Lafayette City Center Passageway

The Griffin Museum of Photography is pleased to announce Elemental Blues: Contemporary Cyanotypes, an in-person exhibition featuring featuring the works of Anna Leigh Clem, Brett Windham, Bryan Whitney, Julia Whitney Barnes, Sally Chapman and Cynthia Katz. The show features the distinct and innovative works of six New England and Upstate New York-based artists that reveal the versatility of the medium through diverse processes and mixed-media explorations.

This collection of works is on the walls of our satellite location Griffin @ Lafayette City Center Place. Located in Boston’s Downtown Crossing, the address is 2 Ave de Lafayette, Boston, MA 02111 and hours are 6am – 10pm Daily.

Presenting photographs of the Basin Head sand dune system along the Northumberland Strait in Canada, Anna Leigh Clem infuses her eerie landscape with somber drama. Toning her works with foraged botanicals, she creates a tangible connection between each print and the landscape that inspired it.

Brett Day Windham’s delicate watercolor overlays illuminate the unseen rhythms of marine life, rendering fan corals as intricate, arterial compositions that underscore the interconnectedness of all life and consciousness.

Offering an unobstructed glimpse into the unseen, Bryan Whitney unveils the skeletal elegance of flowers through striking cyanotype x-rays. These luminous blueprints expose the intricate structure and delicate beauty inherent in botanical forms.

Cynthia Katz constructs fragmented cyanotypes arranging prints on rectangular grids and diptychs populated by small yet impactful details. The works are a creative approach to abstraction and evoke the elusive nature of memory and dreams.

Julia Whitney Barnes creates lavish and meticulously detailed works on paper, blending watercolor, gouache, ink, and cyanotype. Her pieces, reminiscent of fairy tale sights and sacred geometry, highlight the inherent beauty of our world.

Sally Chapman‘s rhythmic still life compositions capture the diverse objects of our everyday surroundings, creating a unique taxonomy of the organic with the manufactured. Delicate, drawing-like gestures on pastel further swirl through her observations. 

An eclectic representation of cyanotype-making, the artists featured in Elemental Blues explore ideas of visibility and transformation, utilizing cyanotype to reinterpret and reimagine natural and everyday subjects through their techniques.

Julia Whiney Barnes (Born in Newbury, VT) spent two decades in Brooklyn/NYC before moving to the Hudson Valley in 2015. She received a BFA from Parsons School of Design and MFA from Hunter College. Whitney Barnes works in a variety of media from cyanotypes, watercolor, combined media works on paper, oil paintings, glass, ceramic sculptures, murals, site-specific installations, and limited-edition prints. She has exhibited widely in the United States and internationally including the Albany International Airport /Shaker Heritage Society, Albany, New York; Dorksy Museum, New Paltz, NY; Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT; Hancock Shaker Museum, Berkshires, MA; Woodstock Artists Association & Museum (WAAM), Woodstock, NY; Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, ME; Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY; Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Kent, CT; Garvey|Simon NY, New York, NY and Galerie Julian Sander, Cologne, Germany.  Her work is in numerous private and public collections.
Whitney Barnes is the recipient of fellowships from the New York State Council on the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Arts Mid-Hudson, Abbey Memorial Fund for Mural Painting/National Academy of Fine Arts, and the Gowanus Public Art Initiative, among others. She completed two significant commissions in 2024 including an immersive double sided glass artwork for Public Art for Public Schools/NYC Percent for Art in Brooklyn, NY and a room-wide mural for the new Vassar College Institute in Poughkeepsie, NY in 2024.

Sally Chapman is a photographer living in Lowell, MA. After earning a BFA in ceramics and photography from Michigan State University, she worked for over twenty years as a ceramic artist exhibiting widely. When she returned to photography ten years ago, she gravitated towards tactile methods of printing. She discovered 19^th century photographic process of cyanotype and the flexibility that hand done processes invite a constant experimentation.

She exhibited in the Griffin Museum 30^th Annual Juried Members Show 2024 with Honorable Mention; Soho Photo Gallery National Competition 2023, Honorable Mention; Texas Photographic Society, By Hand: Alternative Processes, Honorable Mention; The Halide Project, Living Image, Grand Prize Winner; A Smith Gallery, Directors Award; 18th Julia Margaret Cameron Awards, Honorable Mention; and Rockport Art Association and Museum National Show. Excellence in Photography Award. 

