Online Exhibitions

Corona | L. Aviva Diamond

Posted on May 26, 2020

Viewing the natural world and its tiny universes can lead to galactic ideas and visions. L. Aviva Diamond captures light and movement in visions that seem galactic in scale, yet look at small surroundings. Her connection to the landscape crafts celestial visions. Her image Light Stream N.2 is featured in our Corona online exhibition. We wanted to know more about this image and her work, so we asked her a few questions.

How does light play in your work?

Light Stream 2 N.18 © L. Aviva Diamond

My recent work is all about light and about the ambiguous primordial territory where light becomes water becomes air. Or where water becomes air becomes light. I love the blurring of boundaries between earth and sky, wave and galaxy, individual and universal, creation and destruction. One of the things that makes me really happy is when people look at pieces from this series and see aspects of their own belief systems and personal mythologies mixed in with the elemental energies…and when they see and feel something different each time they look.

Your artist statement says your work “encompasses both the outer world of street photography and nature photography and inner perceptions of a cosmos consisting of energy, light and movement”. Your Light Stream image embodies that narrative. How did the series come about?

Light Stream 2 N. 11 © L. Aviva Diamond

I’ve been working on the Light Stream and Wave Nebulae series for about five years, but these pieces are all informed by 35 years of meditative practice. I was sitting on the sand in Newport Beach one afternoon meditating and gazing at the ocean when I suddenly saw stars and nebulae in the glints of light on crashing waves. Not long after that, I was at a retreat in Oregon and had similar experiences with the rushing streams there. It was as though the entire universe was encompassed in the play of light, water and air. So I began going deeper, shooting more, and developing ways to work with the images – painting with light and shadow in Photoshop to make the visual experience as close as possible to what I felt in my heart.

Wave Nebulae N.16 © L. Aviva Diamond

This process led me to a different way of seeing and a visual quest for the sacred in everyday life. I discovered that if I looked deeply enough, really delving beneath the surface, I started seeing the universe in almost everything – in a wave, bubbles in a stream, corrosion on a car hood, the broken arm of a cactus, my clogged kitchen sink. The vastness of the universe is contained in each of its parts; universal becomes cellular and vice-versa. The joy lies in the ambiguity and the reverberation. And the holiness lies in the light…or in the interplay between light and dark. It’s jazz – the music of the spheres – and a quest to distill the essence and mystery of light.

Light Stream comes from water reflections, while your series Celestial Rust also looks at the universe through a hardscape of metals. How do you find your cosmos? At what point do you know a texture goes from small idea to all encompassing universe?

Celestial Rust N.1 © L. Aviva Diamond

Most of my more recent series are all connected – and all about seeing the cosmic in microcosm. A friend and I were walking back from an art show and saw a car with lots of rust and corroded paint. But it wasn’t just a car. Looking at the hood was like seeing NASA photos – galaxies and showers of stars, the universe in a badly-needed paint job. That’s how the Celestial Rust series started. But the mysteries lie just under the surface in EVERYTHING. Another series, Tiny Immensity, began with a leaf covered with dew. If you really look, though, the leaf contains the tree it came from…and the moon and stars. Scientists tell us that we are literally stardust, that the atomic material in our bodies can be traced to stars that exploded billions of years ago, that all biological life is truly connected, that we are linked to all the atoms in the universe. It’s mindblowing. But if you look deeply enough, you get hints. Recently, my disposal broke, and the sink was totally clogged. But the murky water also contained a woman washing her hair with stars.

In this time of Corona, how do you find light in your day?

Light Stream 3 N.9 © L. Aviva Diamond

Like most of us in the time of Covid-19, I ride the rollercoaster between hope and despair. I have a couple of risk factors and live in an area where people haven’t been wearing masks, so I’ve been inside since early March.

Everything feels so much more precious now that we realize how uncertain life has become. Time online with friends is a treasure. Musicians are livestreaming day and night, and both their music and their generosity are stunning. Friends are offering Zoom meditations, art support groups and jazz classes. In a time of so much darkness, people are shining with kindness and generosity. Yes, there are folks whose short-sightedness and selfishness knock me to my knees, but there are so many more people who are finding ways to help and to bring communities together. And that’s where the light lies. In a time of scarcity, we treasure what we have. We finally see its true value. The other day, I was slicing a carrot and became transfixed. I only had my old iPhone 6s, but I grabbed a few shots because in those carrot slices you can see the universe.
What is next for you creatively? What are you working on?This time is changing all of us in ways we still don’t understand, and I don’t know yet how all this will play out in my life – let alone my work.

