Griffin Atelier Gallery

Myths Artist Statement

Inspiration

Photographing my daughter’s first pregnancy and contemplating her beauty and the fullness of her potential, I had an epiphany. In this illuminating awareness, I imagine her standing on a matrilineal continuum with a long line of women from her past, standing as an icon of her unfolding future.  It was like observing a timeline of human history. I suddenly had an intuitive understanding of women perpetuating humanity. My own part in this, albeit in a supporting role, of son, husband, father, and grandfather became clearer. This was the revelation that stimulated my exploration of the feminine and these women as classic ideals for the Myths series.

Contemplating the form of my daughter’s body and her procreative potential encouraged research into the powerful archetypes of womanhood. Informative readings in anthropology, mythology, and religion helped me transform personal intuition into a more concrete understanding.  

Joseph Campbell’s brilliant and exhaustive study of archetypes gives credence to our innate knowledge that seems to well up from deep inside, like one’s awe of nature and the mysterious truth embodied in dreams. 

The title “Myths” speaks to the allegorical nature of the stories depicted. The series seeks an innate understanding of my original epiphany. The female figure and the natural world provide the subject matter and the resulting compositions illuminate these stories of memory, mystery, transformation, desire, and reverence.  

Process

My process utilizes the camera and digital manipulation to visualize musings of the feminine archetype. Files, newly captured or harvested from the archive, are the raw material. The digital medium allows me extensive control over the visual product and the gratification of creating a compelling visual statement. The evidence of what I know and what I simply feel to be true is woven into the photographs. – RM 2019

Bio

Ralph Mercer, a New England native, is an alumnus of Rhode Island School of Design where he obtained a BFA in  photography and studied with Harry Callahan and Bert Beaver. He received his MFA in visual design from the University of Massachusetts, where he studied with Dietmar Winkler and Elaine Fisher, and taught photography as a graduate teaching assistant.

With a studio in Norwood, MA, he specializes in digital photography and photo-collage, creating fine art photography with an emphasis on the figurative and the landscape. His images are licensed worldwide and published in a range of digital and printed media. In addition to being a full-time artist, he is a photographic illustrator and carries out portrait commissions and other photographic projects.

His photographs depict the human figure, nature, and the everyday environment, all interpreted with his sense of visual poetry, whether they be figure studies or abstractions of the visible world.

Sleeping in the Forest
A Poem by Mary Oliver

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

CV

Education:
BFA Photography, Education, Rhode Island School of Design
MFA Visual Design, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

Awards:
Rangefinder Magazine Fine Art Photography Awards, 2018
Weston Online Photography Competition, First Place, Carmel, CA, 2017
Black and White Spider Awards, 2 Honorable Mentions, 2017
Critical Mass, Semi-finalist, 2016
Black and White Spider Awards, nominee, 2015
Trierenberg Super Circuit, Gold Medal, Linz, Austria, 2015
One Eyeland, 4 Silver awards, Chennai, India, 2015
Black and White Spider Awards, nominee, 2014
Master’s Cup, 4th annual, 2013

