WinCam

Lisa Ryan | Griffin State of Mind

Posted on August 15, 2023

Lisa Ryan’s Becoming Light is up at WinCam in Winchester. Her works show transformation from stillness to motion, from dark to light, from body to energy. Light painting has a performance element to it; in that respect it is like dance.

Tell us a little about your background.

My family was always interested in the arts. One grandfather collected art for what is now the Glypotek Museum in Copenhagen. Another was the painter John Graham. I grew up surrounded by wonderful art and took drawing and painting lessons from an early age.

When I got to Pratt Institute of Art in NYC, I started out as a painting major but became fascinated by photography. I wanted to work directly with light and in color.

Now, many years later, as a night photographer and light painter, I have come full circle: I paint and draw with light, captured by the camera.

Do you have an end goal in mind when you begin creating a photo?

I work in series of images. The process of light painting and drawing is repetition and trial and error. One image leads to the next as I refine or develop the idea. Sometimes projects lie dormant, then come to life again. Projects I have worked on include Light Gardens (light drawings), and Fire People (double exposures of fire and people). The Becoming Light (light drawings of the human figure) series began in 2016, and I have worked on it on and off since then.

What feeling do you wish to convey with each piece?

In Becoming Light I would like the viewers to imagine themselves dancing, transforming into light/energy. I would like them to feel a sense of freedom: Imagination is the only limit.

What inspires you to keep making?

Making photographs is both sustaining and fun for me. It’s an important part of how I live in the world. I can’t imagine life without it.

ABOUT LISA RYAN

Lisa Ryan is a night photographer and light painter. The influence of her fine arts education can be seen in her use of light to draw and paint. Working with various light tools she incorporates gestures and movement. In addition to lighting landscapes at night, she creates scenes, including clothing the figure and creating night gardens from light.

Ryan’s photographs have been exhibited in shows presented by the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester MA, the Center for Photographic Art, Carmel CA and in many juried exhibits throughout the US. She has curated group exhibits of night photography at the Front Street Gallery, Scituate MA and at the Art Complex Museum, Duxbury MA.

Her images have been featured in print and digital publications including NASA’s APOD, “RechargeTheArts”, a juried group exhibition on Instagram, Fraction Magazine, and The Literate Image.

Ryan has been co-organizer of the Greater Boston Night Photographers Meetup since 2014.

Atelier 32 | Shelby Meyerhoff

Posted on September 25, 2020

We close out our Atelier 32 artist series with Shelby Meyerhoff. Shelby’s series Paper Playroom is her newest work created during the pandemic, and now on the walls during the Griffin’s Atelier 32 exhibition. We are thrilled to have Shelby as a member of our Griffin artist community showcasing her work here at the Atelier. We are also pleased to announce her upcoming exhibition in October at our satellite venue, Griffin @ WinCam. Her Zoomorphics exhibition will open on September 28th and run through November 5th, 2020. We talked to this prolific multidisciplinary artist about Paper Playroom and how the Atelier is an incubator for creativity.

Which of these images was the impetus for this series? How did it inform how you completed the series?

When the coronavirus pandemic arrived in Boston, I started taking care of my toddler daughter Moxie for much of the workday. Before COVID, my artistic practice had been to paint intricate designs on my own face and body, and then photograph myself. The whole process required hours of uninterrupted time. It had been my plan to do a new face and body painting series over the course of the spring Atelier. But with Moxie by my side, I knew I’d need to find a different way of making art.

One afternoon, we painted with washable paints and cheap printer paper, which crumpled as it dried. Looking at the peaks and valleys, illuminated by the sunlight streaming into the playroom, I was inspired to create sculptures out of ordinary paper products.

I took this photograph, “A Song to the Wind,” early in the semester. I was struck by the liveliness of this image, and the way the paper bag looked almost like a classical sculptural medium. Seeing this piqued my curiosity about the possibilities of paper.

Over the weeks that followed, I experimented with other ways of photographing the sculptures I was making. In particular, I tried backgrounds with loud patterns and bold colors, which were speaking to me at the time, but didn’t ultimately work well for this series.

Towards the end of the program, I circled back to the approach shown in “A Song to the Wind,” limiting the backgrounds for the series to blacks and greys. With fewer competing elements, the emphasis of the images was on light and form. It was a simple and elegant approach, but sometimes those can be the most daunting to undertake. I don’t think I would have arrived there without the encouragement of our instructor Meg Birnbaum and our Atelier group, who gave thoughtful feedback on every iteration of this project.

How has Atelier helped you hone your vision as an artist?

The Atelier was the perfect space to experiment with different ideas for how the project could go. Meg gave excellent feedback at every step in the process – not only during the regular class meetings, but also throughout the summer as further questions arose.