Tiny Immensity N. 3 – Night Tree/Wet Leaf © L. Aviva Diamond

But I will continue to reach for the sacred in everyday life and will attempt to share what I find. All of us have moments of heightened consciousness. For some people they come while playing an instrument or while praying, walking in the woods, watching their child sleep or looking at the night sky. I want to make images that share and maybe even trigger those experiences – the times when we see beneath the surface of the world and feel the energies that form and unite us all.

About L.Aviva Diamond

In her solo exhibition “Light Stream,” abstract nature photographer L. Aviva Diamond plunges the viewer into water’s mystical essence. This is art as a form of meditation and reverence, transmitting the spiritual aspects of water. Diamond uses large-scale images to create an immersive experience of the ambiguous, shifting, elemental forces of the cosmos. Her work melds the natural external world with the inner realms of dream, myth and symbol. The boundaries between earth and sky, wave and galaxy, become blurred. Universal becomes cellular; water and light merge into simultaneous creation and destruction – the swirling energies of a shifting universe.

Light Stream 3 N.7 © L. Aviva Diamond

Aviva Diamond began taking photos as a teenager, inspired by the works of Minor White and Paul Klee. She spent many years as a journalist, reporting and shooting for The Miami Herald, winning a local Emmy in St. Louis, and becoming a network correspondent for ABC News. She later established a successful corporate media training business. In 2014, Diamond joined the Los Angeles Art Association and began exhibiting her work. Her art has been included in shows at the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Palm Springs Art Museum, Annenberg Space for Photography, Neutra Institute Gallery, The Center for Fine Art Photography, the Latino Art Museum and various Southern California galleries.

To see more of Aviva Diamond‘s work log onto her website.

Anton Gautama | Home Sweet Home | Griffin Online Gallery

Posted on May 23, 2020

Alongside our physical exhibitions, the Griffin hosts a series of online exhibitions in our Virtual Gallery and our Critic’s Pick Gallery. The beautiful quiet work of Anton Gautama, currently exhibited in our Virtual Gallery through July 17, is featured on our blog today. His series, Home Sweet Home, while focusing on his familiar surroundings, reminds us of our own. A series not only the objects, but also the people who inhabit our private and public spaces.

Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home No.1 © Anton Gautama

I first became fascinated by the complexity of the home as I observed rows and rows of old Dutch colonial structures, while working on my first book, Pabean Passage. These old colonial structures showed a distinct East-Indies architecture, an adaptation of European architecture to the tropical climate of Indonesia, which gained its popularity in the mid 18th century.

Growing up in two major cities contributed a lot to this project. Born in Makassar, I also live in Surabaya for the most part of my life. What makes this project special is that I tried to capture those places from my experiences of growing up in the two cities.

Home Sweet Home No.4 © Anton Gautama

Built in the early 1900s by Chinese immigrants and based on a European design, these buildings show distinct East-Indies characteristics on the outside, while being infused with an assimilation of Chinese and Indonesian culture.

As I entered those houses, I felt the air of familiarity, a connection with the harmonious combination of two distinctive cultures that I was brought up under. Born as a third-generation Chinese-Indonesian, I was raised under the influence of the Chinese culture that my grandparents brought from the old world, while at the same time being schooled in a mainly Indonesian setting by my Indonesian-born parents.

Home Sweet Home No. 2 © Anton Gautama

Walking into those historic houses sparked my interest to discover more about the roots of my own cultural heritage. I felt my amazement turned into an aspiration to comprehend the lives of these Chinese- Indonesians, along with the challenges they faced to preserve their own culture while living in a whole new world. In Indonesia, there is this notion of family home, a place where history, culture, and tradition still live for generations. Just as the proverb says, “A house is built with boards and beams, a home is built with love and dreams,” these family homes have become a testimony of the evolution of Chinese-Indonesian cultures and traditions.

For many Chinese-Indonesians, their family home was (or still is) a place for business. Packed with merchandise, and various items collected over the years by the owners, these family homes silently tell their stories. They tell the stories about love and dreams, opportunities and challenges, laughter and tears of those who have called them home.

Home Sweet Home no. 9 © Anton Gautama

Home Sweet Home is a one-year journey into the evolution of the Chinese-Indonesian culture. It is the story of a harmonious marriage of two beautiful cultures, three centuries in-the-making. It was not a journey without obstacles, but it certainly was one with countless rewards. What began as a challenge to obtain the owners’ consent to photograph their homes has later proved to be a beginning of new friendships. The challenge to find the appropriate houses to shoot had presented me with the privilege of listening to countless stories that offer valuable lessons in life.