Recent Exhibitions:
Natural Nude, Southeast Center for Photgraphy, 2019, 2 images shown
The Portfolios, LightBox Photographic Gallery, Astoria, OR, 2018, 4 photographs from the Dialectics series shown
Summer Show, Duncan Miller Gallery, Santa Monica, CA 2018
Algorithms, 8 Photographs shown in Group show, Scarlet Seven Gallery, Troy, NY 2018
Staged, PH21 Gallery, Budapest, Hungary, 2018
The Weston Collective online Exhibition, 2017, First Place, Figure Study
The Photographic Nude, LightBox Photographic Gallery, Astoria, OR, 2017
Providence Center for Photographic Art, 4th Open Call Exhibition, 2017
The Curated Fridge, Kayafas Gallery, 2017
10 Spot,10 photographs in group show, Sohn Fine Art Gallery, Lenox, MA, 2017
The Photographic Nude, LightBox Photographic Gallery, Astoria, OR, 2017
The Curated Fridge, Somerville, MA, 2016
The Eye of Photography, L’oeil de la Photographie, Online Portfolio,
http://www.loeildelaphotographie.com/en/2016/09/03/article/159917897/ralph-mercer-dialectics/
Black and White, PhotoPlace Gallery, Middlebury, VT 2016
Don’t Take Pictures, Online Daily Photograph, 2016
Griffin Museum’s 22nd Juried Show, Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA, 2016
Your Daily Photograph, Online gallery of photographs for sale, Duncan Miller Gallery, 2016
37 Photographers/One Model, Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA, 2016
The Photographic Nude, LightBox Photographic Gallery, Astoria, OR, 2016
The Nude in the Landscape, L.A. Photo Curator 2016
Alternative Cameras, PhotoPlace Gallery, Middlebury, VT 2016
Body and Soul, Solo Show, Galatea Fine Art, Boston, MA, 2015
Beyond The Book, Boston Public Library, Boston, MA, 2016
Your Daily Photograph, Online gallery of photographs for sale, Duncan Miller Gallery, 2015
Griffin Museum’s 21st Juried Show, Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA, 2015
Black and White, PhotoPlace Gallery, Middlebury, VT 2015
Think Small, Panopticon Photographic Gallery, Boston, MA 2015
21st Annual Juried Exhibition, Zullo Gallery, Medfield, MA, 2015
FPAC Open Studios Group Show, Boston, MA, 2015
I Love Your Space, 555 Gallery, Boston, MA, 2015
Birds and Bees, Nave Gallery, Somerville, MA, 2015
Early Works Online, Photographic Resource Center, Boston, MA, 2014
Your Work Here 2.0, PRC, Boston, MA, 2014
Atlantic Wharf Gallery, Boston, MA, 2014
Primavera,The Marino Center, One Person Show, Wellesley, MA, 2013

Exhibitions:
American Vision
Andromeda Gallery
ASMP Big Picture Show
Atlantic Monthly Gallery, solo show
Brockton Arts Center
Design 25
Fort Point Artist’s Community Gallery, two person show
Hartford Civic and Arts Festival
Houston Art Director’s Show, Gold Award
Laughlin/Winkler Gallery
Maine Photographic Workshop
MassachusettsTransportation Building, Permanent Installation
R.I.S.D., 12×12
Stonehill College Gallery
The Gallery, UMASS Dartmouth
Woods-Gerry Gallery, R.I.S.D.
FPAC Gallery, Boston

Teaching Experience:
UMASS Dartmouth
Stonehill College
Massasoit Community College
Bristol Community College
Brockton High School

Selected Publications:

Lens Magazine, Issue #43, “Nude”, April 2018, 14 images from the Dialectics Series published
Rangefinder Magazine, January, 2018, 7 images from the Dialectics Series published
Blur Magazine, “The Photographic Nude”, Spring, 2016
Book Cover, “Photoshop Unmasked”, by Nigel French
Book Cover, “A Stranger in the Mirror”, Sidney Sheldon (Italian Edition)
Oprah Magazine, Atlantic Monthly Magazine, Essence Magazine, Boston Magazine, Harvard Business Review, INC magazine, MacWorld, Parade Magazine, Better Homes and Gardens Magazine, PC Computing Magazine, Technology Review Magazine

Selected Corporate Clients:
Agilent Technologies, AT&T, Bank of America, Chase Bank, CitiBank, Compaq Computer, Cross Point Paper, EMC2, Fidelity Investments, Hewlett Packard, Houghton Mifflin, IBM, MCI, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Oppenheimer Funds, Polaroid, Price Waterhouse, RR Donnelley, Smith Barney, Standard and Poors, Unisys, UPS, Vanguard Funds, and Wausau Paper.

Representation:
Getty Images, stock

Website

9th Annual Self-Published Photobook Exhibition is an annual competition open to photographers in the United States and abroad who have self-published a photobook. This competition is offered by Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson NY for the nineth year. The competition results were exhibited at Davis Orton Gallery and thirty-four photobooks are now traveling to the Griffin Museum of Photography. Karen Davis, co-director of the Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson, NY and Paula Tognarelli, executive director and curator of the Griffin Museum of Photography were the jurors for the 9th Annual Self-Published Photobook Exhibition.

9^th Annual Self-Published Photobook Exhibition  is featured in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin Museum April 11 – June 2, 2019. An opening reception with the artists takes place on April 11, 7 – 8:30 p.m.