I was also blown away by the talent and experience of my classmates. Seeing their weekly submissions made me want to bring my very best work to class. And every week they were able to identify what was working well in my photographs and where I needed to improve, always in the spirit of helping me make the series stronger.

I felt safe bringing experimental work to class, but at the same time, I moved faster towards a completed series than I would have expected, because of the quality of our weekly conversations.

Tell us what is next for you creatively.

I’m looking forward to finding out! One of the strengths of the Atelier program is that it takes students all the way through the lifecycle of a project: trying out various possibilities, honing the work into a series and developing the series further, and then producing, marketing, and showing the work. Now that our show is up, I’m excited to begin experimenting again this fall.

I’ll start by picking up paper again, folding and twisting, and seeing where that leads. I’m also interested in doing more painting. And I’m curious if I can find a successful way to combine painting, sculpture, and photography in a new body of work.

At the same time, this fall also marks the culmination of my series of photographs created through face and body painting. The solo show for my Zoomorphics series is opening at the Griffin’s WinCAM gallery on September 28. I am thrilled about the opportunity to show and discuss that work, and it will be all the more fun to do so while in the midst of creating something new.

Join us on October 1st at 7pm Eastern for an engaging conversation with Shelby about creativity and Zoomorphics.

About Shelby Meyerhoff –

Shelby Meyerhoff is a multidisciplinary artist based in the Boston area. She works with a variety of media, including photography, painting, sculpture, and body art, often combining multiple techniques to create her images. Meyerhoff’s work has been exhibited at venues across the country, including the Griffin Museum of Photography (MA), the Mosesian Center for the Arts (MA), the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (GA), and the LH Horton Jr. Gallery at San Joaquin Delta College (CA). Her Zoomorphics series has also been featured in UU World, the national magazine of the Unitarian Universalist Association.

She has studied visual arts at the Griffin Museum of Photography, the New England School of Photography, and MassArt. Before becoming a fine artist, Meyerhoff worked in nonprofit communications, promoting environmental initiatives.

To see more of Shelby Meyerhoff‘s work, log onto her website. Find her on Instagram at @shelbymeyerhoff

Katalina Simon | Land Beyond the Forest

Posted on August 20, 2020

We are thrilled to be hosting an online conversation with Griffin exhibition artist Katalina Simon tonight, August 20th at 7pm Eastern.

For tickets see the Events page of our website.

Her beautiful series Land Beyond the Forest is hanging in our satellite gallery Griffin @ WinCam here in Winchester. The exhibition ends September 27th. We hope if you get a chance to get to Winchester you stop by and see this lovely body of work.

Katalina Simon is a British/Hungarian photographer whose work centers on the passage of time and cultural memory. Her interest in photography began when, as a child, she was told that taking pictures was not allowed in many public spaces in communist Hungary and she observed how precious photographs were to her family separated by the Iron Curtain.

Simon’s photography emphasizes her strong connection with history and the mood of the environments she photographs. Her image making is only part of a larger goal of experiencing a place, learning about a new culture or community.

Katalina holds a BA in Russian from the University of Bristol in England and is a graduate of the Professional Photography Program at the New York Institute of Photography. She is an exhibited member of the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA, PhotoPlace Gallery in Middlebury, Vermont and Fountain Street Gallery in Boston, MA.

The Land Beyond the Forest is an ongoing series depicting a fading way of life in rural Transylvania. This mountainous and remote region of Eastern Europe is steeped in history and lore. The rugged Carpathian Mountains kept invaders at bay and kept the remote villages isolated from the passage of time.

I am drawn time and again to this region and these people because it reminds me of a way of life that I experienced at my grandparent’s village in Hungary every summer. As a child, I was oblivious to the hardships that people faced and experienced only kindness and warmth. With my camera I work to recapture this feeling of storybook wonder and show domestic tableaux and rural people as I remember them.

For this exhibition I am focusing on the last generation of women who live this traditional rural life. My hope is to show the magic and poetry of the women who inhabit the “The Land Beyond the Forest.”

Rick Wright | Vessels of the Late Petroleum Age

Posted on April 7, 2020

In light of our quarantined exhibitions, we want to make sure you don’t miss out on the great works on the walls of the Griffin, and our satellite exhibitions across the Greater Boston area. Our satellite space at WinCam, The Winchester Community Access & Media Channel features the clever work of Rick Wright. His series Vessels of the Late Petroleum Age is a wry, humorous look at how we view and interpret objects as well as questioning the idea of permanence and what we leave behind.

From Left to Right – #4, #17, #19

Rick Wright practices photography as a malleable and sculptural medium. This Philadelphia photographer inhabits the persona of a c. 4300 CE archaeologist: a scientist stumbling onto a cache of preserved vessels crafted out of an unknown synthetic material. This Dada series of catalogued “artifacts” explores how a future society might interpret contemporary plastic containers. The project is driven by Wright’s creative lens work; the objects taking on new form, expression, and meaning.

