Private Visions/
Public Spaces
November 11 to December 3, 2023
Reception:
Saturday, November 11, 4pm to 6pm
Ellen Feldman
Cassandra Goldwater
Moira Barrett
Karen Davis
Ellen Feldman
Strange Encounter, pigment print by Ellen Feldman
Cassandra Goldwater
Contemplating Circles, pigment print by Cassandra Goldwater
Moira Barrett
Untitled7 from Losing Focus, pigment print by Moira Barrett
Karen Davis
CK IT from Warren Street Through the Looking-Glass, pigment print by Karen Davis
About the Artists & Their Work
Ellen Feldman: My Private Paris
Eyes on the Wall, c-print by Ellen Feldman
Ellen Feldman’s photographic roots are in street photography. But “My Private Paris” began for Feldman in the 1960s with the early films of Jean-Luc Godard, particularly Vivre sa vie. His films—with their cool tone— influence her search for odd compositional elements: complications of line, scale, perspective, and figure-to-ground relationships.
In Feldman’s annual three-month stays in Paris, she feels a curious ease when she’s out photographing — an ease tinged with equal levels of anxiety and excitement, wandering through areas little frequented by tourists, seeking the energy and grit of urban life. Camera in hand, she takes in the wall art of the Butte Aux Cailles, the multi-ethnic inhabitants of Belleville, and walks along sections of the Seine far from Notre Dame. When she spots her subject(s), her eyes, hands, and mind become one. As she circles in, usually unnoticed, she aims to fill the frame, layering human interactions, narratives, color, and geometry.
Bio
Ellen Feldman is a fine arts photographer, whose work includes street photography and long-term projects. Her work reflects her film studies background—the primacy of physical gesture, bold color, and a sense of narrative.
Feldman has had solo exhibits at the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Davis Orton Gallery, Hudson, NY, and the French Cultural Center, Boston, MA. Juried shows include Julia Margaret Cameron Awards (Honorable Mention), NYC4PA (Juror Selection), New York Photo Curator (Honorable Mention), PhotoPlace Gallery, Photographic Resource Center, Praxis Gallery, Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts, and more.
She created the photobook “We Who March: Photographs and Reflections on the Women’s March, January 21, 2017,” with contributions from thirty photographers. Other books include a photo/comic book: “The Dancer as the Invisible Girl,” and street photographs: “Les Mystères de Paris / Paris Mysteries” and “A Week in Prague: Wall People / Street People.”
Feldman was for many years Photography Editor of the Women’s Review of Books. She holds a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University.
Cassandra Goldwater: Line and Texture
Anxiety, pigment print by Cassandra Goldwater
An ongoing theme in Cassandra Goldwater’s work is a close look at surface, texture, and line. Lines cross and make texture everywhere – in reflections, in corners, plants, and industrial equipment. She is drawn to these visual layers and the surprises that emerge. Hers is a contemplative process: observe, frame, and capture an image.
“I am fascinated with how, in the making of the image, something new arises and I’m always prepared to be surprised by what is revealed.” A lotus bud filled with eyes, or is it green olives and pimentos? A patch of ice that looks sewn onto the surface with darning or decorative stitches. The soft layering of a young robin’s feathers might be finely painted lines of a newborn’s hair.
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 with her imagination.
Her photographs have been shown in the Curated Fridge, Griffin Museum Photography Atelier exhibitions and Members’ Show. Davis Orton Gallery, SE Center for Photography, RI Center for Photographic Art, Bedford MA Library and the Arts League of Lowell.
Ms. Goldwater has studied photography at the DeCordova Museum, the New England School of Photography, and the New Hampshire Institute of Arts and Science. Workshops include the Santa Fe Workshop with Cig Harvey, the North Country Workshops with Sean Kernan.
Goldwater teaches composition at UMass Lowell. Her commentary on the photographic work of Jennette Williams and Jellen van Meene appeared in the Women’s Review of Books. A lifelong New Englander, she currently resides in the small city of Lowell, Massachusetts where it is rumored a renaissance is in the making.
Moira Barrett: Losing Focus
Losing Focus #4 by Moira Barrett
Moira Barrett observes that in an increasingly chaotic world, it is hard to keep your head above water — or your head down to avoid conflict. Maintaining course seems difficult and at times impossible.
“My head sometimes spins from the disorder and discord that surrounds me, and I find myself trying to be reasonable when reason and questions have become the enemy. Nothing is clear anymore; we are in a constant state of flux. I am awash in a swirl of feelings and emotions. I try to create order, but I can only record the confusion. Finding beauty in that confusion is my way of coping.”
Barrett’s 4-second exposures do not simply pin down an instant but record the surrounding moments — what comes before and what remains after. Edges become blurred, truth remains elusive, and yet perhaps there is still light in the world.
Bio
Moira Barrett is a fine art photographer based in New England. She uses traditional photography and photo-transfer techniques, video, and construction to address issues of self, memory, relationships, and aging.
Her photographs and mixed media have 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; the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts, Newburyport Art Assoc. and the Boston Young Contemporaries juried show. Dana Hoey has reviewed her work in the Women’s Review of Books.
Originally from Rochester NY, Moira 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 retired financial planner and artist, lives in Cambridge, MA, and is the parent of Annie Barrett, Assistant Coach for Women’s basketball at NYU.
Karen Davis Hudson Canto:
Warren Street Through the Looking-Glass
Winged Goddess from Warren Street Through the Looking Glass, pigment print by Karen Davis
In the city …. everything comes out of the human gut. It has the new and old, the beautiful, the ugly, the juxtaposition of it all. You’re photographing people when you’re photographing a city. It is an immensely human subject.
Berenice Abbott
As Karen Davis thinks of key episodes in her life, it is location, where she has lived—her home, street, neighborhood, city—that frames her past.
Hudson Cantos is a personal portrait of her home, Hudson NY. Under 6000 in population, two square miles in area, it is eminently walkable. For over fourteen years, she has meandered—camera in hand—along its streets and alleys.
Each Canto, a collection of photographs and a zine, while thematically different, reflects what she loves about Hudson- the diversity of the built environment and its multiplicity of class, culture, and identity.
Bio
Karen Davis’s work is featured at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) and in the collections of CPW Kingston NY; Lishui Museum of Photography (China); Houghton Rare Books Library, Harvard University, and corporate and private collections.
Davis is a Critical Mass finalist and recipient of the CPW Artists Fellowship Award. Her word/image book, Still Stepping: A Family Portrait, was published in 2020. A second edition (2022) is available at The Spotty Dog Bookstore in Hudson, Inquiring Mind Bookstore in Saugerties NY, and the Davis Orton gallery and website. Her photographs, photobooks and artist books have appeared in solo and featured exhibits throughout the country.
Davis is curator/co-founder of Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson NY, now in its fourteenth year, exhibiting photography, mixed-media, and photobooks. She has taught photo-based and word and image art courses at several colleges in the Boston MA area and presently teaches Portfolio Development & Marketing and The Self-Published Photobook Workshop online for the Griffin Museum of Photography. She is a member of the Women Photographers Collective of the Mid-Hudson Valley.