An informal gallery talk by Paula Riff will take place on April 11, 2019 at 6:15 PM

A book talk by Mary Virginia Swanson will take place on April 13, 2019 from 2-4 PM

For the 9th Annual Self-Published Photobook Exhibition, jurors Karen Davis and Paula Tognarelli chose 34 Photobooks to be exhibited at the Griffin Museum. The photobook authors are:

Meghan Boilard  Press Enter To Search
Sheri Lynn Behr  Be seeing you
Vera Benschop  Fingerprints In The Dirt
Leslie Hall Brown  Muse
Lucinda Bunnen  Gathered
Jo Ann Chaus  Sweetie & Hansom
Clara DeTezanos  Piedra-Padre, Universo
Daniel Drake  The Mystery Of The Jewish New Year Valentines
Melissa Eder  Fake Foods/Fake News
Kev Filmore  21 Magnolia Rd.
Kay Kenny  Mirrors Of The Moment, Casting Shadows
Roddy Macinnes   Family Album
Amanda Marchand  Because The Sky
Linda Morrow  Looking For Bobby Clackett
Jeremy Olson  Grotto
Robert Pacheco  Sun And Cellophane
Louise Pedno  Hair Matters
Antonio Perez Rio  Masterpieces – Obras Maestras
Allison Stewart.  Bug Out Bag: The Commodification Of American Fear
Britland Tracy  Show Me Yours
Sara Anthony/Meghan Bollard  The Somerville Collection Agency
Clarice Barbato-Dunn  The Spaciousness Project
Michael Callahan  What Battle Exactly
Andrew Cohen  Fuel Islands
David Curtis  Auto-Reflections: Metropolis
Geoff Delanoy  Trees
Jeff Evans   Jeff Evans’ Guide
Arnold Clayton Henderson  Urban Illlusions
Kevin Jones   Nuestro Cometa
Sandy Lloyd   Requiem For A Son
Dan Mccormack    The Nude At Home – Pinhole Camera Images
Bruce Morton   Forgottonia – The Suburbs
Thomas Pickarski   Floating Blue
Thomas Whitworth   Constructed Realities

View Davis Orton Gallery website:

View online catalog

There are growing options available for self-publishing a book such as on-demand (blurb, lulu, viovio, iphoto, etc.); small run offset or web printing/publishing firms, binderies. For the competition if photobooks submitted had been hand-made/bound, they had to be available in multiples of at least 25. Entrants could submit up to three different titles that are self-published photography books of any size, format, or style: hard cover, soft cover, case-wraps, landscape, portrait, square, color, black and white. Submissions were judged on the basis of: cover design, strength of the photography, subject matter of the book, page layouts, editing and sequencing and emotional impact of the overall book. All Submissions had to be original works of authorship created by the photographer who submitted the book.

“A photobook relies on the image to form visual sentences,” says Paula Tognarelli, executive director and curator of the Griffin Museum of Photography. “A photobook that is produced well can transport us in time and place just as any book produced with the written word.”

Statement
These photographs are seen through my eyes as sitter, as maker, and as a viewer from a time in photography I thought we might not wish to lose track of. The birth we give our life passes through archetypal wombs spun of fibers, glow, and exposed in the way we develop ourselves. Self-Portraiture and portraits of me by photographers provided insight to provoke me to express myself at moments of emotional shifts and curiosity. The self-portrait is a composition of structured forces and aspects of our developed knowledge of life.  It is a guide toward “Who am I?” Working with the psyche is much more than narcissistic exercise, though it fulfills that role too. I experimented with ‘presenting’ myself to the camera to gain possession of powerful “self-hood.” When I see a print or screen image of myself, it is something real, something physical, and something that increases awareness. With this collection of photographs over time, I’ve a reference to compare and contrast and notice things I was not consciously ready to deal with before. – LT

Introduction to “Self Reflection”
by Toby Kamps, Director, Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, Texas
“Artist.  Model.  Author.  Muse.  Linda Troeller plays many parts in her photographic life.  Throughout a prolific career photographing and publishing books on female sexuality, healing-water spas, the AIDS epidemic, and her home in New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel, Troeller has regularly served as a subject for the camera, her own and those of her colleagues. The collection of images by Troeller and other photographers from the 1970s to today, is an intimate, illuminating assessment of one artist’s deep engagement with seeing and understanding herself through the camera’s lens.

