27th Annual Members Juried Show | Birnbaum, Mercer, Taylor & Weinberg Doran

Join us Thursday August 5th at 7pm Eastern for artist presentations with four of the highlighted awardee’s from the Griffin Members show, juried by Arnika Dawkins of Arnkia Dawkins Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia.

This event is FREE to Griffin Museum members. $10 for Non Members. Interested in Membership and its benefits? See more about what the Griffin offers here

The artists featured –

Meg Birnbaum – 

© Meg Birnbaum, “Iaritza and the Porcelain Berries,” 2021, Honorable Mention

Meg Birnbaum lives and works in the Boston area. She is a photographer, graphic designer, and educator.

She has had solo exhibitions at Stonewall Museum and Archives in FL., Gallery Tanto Tempo in Kobe, Japan, Corden Potts Gallery, San Francisco, The Lishui International Photography Festival, China, the Museum of Art Pompeo Boggio, Buenos Aires during the biennial Encuentros Abiertos-Festival de la Luz, the Griffin Museum of Photography, Massachusetts, Flash Forward Festival, Boston, Davis/Orton Gallery, NY, and Panopticon Gallery, Boston.

Meg is a member of the Griffin exhibition committee and designs their catalogs, signage and website. Her work is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, the Lishui Museum of Photography in China, the Meditech Corporation, and private collections.

Ralph Mercer – 

© Ralph Mercer, “Rayanne’s Dream,” 2013, Griffin Award

Trained as an artist, BFA RISD, MFA Umass Dartmouth, I have practiced photography as a commercial photo-illustrator throughout my career. Recently, my work has concentrated on fine art photography.

Bill Brandt and Harry Callahan are my photographic heroes. Both men picked up a camera loaded with black and white film and investigated their environments and personal worlds with a brilliant sense of experimentation and design. Emulating their dedication and artistic imperatives, I pursue the sensual and the abstract through camera manipulation and digital composite techniques. The primary subject of the work is the human body. It juxtaposes the human figure with imagery captured in nature or created in the studio. Looking beyond the body’s visible exterior my photography is both literal and symbolic striving for evocative formal elegance. I explore the female body and its implied connections to the natural world and evolutionary imperatives. It is a metaphysical meditation that ponders the powerful, creative, and archetypal character of womanhood.

Tokie (Rome)Taylor –

© Tokie Taylor, “An Offering,” 2020 Arthur Griffin Legacy Award

Tokie (Rome) Taylor  is a native and resident in the suburbs of Atlanta,GA. She received her BA in Arts Education with a focus on Photography and Drawing from Morris Brown College, In Atlanta and a M.Ed, and Ed.S from Lesley University. Tokie’s work explores themes of time, spirituality, and identity. She often integrates  found objects as artifacts and conduits of memory.

Tokie’s exhibition and awards record includes international and national exhibitions; ArtFields 2020 and 2021, SP-Foto in São Paulo, Brazil, top 50 PhotoLucida Critical Mass 2020, WOMEN (UN)SILENCED A Survey of Contemporary Black Artists Gallery 1202, Gilroy, CA, 37 Juried Exhibition, Masur Museum, Monroe LA, Zuckerman Museum of Art  GA, Dalton Gallery, Agnes Scott College, “APG- Alan Avery Selects” Atlanta, GA. among others. Tokie is a Funds for Teachers Fellowship recipient, studying photography in Santa Fe, New Mexico and in San Francisco, California. She is an Honorable Mention recipient for the International Photography Awards (2019) sponsored by the Lucie Foundation. She is a 2019 recipient of the 2019 Virginia Twinam-Smith Purchase Award. Her work is a part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia,  government public collections, and  private collections. Her work was  recently added to the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art.
Additionally, Tokie  devotes her time to her 5 children, as well as  teaching and inspiring young artists as an arts educator in Atlanta, GA

Nina Weinberg Doran –

© Nina Weinberg Doran, “Looking Back,” 2016, Honorable Mention

It’s remarkable how we arrive at certain places in life. You make a decision to do something new and it opens a window onto possibilities previously unexplored.  For me photography emerged haphazardly. I’d been going through a tumultuous time and found myself struggling to find new meaning and peace.  I set off on my own, camera in hand, with the intention of doing nothing more than further explore a place I’d grown to love.  The camera was thrown in amongst the usual essentials; maybe I’d take it out now and then to encapsulate some lasting memories. What ensued was a metamorphosis: a few casual shots grew into an obsession.

I am a self-taught photographer, picking things up by something akin to osmosis. Time and again I was told by friends and colleagues that the photos evoked something more than the typical travel shot and I was encouraged to do more. I began to connect with fellow photographers who assisted in mentoring me.  Like the revelation of discovering more than “vacation shots” stowed away in my camera, I find sharing my photographs with a broader audience just as serendipitous.

Shooting comes from somewhere deep within.  It is as though something murmurs, and I must wander off and shoot. My heart starts to beat wildly. My eyes blink like a shutter, as if to retain some images I may have missed. What ensues are these special moments, requiring communication with the subject, even if unspoken. Almost all of my photos begin with that flicker of human connection.

What does the future hold?  I’ve always loved to travel. The second the wheels hit the runway, I’m conceiving my next journey.  With the added captivation to shoot, the urge is almost irrepressible.