As I embarked on this journey, I have discovered that there is more to a home than what meets the eyes. Beyond the evidence of economical, functional, or sentimental hoarding. Beyond the cluttered halls or the neatly- organized storage rooms. Beyond the simplicity of aging and the glitters of luxury.

Home Sweet Home no. 10 © Anton Gautama

There is a story in each frame, hope and dreams embedded and encrypted beneath the layers of objects that fill the space. Walls displaying pictures of joyous achievements and traumatic miseries, the good-old days and the modern reality that stole their thunder.

A home is more than merely a dwelling place, it is a monument where stories are carved and histories are made. Whether it is an aging third-generation family home or a modern private home, there is this air of familiarity, a connection, a deep sense of longing. A pride in calling it a Home Sweet Home. -AG

About Anton Gautama

Anton Gautama began taking pictures with a mobile phone. Since 2015 he has been working professionally as photographer with a passionate focus on documentary photography. He believes that the essence of the medium is the ability to help us understand life. Gautama seeks unique moments that generate powerful emotional responses. With patience and determination, the photographer often immerses himself for months at a single location pursuing his photographic observations.

interior with wall hangings, table and flowers

Home Sweet Home no. 6
© Anton Gautama

The photographs from Anton Gautama have been featured in several online and printed magazine platforms since 2016, such as “LensCulture” and “National Geographic Travel.” His works have been exhibited solo at the Goethe Institute – Jakarta, Indonesian Institute of Art – Jogjakarta. Gautama’s photographs have received numerous international awards, including in international photo festivals. His first monograph Pabean Passage, published in 2016, reveals the milieu of traditional Indonesian spice markets through intimate colour street photography.

In October 2015 Anton Gautama opened a private photo gallery in Malang in order to share his passion of photography. In keeping with his interest in exploring and preserving Indonesian culture, he also restored a full set of Javanese gamelan and placed it inside the gallery.

Born as a fourth son in 1969 in Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia, Anton Gautama is based in Surabaya, Master in Business Administration from Hawaii Pacific University, USA, and is also the founder of ALFALINK, a prominent overseas education consultancy with branches throughout Indonesia.

Essay by Celina Lunsford Artistic
Director of Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany

View Anton Gautama’s website.

Corona | Barbara Ford Doyle

Posted on May 22, 2020

In our desire to reframe the conversation about Corona, taking the narrative of a dark virus and exposing it to light, cleansing our souls, our online Corona exhibition speaks to a new way of seeing. The unique view of Barbara Ford Doyle’s Artichoke is a playful look at light and dark, texture, color and our assumption of a corona of light. In science terms, a “corona” is a usually colored circle often seen around and close to a luminous body (such as the sun or moon) caused by diffraction produced by suspended droplets or occasionally particles of dust. Doyle’s Artichoke comes from a series called Peaches and Penumbras. We loved the idea of the play between the moon with the sun for the natural balance between light and dark, moon glow and sun rays.

How does light play in your work?

Pepper © Barbara Ford Doyle

My analog background has been an advantage in understanding camera functions (think Pentax K 1000), metering light, mixing chemicals, dodging with a cotton ball on a stick, etc. When I first converted to digital, I used a DSLR camera for “serious” photographs and my iPhone for “other stuff.” No longer. The unfussiness of using an iPhone camera (and the fact that it is always with me) enables me to capture countless images to store in my digital library. To name a few files: Dale Chihuly, antique papers, dumpster textures, lint, oxidized aluminum, clouds, Sonoma tiles, tissue paper, reflected light. My interest is to create a dialogue between my “start” photograph, a computer composite, and a final printed image using an alternative hands-on process. I want my work to have a strong luminous and tactile quality.

Playing on the ideas of Corona, your piece Artichoke comes from a series called Peaches and Penumbras, with the play between the sun and moon illuminating our imagination. Working with organic objects, like artichokes, how did this vision of penumbra come about?

Artichoke, © Barbara Ford Doyle

I started this series when I was making relish to save a crop of red peppers from freezing. Cutting the peppers in half, I was fascinated by their mysterious internal worlds. The seeds in some looked like teeth, other concavities were more sexual. At the same time, I was reading Howl and Other Poems by Alan Ginsberg. An on-line analysis explains Ginsberg’s intent this way: The penumbras, a word meaning “shroud” or “partial illumination,” are meant to designate the secrets that such displays of nature and domesticity hide. I started cutting lots of fruits and vegetables in half.