The images are waypoints in Troeller’s aesthetic and personal evolution.  Some are carefully planned; others are quick and spontaneous. All are telling responses to a time and place.  Early self- and family portraits trace her progress as a young feminist carving out an identity in a male-dominated photo world.  She shoots herself in a dorm-room mirror, as a Lolita-like gamine in a terrycloth robe, and in dramatic half-shadow with her proud father.  Later images show her exploring her emotional and erotic sides and working as a model for other photographers.  She depicts herself healing from a breakup in a Mexican hot spring and poses nude for greats like Eikoh Hosoe and Lucien Clergue.  And current work shows her as a stylish, older woman living and working in an epicenter of creativity.

Troeller’s dual roles behind and in front of the camera make her an anomaly in a community where most hide behind their viewfinders.  But her exceptional beauty, along with the strength, openness, and willingness to collaborate with other artists on subtle, spiritual levels manifested in each photograph, made it inevitable that she would inspire other photographers as a subject.  In each fearless image Troeller depicts the creative arc of a soul in love with photography and life.”

Toby Kamps is the  director at the Blaffler Museum and was curator at the Contemporary Art Museum and then curator of modern and contemporary art at the Menil Collection since 2010. He has curated some of Houston’s most acclaimed solo shows including Claes Oldenburg, Ellsworth Kelly, and William N. Copley.

Bio
Linda Troeller is a NYC art photographer with a relatively new book Living Inside the Chelsea Hotel published by Schiffer. Her exhibitions include the Laurence Miller Gallery, F-stop Festival, Leipzig, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, and Coda Museum, Netherlands.

She is published by Aperture, Healing Waters, and Scalo, Erotic Lives of Women, (with writer Marion Schneider), reviewed in the NYTimes, “as one of the gutsiest books of the decade.” She lectured at Griffin Museum, Yale, Parsons and SVA. Some of her archives are at Syracuse University and the TB-AIDS Diaryis in the collections the Norton Museum of Art.

Website

The Arts Fuse

The Eye of Photography

Mark Feeney Boston Globe Review

Natural History is a series of completely candid single exposure images that merge the living and the dead to create allegorical narratives of our troubled co-existence with nature. Ghost-like reflections of modern visitors viewing wildlife dioramas are juxtaposed against the antique taxidermied subjects housed behind thick glass, their faces molded into permanent expressions of fear, aggression or fleeting passivity. After decades of over-hunting, climate change, poaching and destruction of habitat, many of these long dead diorama specimens now represent endangered or completely extinct species.

During the summer of my ninth and tenth years, my mother, in lieu of hiring a babysitter, kept me captive in our hometown Natural History Museum all day, every day. She functioned as a vibrant and quirky volunteer curator while I spent very long, solitary weeks communing with the museum’s animals, both living and dead, as well as operating the ancient manual elevator for employees and rummaging through the museum’s disheveled collection of mite riddled, century old periodicals and books housed in a private storage. I have since harbored an immense affection for all things old and musty and mysterious, particularly preserved animals whose half dead/half alive presence is at once fascinating and unnerving.

In 2008, during a long anticipated visit to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, I accidentally created an intriguing image while “snapshotting” their dioramas. A reflection of my husband, inadvertently rendered in the glass and framed behind a large ostrich, gave me pause. A few months later, I began to frequent diorama exhibits around the country furtively aiming at capturing these narratives. It is both exhilarating and humbling to be the catalyst for these truly alchemical images which are set against a century old stage and born of random timing and fractured light.

 

 

Traer Scottis an award winning fine art and commercial photographer and author of seven books including Nocturne: Creatures of the Night (Princeton Architectural Press, 2014), Finding Home; Shelter Dogs and Their Stories (Princeton Architectural Press, Fall 2015) and Wild Babies; Photographs of Baby Animals from Giraffes to Hummingbirds (Chronicle Books, 2016). Her work is exhibited around the world and has been featured in National Geographic, Life, Vogue, People, O, on the NY Times Lens Blog, Behold and dozens of other national and international print and online publications. Her first solo museum show Natural Historywas exhibited at the University of Maine Museum of Art in 2015. Traer was the recipient of the 2010 Rhode Island State Council for the Arts Photography Fellowship Grant and the 2008 Helen Woodward Humane Award for animal welfare activism. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island with her husband, daughter and adopted dogs: a pit bull and a baby basset hound.