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Wright states, “Over the course of a full year, I ventured out into my Philadelphia neighborhood on recycling night. The purpose of my stroll was to dig through the blue bins piled high with plastic containers. The street lamps provided the perfect overhead lighting – akin to that original laundry room bulb – by which to preview the “personality” of each vessel. Wright goes on to say, “Photography suffers the unfortunate condition of looking like reality and it is the first thing to transcend as a photographer.”

We had a few questions.

The images are unnamed, using only catalog numbers. Why the numbering system, and not something like archeological field notes?

Numbering (only) was my way to stay-out-of-the-way and let the viewer overlay their own typology, reactions, mapping, whatnot. I felt there was enough in the images without getting too careful or cute with the titles; the danger in making the project purely funny, or too joke-like. It’s not. It’s both: serious/dark, yet amusing.

I avoided Field Notes and over-describing the objects, hence the plain catalog numbers. I’m trying to leave a viewer plenty of room-to-roam about in the weight/reality of our ubiquitous and unseen over-use of plastic. (Though, really, not so “unseen” anymore.)

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Without text to accompany each image, like field notes, what do you want the viewer to understand about the permanent culture we live in?

The whole project, effectively, is about taking a look back from the far future. (well, far human future). We’re in the 41st Century and our archaeologist/scientist is struggling to sort these plastic vessels out (these Vessels holding: elixirs, potions, balms, aphrodisiacs, immortality). What caused the end of the Petroleum Age, effectively?

What do you hope the viewer walks away with in terms of understanding the project?

I’d like them to laugh, then perhaps cry. Certainly to reflect, without me (or the work) being heavy-handed or chastising.

What is the one vessel your anthropologist treasures most, but has yet to find. In Indiana Jones terms, his own Holy Grail.

While any or all of these “visages” might be good candidates for The Shaman, The Medicine Man, The Seer, I think I remain on the lookout for that super particular type. I’d know him/her when I saw them.

The Vessels of the Late Petroleum Age was featured on the cover of LensWork #144 magazine (Sept.-Oct. 2019); along with a 16-page spread. The work has also appeared online in Float Magazine and garnered a Fleisher Faculty Fellowship Award. Wright is currently collaborating with a writer on a book of this series.

The Griffin Museum crafted a catalogue to accompany the exhibition and it is now available for purchase. For more information see our website for details.

Included in the book are the astute observations of art historian, scholar and independent curator in the field of photography, Alison Nordström, who gets to the heart of the series and its place in photography.

“Positioned, framed, composed, lit, and presented like art objects, Wright’s images elevate, isolate, and transform the ordinary as photography is uniquely equipped to do. There is plenty to consider in this aspect of the work alone, but, taken as a whole, the series goes beyond visual description by encouraging interpretations on so many levels that it underscores a wide range of the many things photography can do. Simultaneously legerdemain, joke, science, typology, aesthetic study, symbol, sign, social commentary, and artifact, these photographs contain multitudes; the series is slippery, challenging, and memorable.”

Our own Paula Tognarelli interviewed Rick during an episode of Optics interview at WinCam in Winchester, Massachusetts. Take a look and a listen.

From Left to Right – #33, #48, #51

About Rick Wright

Rick Wright practices photography as a malleable and sculptural medium. He states, “photography suffers the unfortunate condition of looking like reality and it is the first thing to transcend as a photographer.” His primary training as a painter at Princeton and Columbia Universities (BA and MFA) later morphed into photographic studies at ICP in NY with John Loengard, Susan Meiselas, Nan Goldin, and Dorit Cypis.

Rick shows his work locally and nationally. Along with his ongoing history as an artist-using-photography, he also photographs architecture professionally. His works resides in several permanent collections; most recently added to the Houston Museum of Fine Art and Philadelphia Museum of Art. Wright keeps a studio in Philadelphia (past 12 years) and teaches photography at: Philadelphia Photo Arts, Fleisher Art Memorial, Peter’s Valley School of Art & Craft, The Halide Project.

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Several of his photographs reside in permanent collections: Houston Museum of Fine Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Creon Collection, Johnson & Johnson Collection, and The University of Pennsylvania. Wright keeps his studio in Philadelphia (past 13 years) and teaches photography at Fleisher Art Memorial, Peter’s Valley School of Art & Craft, and The Halide Project.

“Photography is 93% of my life,” says Wright. “The other 7% is occupied by typewriter repair, short story writing, and life model sketching. I chose photography over painting for its speed, joy, and unexpected bends of reality.”

See more of Rick Wright‘s creativity on his website.

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