Here are the first few lines from A Supermarket in California:

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for
I walked down the side streets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?

You create one of a kind objects with your photo transfer process. This process can often lose sharpness and vibrancy in the transfer. How do you keep your images so filled with light and life?

Peach © Barbara Ford Doyle

I use the Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw Filter to correct color and adjust texture and sharpness. The file size is large with a high resolution. The background glow for this series is from a photo of sunlight on a Sonoma floor tile. All my images are photo transfers on to DASS™ film using an Epson printer. I use bright white Yupo paper as the substrate. Each transfer has peculiar characteristics, just as each of my subjects is unique in nature.

In this time of COVID-19, how do you find light in your day?
I live on Cape Cod where the light is ever changing. And I have a dog. We begin each day with an early morning run on the beach.

What is next for you creatively? What are you working on?

Hood Milk © Barbara Ford Doyle

I am working on a series of emulsion lift “quilts” for an exhibition titled: Altered Realities.
By shooting multiple exposures, I use the camera to explore and make sense of the world around me.
From different points of view, layers of space-related information superimpose as one print. Choosing to print in black and white further distances the subject from reality by making urban landscapes timeless and the shapes and textures more compelling. Each composite “quilt” is made up of nine emulsion lift “skins.”

About Barbara Ford Doyle –

Leon Electric © Barbara Ford Doyle

Doyle was born and raised on a small farm in Connecticut. She attended UMass Amherst and Southern Connecticut University majoring in art education. Moving to Cape Cod, she taught art/photography in public schools and published a line of stationery products.

She maintains a website of Alternative Photo Imaging at www.bfdoyle.com and is a founding member of the digital artists group ArtSynergies www.artsynergies.com.

Corona | Ellen Jantzen

Posted on May 19, 2020

Part of our Corona Exhibition, Ellen Jantzen’s image After Hours leads us into the light, reframing the daily narrative of a virus that has consumed our lives. The Griffin showcased Ellen’s work, Disturbing the Spirits in the spring of 2017. Here we are three years later, looking again to Jantzen’s work to lift us into the light. We followed up with her to talk about how light affects her work, and how she gets through this unique time in our lives.

How does light play in your work?

After Hours © Ellen Jantzen

I grew up in the Midwest but moved to California in 1990 where I live for most of my adult life. When I returned to Missouri to help aging parents my attachment to the healing powers of the natural environment grew as I became familiarized, once again, with the seasons. Light is quite an indicator of seasonal changes and bringing light into my work heightened this. “After Hours” was created in the early autumn. I was struck by how the low angle of the sun shown through the trees. After my parents passed and I moved back west, (this time alighting in New Mexico) once again light took over my sensibilities but this time as a reflection of the vast sky and sun drenched landscape of New Mexico.

There is so much movement in your work. Not only are you working with shapes and texture, but adding motion through time and space. Light seems to be the pathway through all your work. How did this way of seeing come about?

Into the Unknown © Ellen Jantzen

I believe that the way I work influences my “seeing” in a direct way. I capture my images using a digital camera but the pieces don’t actually form and come to life until I upload my images to my computer and begin the creative process. As the computer screen is lit from behind, I take advantage of this in my work.

I believe the movement in my work started during the 5 years I was back in the Mid West. It started with my mother-in-law who was slipping into Alzheimer’s. I was documenting the feeling of loss that she and my husband were experiencing. In essence I was striving to show her disappearance. Shortly after, my parents began a decline and once again I was using motion and shapes to obscure a portion of an image through a veil of sorts. I was striving to heighten the remaining reality through discovery and reflection.

Do you start with a sketch or preconceived idea? Or does the process flow organically? How do you know when you have the right combination?

Continuing Onward © Ellen Jantzen

I don’t start with a sketch or a preconceived idea….. the ideas form organically. I normally start with a kernel of an idea… then start shooting. I take my photos and pick the strongest that support my idea and start manipulating, combining, etc until something gels. I then have a much stronger direction and I start shooting with more intention. I know I have the right combination when I feel a rush of adrenaline as I am working.

In this time of Corona, how do you find light in your day?

Luckily I am sequestered in New Mexico with my husband, Michael. The light is self evident here and buoys my spirits.

What is next for you creatively? What are you working on?