Website

I am photographing my life. It is as simple and complex as that. Presently, my life is overrun by exquisite little creatures known as children. As they explore the elements with carefree abandon, I observe with camera poised, balanced between protection and permission. – JS

I work from a place of intuition, capturing the action as it unfolds and stealing sidelong glances at the details of our environments. The images are juxtaposed to create an introspective narrative, mining the richly ambiguous state of parenthood, akin to the murky realm between a river’s glittering surface and its hidden undercurrents. Through the camera’s lens I am transported, traversing the spaces between shadow and light, dreams and reality, delight and disquiet.

Bio
Jennifer Shaw is a fine art photographer whose work is based on both a world observed and a world constructed, often focusing on the fleeting and personal within the sphere of her immediate surroundings. She grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and earned a BFA in photography at the Rhode Island School of Design. Upon graduation she moved to New Orleans in pursuit of the artist’s life, where she currently teaches the disappearing art of darkroom photography at the Louise S. McGehee School and serves as creative director of PhotoNOLA, in addition to chasing after two young sons.

Shaw’s photographs have been featured in B&W, American Photo, Shots, Light Leaks, The Sun, and Oxford American magazines, and online publications including NPR, Fraction Magazine, One One Thousand and Lenscratch. Her first monograph, Hurricane Story (Chin Music Press), was named a best photo book of 2011 by photo-eye and Brain Pickings. North Light Press published her second monograph, Nature/Nurture, in 2012. Shaw’s work is exhibited widely and held in collections, including the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

website

Review on “What Will You Remember” by Suzanne Révy

Statement

“Several years ago, while I was sitting across the table from my late father on his 90th birthday, it became clear to me, for the first time, that his dementia had taken a significant part of him away. That was a very powerful moment and the catalyst for the entire “Scratch” series.The work comes together around notions of the unknown, incremental loss, perceptions, transformation and the corners of ourselves, individually and collectively, we may rather leave in the dark.” – CB

Bio
Craig Becker is a self-taught, photo-based artist whose varied creative experiences – gallerist, professional photographer and digital collagist – are each marked by the search for the visually evocative. From his lakeside studio in rural Maine, his work starts with a general theme, but is constantly transformed during an intuitive and spontaneous process. The resulting images are psychologically complex, inviting exploration to the edges of the human experience.

His award-winning work has been widely exhibited at galleries and museums across the country including the Ogden Museum, New Britain Museum of American Art, Griffin Museum of Photography, Center for Fine Art Photography, Martin Museum of Art & Maine Museum of Photographic Arts. Portfolios of his work have been published in Musee’ Magazine, F-Stop Magazine, BETA19, Lenscratch and was one of Feature Shoot’s Emerging Photographers for 2017.

Website

Craig Becker CV
(b.1959, US)

Education: Continuing

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2018

PORTRAITS.ASmith Gallery,TX

TREE TALK. Griffin Museum of Photography, MA

PORTRAITS 2018.Maine Museum of PhotographicArt, Portland, ME

2017

NOR’EASTER. New Britain Museum ofAmericanArt. New Britain, CT
SOHO PHOTO GALLERY.Annual National Competition. NY
PORTRAIT: WITHINTIME + SPACE. South x Southeast Gallery. GA
INTIMATE PORTRAITS. PhotoPlace Gallery, VT
ELSEWHERE.A. Smith Gallery.TX
LIQUID. NewYork Center for Photographic Arts, NY
ANNUAL JURIED EXHIBITION. Providence Center for PhotographicArts. RI

2016

CURRENTS 2016. Ogden Museum, New Orleans, LA
PETER URBAN LEGACY EXHIBITION.  Griffin Museum of Photography, MA CENTER FORWARD 2016.The Center for FineArt Photography, CO
RESIDUE. University of Maine at FarmingtonArt Gallery, ME
TPS 25. Big Bend Museum,TX, Martin Museum ofArt,TX, Grace Museum,TX
THE CREATIVE PORTRAIT. LACenter for Photography, CA
NEUROTICA. Union of Maine VisualArtist.  Portland, ME
MASKS.The Southeast Center for Photography. Greenville, SC
NOR’EASTER. New Britain Museum ofAmericanArt. New Britain, CT THE CURATED FRIDGE. The OpenAperture Gallery. Newport, RI
WHAT YOU SEE.Carver Hill Gallery, Rockland, ME

