent” (2013) represents the culmination of 4 years of filming his life as a working artist.

DiRado’s photographs are in the collections of the Museum of Fine Art Boston, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Currier Museum of Art, Berlin National History Museum, New Britain Museum of American Art and the Worcester Art Museum. Numerous solo exhibitions at the deCordova Museum, Lincoln MA, Afterimage Photography Gallery, Dallas Tx, Houston Center of Photography and the Fitchburg Art Museum, have featured different aspects of DiRado’s series.

Stephen DiRado is a Professor of Practice in the Visual and Performing Arts Department at Clark University in Worcester. He is a 2012 recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship.

*Stephen’s experimental documentary DVD, “Summer Spent” has just been published.  It will be available at the gallery.

Bob Avakian, Between Night and Day

Full Flower Moon by Bob AvakianFull Flower Moon by Bob Avakian

 “When I am out at night, alone, all cares disappear and my sense of time fades. A heightened awareness takes over as I direct my attention to the challenge of relaying the quiet and solitude I experience through the photographs I make.”

For the past year, Bob Avakian of Martha’s Vineyard has been photographing the natural landscape at night and at the break of dawn. He is intimately familiar with most of the landscapes he photographs.  At night he use long exposures, which make it possible to turn a night scene into a day scene. In the early daylight hours, by underexposing, it is possible to turn day to night. Through his exposure and printing decisions, Avakian’s glowing prints, mastery of light and sense of place suggests a narrative where everything happens in a single moment in time somewhere between night and day.

“What fascinates me about this process is that there is so much surprise that it seems almost magical. Since the night is in control of setting the stage, I never know where I will wind up. It reminds me so much of life.”

bio  Emerging artist Bob Avakian and his wife visited Martha’s Vineyard for the summer in 1973 and it has been home ever since. Trained in architecture, engineering and building, for years he worked in the construction field as a custom homebuilder. After finding himself in management, removed from the satisfactions of hands-on involvement, he turned to photography as a means of self-expression. As his photographic vision has evolved, he has been drawn to the natural landscape and an exploration of night photography.

Bob’s work has been featured in the influential photography blog, “Lenscratch.” In 2012 he was a Photolucida Critical Mass 2012 Finalist; received honorable mention in a number of categories at the International Photography Awards (IPA) 10th Annual competition; and received the Best of Show Award in the All Island Art Show, Martha’s Vineyard.  (It was soon after that that Bob met another Martha’s Vineyard photographer, Stephen DiRado, and a friendship began.) Avakian will be featured in a one person show at the South Shore Arts Center, Cohasset MA, in May.  He has recently exhibited his photographs at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester MA; Gallery Seven, Maynard MA; Greg Moon Gallery, Taos NM, the South Shore Arts Center and the Cape Cod Art Association’s “Big Picture Show.”


PORTFOLIO SHOWCASE: Night Photography

Selected through the gallery’s Portfolio Showcase competition, the gallery is also featuring outstanding portfolios by Susan Bowen, “Legs and Feet” and Miska Draskoczy, “Gowanus Wild”.

Susan Bowen, Legs and Feet #508

Susan Bowen’s work, “Legs and Feet”,  is about motion – the intense pace and vitality of the urban setting. “I like to shoot fast and furiously, to be totally immersed and to be swept up in, and along with, the tide of the moment. I enjoy the element of chance in my photography. I like to be spontaneous in my shooting and see what surprises that brings.” The portfolio presented at the Davis Orton Gallery is a subset of her project “People Walking” and focuses on legs and feet and are shot at night at various busy street corners in New York City.  The vantage point is low; Bowen sits on the ground with a small tripod and rapidly capturing people as they walk by. The slow exposure speed she selects makes for surprising outcomes: one foot in sharpness and the other totally blurred; multiple people walking together might seem to be a single person with mis-matched feet; the swirl of fabric might create a dynamic abstraction.

bio: New York artist Susan Bowen has been featured in one and two person shows in New York, Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, Reno, Dayton, San Marino, and Lubbock. She has been in numerous group shows including ones at the Safe-T, Nelson Hancock, and Sideshow galleries in Brooklyn, the Photographic Center NW in Seattle, Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, and the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, CO.

Widely known for her overlapping multiple exposure panoramas which she shoots with a plastic camera, Bowen has most recently completed public art murals for a school in New Haven CT and four for the Department of Transportation in Minnesota. She has been a finalist for public art projects in Brooklyn, Iowa, Tampa, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and Texas.

Bowen has been profiled in Photo Techniques and Light Leaks magazines, published in Light and Lens: Photography in the Digital Age, and received an award in the Pilsner Urquell International Photography/Lucie 2007 Awards. Her photographs have also been published in Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity, a book by Michelle Bates.

Miska Draskoczy-Active Driveway-400Miska Draskoczy: “I aim to turn concepts of nature photography on their head by finding the beautiful in what most consider to be a man-made environmental catastrophe.”

Silence. A lack of humans. Light on textured abstraction. Lumbering forms unfolding all around you. These are the qualities one thinks of when experiencing ‘wilderness’. Wandering the industrial night streets of Gowanus, Brooklyn, Miska Draskoczy experiences the same feeling of stillness, awe and liberation as one would gazing out over a remote snowcapped range. Contrary to any vision of civilized urban planning, engineered order rapidly crumbles here in this gully of organic NYC decay.

Draskoczy’s vision for this project is to capture a unique marriage of opposites; the organic in the industrial, life surrounded by decay, green within blacks and grays, stillness and peace in urban chaos. The Gowanus canal is one of the most polluted waterways in the country and the neighborhood has seen continual industrial use since the 19th century. As much of the world’s population grapples with how to connect with nature while living in increasingly urban spaces, it is both a warning against disaster and a note of hope that even such in circumstances, organic beauty can still prevail.

bio: Photographer and director Miska Draskoczy’s career has included diverse projects across a range of media. His photography has been exhibited in the US and Canada and most recently earned him the Portraits 2013 Juror’s Award at the Center for Fine Art Photography and the 2013 Director’s Choice Award at the Midwest Center for Photography for his series Gowanus Wild.

Other projects include: cofounding a conceptual arts organization purporting to be funded by NATO (NATOarts, profiled in WIRED, i-D, ARTnews, UK Esquire); directing the surreal sci-fi shorts Perfect Heat & The Trick (screening in Fantasia Fest, Fantastic Fest, SF IndieFest, LA shorts fest, and many others); writing and developing a horror feature (Mister Gimp, Slamdance Screenplay semi-finalist) and creating a documentary web series about objects in people’s homes (Here’s the Thing…).