I am continuing to work on my “Mid+West” series.
(A visual essay on adaptation and acceptance in relocation/immigration and migration)

Gallup Lakeside © Ellen Jantzen

Some say we are all immigrants but many indigenous people have lived in one location for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. In this series I am addressing the more recent acts of relocation.

The place of one’s birth greatly influences who they are but through moving, new foods, cultures, languages and landscapes await to reshape their very being.

I was born in the Midwest, but now reside in New Mexico. Even though I didn’t really encounter a great deal of differences in people there were subtle language differences, definitely food differences and some culture shifts that required adjustment on my part. The most profound change for me was the landscape.

Metanoia © Ellen Jantzen

Here I am blending photos from my years in the Midwest (mainly rural Missouri and Illinois) with current photos I’ve taken while living in New Mexico.

I feel that one’s landscape, whether rural, suburban or urban, can utterly reshape them and how through relocation they grow and flourish. They become, in essence, a blending of all former homelands with the present.

Additional thoughts…..

Threshold © Ellen Jantzen

Photographs were once considered to be “truthful”, but we now know there has been photo tampering going on since its inception. Because photos are “believed” there is a great deal of room to play within photography’s reality to create a personal fiction (a visual poetry) that is more open to interpretation.

This is the very reason I was drawn to photography ten years ago as a creative medium.
Photography, especially digitally aided photo collage/montage, is a potent medium
through which I am able to communicate the ways I see and understand the world most effectively.

About Ellen Jantzen –

Ellen Jantzen was born and raised in St. Louis Missouri. Her early college years were spent obtaining a degree in graphic arts; later emphasizing fine art.

Plentitude © Ellen Jantzen

Ellen spent two years at FIDM (the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising) in downtown Los Angeles. Here, she obtained her advanced degree in 1992. After a few years working in the industry, including several years at Mattel Toy Company as a senior project designer, she became disillusioned with the corporate world and longed for a more creative outlet. Having been trained in computer design while at Mattel, Ellen continued her training on her own using mostly Photoshop software.

As digital technology advanced and the newer cameras were producing excellent resolution, Ellen found her perfect medium. It was a true confluence of technical advancements and creative desire that culminated in her current explorations in photo inspired art using both a camera to capture staged assemblages and a computer to alter and manipulate the pieces. Ellen has been creating works that bridge the world of prints, photography and collage.

To see more of Ellen Jantzen‘s work visit her website.

Corona | Deborah Bay

Posted on May 18, 2020

Deborah Bay‘s Traveling Light series plays with vibrant saturated color, angle, shape and form to create new ways of experiencing how light and reflection plays on materials. We first saw Deborah’s work at the Griffin in 2016 in our Bullet Points exhibition. This series, Traveling Light plays with the visual scale, crafting abstract visions with sharpness and clarity. We asked her a few questions about the series, and how light plays into her day.
How does light play in your work?

Probability Theory, from series Traveling Light

Light was the point of origin for this body of work. I had been thinking about some of the Bauhaus light studies and became interested in using color to further explore how light moves across optical objects.

In your series Traveling Light color and shape are intertwined in each image. How did this series come about?

Angular Velocity, from series Traveling Light © Deborah Bay

In addition to contemplating the work of Moholy-Nagy and others, I also was influenced by the abstract geometries of constructivism and the color field movement. Those ideas all came together as I began experimenting with tabletop constructions using small lenses and prisms. Most of the objects are only about 1 or 2 inches tall, so there’s a wonderful disconnect when you see them in a 40×40 print.

The color comes from gels placed in front of small lights around the shooting table. As I was photographing, I became fascinated with the way that various colors traveled over planes of the objects, separating them from the background, or created thin chromatic circles around lenses with a wash of color in the background. The images are all produced in-camera.

There are endless combinations of light and color. How do you know when you have the right combination?

Triangle Theorem, from series Traveling Light © Deborah Bay

It is amazing how many permutations there are of light and color, so it was a challenge to get the color blend and other factors in just the right combination. With a digital camera, though, I could shoot numerous images with slight variations since the sensor would capture the color and depth of field in sometimes surprising ways. And, of course, intuition always plays a role.

In this time of Corona, how do you find light in your day?

Mondrian Dialectic I, from series Traveling Light

During these Corona times, my routine on the best days has been to spend the afternoon in the studio, where the windows are covered and tiny lamps illuminate the tabletop setting. But in the mornings, I like to walk in the park and then review the previous day’s shoot in my home office, which has a lot of light filtering through the trees.

What is next for you creatively? What are you working on?