2015

PORTRAITS 2015. The Center for FineArt Photography, CO
ROTATION. Susan Maasch FineArt, Portland, ME
ANNUAL JURIED EXHIBIT. Peter Miller FineArt. Providence, RI
ART2015. Annual Juried Exhibit. Harlow Gallery. Hallowell, ME
CENTER FORWARD 2015.The Center for FineArt Photography, CO
ART& INNOVATION. WEX.  South Portland, ME
NEW NEW ENGLAND. Gallery 263, Cambridge, MA

2014

WHAT IS A PORTRAIT. Ripe Gallery, NY
NEW CREATIVITY. NewYork Center for PhotographicArts, NY
NEW ENLAND COLLECTIVE V. Galatea FineArt, Boston, MA
ANNUAL JURIED EXHIBIT. Danforth Museum ofArt. Framingham, MA TRANSFORMATION. Saccarappa Art Collective. Westbrook, ME Solo Exhibit

2010

THE DIGITAL COLLAGE. Shaw Gallery. Northeast Harbor, ME
WALLSAND WINDOWS. WaterfallArts. Belfast, ME

Craig Becker
AWARDS & RECOGNITION

INTIMATE PORTRAITS. PhotoPlace Gallery, VTJuror’s Choice. Joyce Tenneson

FEATURE SHOOT Emerging PhotographerAward 2017

LIQUID. NewYork Center for PhotographicArts, NYSecond Place 2017 Deborah Klomp Ching

ELSEWHERE. A Smith Gallery,TX Director’sAward 2017 Amanda Smith

TEXAS PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY 25. First Place. Juror Rixon Reed 2016

MASKS.The Southeast Center for Photography. Juror’s Choice. Aline Smithson 2016

CRITICAL MASS FINALIST. Photolucida 2016

LENSCULTURE. Scratch series. Editor’s Pick 2015

YOUR DAILYPHOTOGRAPH.  “First Place”. Duncan Miller Gallery, CA 2015

CRITICALMASS FINALIST. Photolucida 2015

NEW PORTRAITURE. Saatchi Art 2015

NEW CREATIVITY. NewYork Center for PhotographicArts, NY Grand Prize & First Place, JurorAline Smithson  2014

WHAT IS A PORTRAIT? Ripe Gallery, NY Best in the Surreal category. Juror Ruben Natal-San Miguel 2014

PUBLICATIONS

FEATURE SHOOT. Portraits Born From a Sense of Loss. 2017

F-STOP MAGAZINE. Portfolio Issue. Featured artist portfolio and interview. 2017

MUSEE MAGAZINE. Chaos Issue. Spotlight Artist  2016

BETA 19. developments in photography 2016  Cover & 18 page portfolio

PROFANE LITERARY JOURNAL. WINTER 2016. Cover & Featured Artist

MAINE ARTS JOURNAL. Neurotic 2016 Cover

MAINE HOME + DESIGN.TheArtist Issue 2016

EDGE OF HUMANITY MAGAZINE.Artist Expose’ 2016

MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM. “What You  See” review by Dan Kany 2016

FRACTION MAGAZINE. 7th Anniversary Issue 2015

CENTER FORWARD 2015.The Center for Fine Art Photography, CO
Exhibition Catalog Cover 2015

THE ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTION. Exposure Awards 2015

BIBLIOTHEQUE. October 2015

NEW CREATIVITY. NewYork Center for PhotographicArts, NY
Exhibition Catalog Cover 2014

MiLDRED MAGAZINE. Art’s Sake Profile 2014

Statement
Many of the swamps, ponds, and streams that were once plentiful still remain. Water, though a simple molecular formula, is an extraordinary substance subject to dramatic physical change depending on ambient conditions. Recent interplanetary explorations have confirmed that water, so fundamental to life, is distributed throughout the solar system. Early life forms may have emerged in the fecund swamps and ponds that surround us. Primal Waters is a close study of these dynamic systems where the surface always changes according to fluctuations in temperature, currents, and wind. I study the surfaces for patterns and naturally occurring geometric arrangements that intrigue me.