Circular Thinking, from series Traveling Light © Deborah Bay

I’ve been exploring an idea with the working title of Traveling Light 2.0. It’s based on the same concept of using color to investigate how light moves across surfaces but with a much more textural component. Some of the images are totally abstract in a very painterly fashion, while others are more representational. The surfaces have been altered in such a way as to further disrupt the diffusion of light and color. It’s still early in the investigation, so I’ll save the details for another time.

About Deborah Bay –

Deborah Bay is an American artist who specializes in constructed studio photography. She has exhibited throughout the United States, most recently at Photoville Brooklyn and Texas Contemporary 2018. Her work is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Dorsky Museum of Art at State University of New York at New Paltz. The British Journal of Photography has featured her work on its cover, and her images also have appeared in Popular Photography, BBC Focus and the Oxford American, among others. She lives in Houston, Texas, and holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from The University of Texas at Austin.

To see more of Deborah Bay‘s work log onto her website. She is represented by FotoRelevance in Houston, Texas.

Corona | Blythe King

Posted on May 15, 2020

Today’s featured Corona artist is Blythe King. A featured artist in 2017 in our Griffin online gallery, Blythe’s creative constructions of women radiate out of our screens. Combining materials to elevate ordinary women to extraordinary beings, her work exemplifies the internal manifestation embodying light and life. We asked her a few questions about her work and how light fills her day.

A central focus of the Corona exhibition is based in light, both external and internal. Your portraits exude light and life. How does light play into your work?

My subjects are radiant beings. Transparent layers let light in and invite us to look beneath the surface. These women are liberated to reveal each individual’s complex, boundless nature.

My work transforms photographs of models from Montgomery Ward mail order catalogs (circa 1940-80) into evocative multi-layered portraits. Because subjects are freed from the social expectations and stereotypes of their original context of commodification, they shine anew.

Gold leafing animates my work. As light changes throughout the day, it alters the appearance of my portraits — illuminating the figure, making it flicker, casting a shadow.

Can you talk about how religion, faith and spirituality are infused in the work?

My subjects begin as mere clippings from discarded, forgotten Montgomery Ward catalogs. The models were presented superficially. It’s advertising. But through collage, gold leafing, and other techniques, they re-emerge and become a source of wonder and intrigue. It’s divinization.

I notice parallels between the poses, gazes, and hand gestures of fashion models in advertising and deities in Buddhist and Hindu art. I combine religious imagery with commercial images of women to create a pantheon of sorts. The women in my work strike me as familiar — but with a difference. They stand out to me because I see something extraordinary in them. My impulse is to honor them.

I hold an MA in Buddhism and Art from the University of Colorado, with undergraduate studies in Japanese religion and art at the University of Richmond. I’m a practitioner of Zen Buddhism. My experiences lead me to question how our conditioning — be it social, cultural, environmental, genetic — places limitations on how we understand who we are. Zen is liberating. It beckons a fundamental shift in perspective.

How did you first find the idea to combine materials? What was the moment you knew you had found your process to showcase your vision. What was the first image that was a result of that combination of layers?

I like that you asked how I “found” my process. It brings to mind the question that inspired Rebecca Solnit’s book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost: “How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?”

Making art is one path. For me, it’s applying the sum of my experiences. Through artistic experimentation, I’ve discovered a way to combine and further activate my interests in popular culture, vintage imagery, Buddhist philosophy, Japanese art, old paper, and feminist philosophy.

By removing limitations imposed by our conditioning, and opening possibilities for the ways we understand who we are, I find clarity. I’ve breathed life into old mail-order catalogs for almost 8 years. “Moonbathing” was the first commercial clipping to be divinized.

And thank you for mentioning “that combination of layers” in my work. It’s all done by hand. It’s important to me that the viewer see and feel how the physical layers — skins, if you will — interact. The image transfer process is my own. I arrived at it after overcoming the restrictions in hand-cut collages. My first body of work, “How to Take a Compliment,” presents subjects at their original scale. Since then, I’ve amplified and reduced subjects through scanning. That has made pieces more intimate or larger than life.

In this time of Corona, how do you find light in your day?

Survival is a means to coronation. My subjects were mere paper but have lasted more than a half century to now stand as supernatural queens. We too can adapt and become our greatest selves through challenges.

There’s a cemetery near my home. I walk there because it’s perfect for social distancing. But I’m also taken by how beautiful the flowers and trees blossom in a place that honors death. I’m reminded of the Hindu goddess, Kali, who is at once a destructive and creative force.

Placed in this light, a pandemic is not only temporary but also a path to renewal. It’s part of the perfection, if you will.

What is next for you creatively? What are you working on?

I have a solo exhibition coming in the fall of 2021 at Eric Schindler Gallery here in Richmond (VA, USA). I’ll have a whole new collection ready for that.

I’ve dreamed of being hired by Montgomery Ward as their collage artist. They’re still in business. I have convincing to do.

About Blythe King

Blythe King is a rising talent who currently breaks new ground in photography, collage, and the ancient art of gold leafing. Born in Pittsburgh in 1977, her work is heavily influenced by two legacies — the whimsical, social commentary of hometown hero Andy Warhol forged with traditional Steel Town resolve. King studied religion and art at the University of Richmond and the University of Colorado. She practiced Zen calligraphy with Stephen Addiss (The Art of Zen).

But it was a textile startup in quaint Breaux Bridge, Louisiana that brought her journey into focus. For iSockits, King fashioned wildly-successful tablet covers from vintage women’s shirts. Her latest fine art project, “Two Sides of the Same Coin,” is exceptional for its delicate but moving revelations. She rescues clippings from a range of vintage catalogs to open a fresh discourse around women’s issues. In addition to her art, King teaches creativity to underserved communities in Richmond, VA.

You can see more of Blythe King‘s work on her website.

Corona | Leslie Jean-Bart

Posted on May 14, 2020

In our newest online exhibition, Corona, we seek to illuminate the best part of our lives and lift us out of darkness. This is a difficult time, and we want to let the light in, lifting our souls into the light.

In science terms, a “corona” is a usually colored circle often seen around and close to a luminous body (such as the sun or moon) caused by diffraction produced by suspended droplets or occasionally particles of dust.

There is no greater way to celebrate our exhibition with the first in a series of interviews with the image makers that inspire us, lift us and show us how to find light in our day.

Today’s featured artist is Leslie Jean-Bart. The Griffin first highlighted his work in 2017, and we look back at it today as we talk to Leslie about this series, light and the idea of Corona.

How does light play in your work?

To have the shadow and the silhouette aligned as wanted, I needed not just the light, but also a certain angle of the light.

I never fail to see, to observe, and to follow the light. The presence and/or the lack of the presence of light at any degree is the key to it all for me. It is one of the fundamental elements that currently informs most of my work.

In your series Reality & Imagination you use the tidal reflection to illuminate life. Did you find the reflection first? Or did the reflections find you?

The most effective and efficient way for me to answer this second question about my use of the tidal reflection to illuminate life and as to whether I found the reflection first or the other way around would perhaps be for me to speak a bit in general about the framework of the segments of “Reality & Imagination” that these images are a part of.

My process there is a way of seeing driven by a frame of mind at the service of an idea. What I mean exactly is, I chose to accept the upside down world to being as important as if not more so than the right-side up world (frame of mind) as a context within which to explore the interaction that takes place between the culture of the host country and the culture of the immigrant living permanently abroad (idea), while I make use of the movement/motion of the tide with the sand to combine that frame of mind with that idea to tease life from the combination (way of seeing). Because of the frame of mind in use, the images created pull the viewer into a world that seems instantaneously both familiar and unfamiliar. The essence of creating that world is not only in the physical aspect of making the image, but even more so, in the frame of mind that permits me to find the suitable environment to interplay the combined elements.

Of course, light, timing, composition, patience, purpose, idea(s), being in the moment, being flexible, are all engaged in creating the image as the tide continuously and rapidly transforms each tableau anew in a fraction of a second. I have to remain focused and be present.

How did you first find the idea to capture contrast in organic shape and texture with the hard edge of light reflection?

It all came about by my need to support the phase of the idea I was exploring at that particular time.

There were a myriad of possibilities in the surroundings of the tide. It was simply a matter of observing, closely evaluating, and selecting an appropriate form(s).

How can a dominant culture be defined vs a culture that’s a guest? After careful evaluation, it was an obvious choice. A silhouette which is more solid, was to represent the host culture. The shadow which is more transparent was to represent the guest culture. By the way, both the silhouette as well as the shadow cannot exist without the presence of light. So there is a common need there. A common need also exists between the host culture and the immigrant culture. The Corona virus has made that definitely overtly apparent.

As I worked on each segment I mentally assigned a very loose characteristic or definition to that given segment. One segment was, say, where the host culture was in charge/doing the viewing, another was the immigrant interacting/doing the watching within the host culture, another was the immigrant culture interacting within its own community. How and what I shot at that particular time was very much influenced by the loose characteristics I assigned to that segment and whatever related thoughts were wafting in my mind on that subject.