Most often, the shallow waters along the shore display the most dramatic effects of increasingly extreme temperature variations. This is where the freeze/thaw cycles of water, ice, and snow are most visible.  In warmer weather, the pollen deposits on the surface make the subtle currents and whirlpools visible. Episodic overgrowth of “invasive species” such as milfoil or algae blooms indicate an ecosystem under new kinds of stress. All these stressors have given rise to phenomena I have never seen before.

The black surround on each image was first suggested in the field while I handheld a lens hood in front of camera. The blackness appealed to me, since I wanted to evoke the idea of an intense gaze as though seen through a microscope or telescope. The black surround at once distances the viewer and concentrates the view. I aim to choose just the right amount of black; too much makes the image too distant, too little doesn’t hold the image still enough for intense focus.

In some of the images, I like the confusion of scale. With the black surround some of the images, particularly the pollen patterns, could be mistaken for the shifting cloud and vapor systems on distant planets suspended in space.
– CWT

Bio
Catherine Wilcox-Titus has pursued creative expression in words and images for over 40 years. The poetry of images has most recently engaged her full attention, and she has explored this medium in film and digital formats.

She has exhibited her work in collaborative two-person shows, group shows, and solo shows. Primal Waters reflects work she has done in the past two years as she has explored the fresh water ponds, swamps, and streams that surround us. The close study of the surface patterns on the water and the aesthetic potential of these  dynamic systems continues to fascinate her.

She is the recipient of grants from ARTSWorcester and Worcester State University, and won awards in many regional exhibitions. She has a Ph.D. from Boston University in Art History and writes and lectures on topics in art from the 19^thcentury to the present day. Catherine teaches at Worcester State University in Massachusetts and curates the campus gallery.

In “Orchard Trail” Michal Greenboim creates photographic diptychs. These photographs were taken as individual images over the years, as daily responses to the world around her, as in a visual journal, and later paired. In examining the photographs she realized that she “had subconsciously been photographing [her] childhood.” She says, “The pictures in front of me held deep memories of curiosity, innocence and wonder. They were my remembrances, wandering in the backyard, exploring moments like the sound of a tree [or] a bird in the sky.”

“Orchard Trail,” is featured in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin Museum of Photography from January 11^, 2018 through March 4, 2018. An opening reception (Free to all) will take place on January 18, 2018 from 7-8:30 PM. Holly Roberts will do a gallery walk/talk at 6 PM on January 18, 2018 that is free for members and $10 for nonmembers.

“The photographs of Orchard Trail are in their essence a mode of language,” says Paula Tognarelli, executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography. “In each diptych there is an exchange by way of harmonic gesture that conveys the intangibles of thought and experience.”

Tognarelli goes on to say, “In the trilogy of shows opening in Winchester on January 11, 2018, if there is a common element that links each to the other, it is the ability of the artists to disclose personal psychologies without vulnerability. It is this show of openness that draws us to the artists and their art-making process.”

Michal Greenboim grew up in a small town in Israel called Pardes Chana that means Hana Orchard. She says of her childhood “the town was full of orange, avocado and mango orchards. I remember neighbors stopping by with mangos and [we] giving our avocados in exchange. Kids would walk by themselves to the next-door-neighbors for story time or a piano lesson. I remember going with my father to pick oranges from our orchard. When I look at my photographs …, I am reminded of who I truly am.”

Greenboim developed an early interest in photography after watching her grandfather, who always had a camera present to capture family moments. Following a career as an interior designer and computer engineer, Michal later moved into photography, publishing her first photography book “Orchard Trail,” a narrative of childhood stories and memories, in 2016.

Michal now lives in La Jolla, California and started her MFA studies in June 2017.

From 2012-2017, Michal has exhibited her work in shows across the United States, including the Art of Photography Show in San Diego and at the Los Angeles Center for Photography in California, Photo Place in Vermont, Tilt Gallery in Arizona and Dickerman Gallery in San-Francisco. Her photograph “Rear Blues” won third place in the “World in Place” competition in the “Sense of Place” category, PDN Magazine, December 2016. In 2017, Greenboim was awarded an exhibition at the Griffin Museum from the Los Angeles Center of Photography.

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