But no matter how loose the given characteristics or definitions were, there is one physical element that I always defined for myself in a singular fashion. That element was the thin white/silvery line of light that sliced in one fashion or another through the frame. I always saw it in some form or another as the dividing line, as the border and entry point between the two cultures.

As a way to give a better understanding of what goes on during the actual shoot, let’s follow through with the last line from my answer to question above, “I have to remain focused and be present”.

My being completely present means that all research done and/or any thoughts about particular idea(s) are relegated to the deep recess of the mind. It is as if all information were stored in the electronic cloud, and the pertinent bit of information automatically downloaded itself to fluidly inform the image making process. The downloading happened so fluidly pure and fast that physical recognition at that particular moment is of no practical use and so that physical function is disengaged. (Only at the end of the shooting day while reviewing the images does the physical consciousness fully reengaged in that process, and the image files completely expanded themselves to fully reveal their contents. As I focus on an image of interest during the review, what took place at that moment while shooting is vividly replayed in my head.) It’s a surrender to what is, a surrender to the moment while absolutely not losing oneself.

That process of seeing has also become some sort of a blueprint of life for me. I always try to remain open, and to remain present, without losing a sense of myself.

In this time of Corona, how do you find light in your day?

I try to create, that always brings in the light, especially when it’s all flowing. But a sure boost is to blast music at a high decibel with the headphone on for a short period of time. Unwise, but it works and it’s fun. Am spending time making videos about what I am doing, and how the shelter-in-place is affecting me.

What is next for you creatively? What are you working on?

I just completed a new series titled “Echoes of Past Present”

Two short videos from the ones I have been making gives a visual idea about the series. Please see links below to view. The first link is the very first video done.

Echoes of Past Present Video One. Echoes of the Past Present Video Two.

About Leslie Jean-Bart

Born in Haiti where he acquired his love for the ocean, Leslie Jean-Bart has been living in New York City since he arrived in the US in 1967. After earning a master’s degree in Journalism from Columbia University, Jean-Bart embarked on a photography career that resulted in the creation of images that have garnered awards and recognition.

Earlier days found Jean-Bart on staff at Sotheby’s and Christie’s where he was surrounded daily by the world’s greatest art. Freelance assignments took him all over the world, as he shot for clients in Japan, Brazil, Iceland, Cyprus and Portugal. His commitment to his craft and his defined vision, resulted in a variety of commercial projects, and several published award winning books. A special collage project of Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker for the Verve Music Group was cited for excellence.

Jean-Bart began exhibiting in 2001, when a number of his collages were part of the exhibit “Committed To The Image: Contemporary Black Photographers” at The Brooklyn Museum. From 2001-2003 he took part in a number of group exhibits at Monique Goldstrom Gallery
in SoHo, NYC.

During the last several years Jean-Bart put his career, but not his art on hold. Committed to the care of his mother who has dementia, Jean-Bart became her daily guardian. During this very trying time he soothed his soul by photographing water and reflections. The call to somehow combine the ocean or water and the camera was never far from his mind during the past two decades, and in 2009 the call became a mission and a project was birthed.

The ensuing series titled “Reality and Imagination“ is the culmination of years of working the science and magic that is photography and a never ending love of water, light, shape, form and collage.

To see more of Leslie Jean-Bart‘s work, visit his website.

Corona | Online Exhibition 2020

Posted on April 27, 2020

It’s spring, and we are all physically distanced and living via the interwebs to have shared experiences. At a time of renewal, time of reawakening, we are all yearning to break free. We hope to get outside, see the blooms on the trees, breathe deeply of fresh air, unafraid of life in the time of Corona.

Let’s brighten our outlook on Corona. In science terms, a Corona is a usually colored circle often seen around and close to a luminous body (such as the sun or moon) caused by diffraction produced by suspended droplets or occasionally particles of dust.

We want you to share your light with us. Send us your images of sunshine, light and spring. Metaphor, abstraction and suggestion of sunlight in addition to representational concepts are welcome.

We are looking forward to your visual contributions with our creative community.

It is NOT about the virus. There are other calls you can submit to for this. Because of what we have been receiving, we are going to have to change our rules that we will not be including everything that is submitted. We thought we were clear in our call. We provided 6 examples. We may respond to you and ask you to submit another image, but because there is not much time we may just remove it and move on. We are sorry for the confusion. – PT

Online Exhibitions

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