She has had solo shows at the Soho Photo Gallery, New York, NY; The Halide Project, Philadelphia, PA; Three Stones Gallery, Concord, MA; MIT Rotch Architectural Library, Cambridge, MA; Gallery 93, Brookline, MA; The Sanctuary in Medford, MA; and the Arts League of Lowell, Lowell, MA. 

She has been included in many group shows including at the Griffin Museum, Winchester, MA; Image Flow Gallery, Mill Valley, CA; Soho Photo Gallery, New York, NY; Art Intersection, Gilbert, AZ; Light Space, Silver City, NM; Photo Place Gallery, Middlebury, VT; and the Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA.

Brett Day Windham (born Cambridge, England, raised Providence, Rhode Island) is a multidisciplinary artist currently working with cyanotype. She received a BFA from Hampshire College, a certificate in painting from SACI in Florence, Italy, and an MFA in Sculpture from RISD. Her work has been collected internationally and has been included in shows around the US, including The Barnes Foundation (Philadelphia), Smack Mellon (New York), the RISD Museum (Providence), University of Maine Museum of Art (Bangor), and RMCAD (Denver). Windham received a Dean’s fellowship at RISD and was nominated for the Joan Mitchell MFA Grant. Residencies include The Select Fair Residency (Brooklyn, New York), The Chrysler Museum Glass Studio (Norfolk, Virginia), TSKW (Key West, Florida), Cascina Remondenca (Chiaverano, Italy), and Penland School of Craft. (Penland, North Carolina). Her work has been cited in Art New England, Elle Decor, V Magazine, Hyperallergic, The New York Times, Providence Phoenix, Whitewall Magazine, and The Bangor Daily News.

Anna Leigh Clem is an artist working in photography, text, book arts, video, and other media to investigate the nature of ephemerality. Compelled by the ineffable secrets embedded in memories, dreams, and the natural world, her work makes tangible these otherwise invisible realms. Born in New York in 1990, Clem currently lives and works on the North Shore of Boston and holds a Master of Fine-Arts in photography and integrated media from Lesley University (2021) and a Bachelor of Fine-Arts in photography from Rochester Institute of Technology (2012). Her work has been shown both nationally and internationally, at venues such as Bromfield Gallery, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, Foley Gallery, Visual Studies Workshop, and Elysium Gallery. She has published both trade edition books and artist’s books, several of which are held in collections at The Griffin Museum of Photography, Yale University, SMFA, SVA, and Pratt Institute.

Bryan Whitney is a photographer and artist living and working in New York City whose work often involves experimental imaging techniques, such as x-rays, 3D imagery, virtual reality, and other alternative processes. Whitney holds an MFA in Photography from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and a BA in the Psychology of Art from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has taught photography at Rutgers University and currently teaches at the International Center of Photography in New York City. A recipient of the Fulbright Grant: Lectures on American Photography, he has exhibited across the United States and internationally as well as traveled the globe for special projects, including archeological photo expeditions with the Qatar Museum Authority and the National Agency for Cultural Heritage Preservation, Republic of Georgia. Art exhibitions include various prestigious venues such as the Center for Holography on Governor’s Island, Currents New Media Festival in Santa Fe, the Fringe Art Fair in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the Islamic Museum of Art in Berlin, Germany. His work has appeared in several media outlets such as Martha Stewart, Harpers Bazaar, Fortune, the New York Times, and in books, posters and advertising campaigns worldwide.

Cynthia Katz is an award-winning photo-based artist working in the Boston area. Process and discovery have been guiding forces that link her photographic practice, artist books, and installations. Her work has been shown regionally and nationally, most recently at Three Stones Gallery, Jessica Hagen Gallery, The Danforth Art Museum, The Fitchburg Art Museum, and Soho Photo Gallery in NYC. Katz’s latest recognition includes being named a finalist and a juror’s pick by LensCulture’s 2024 Art Photography Awards. She was awarded the Photography Prize at the 2024 Fitchburg Art Museum’s summer exhibition, and the first prize in Soho Photo Gallery’s Alt Process Competition in 2024. In 2025, she was selected for recognition at Concord Art’s MJ2 exhibit by juror Crista Dix, executive director at the Griffin Museum of Photography. 

Cynthia’s work is published in journals, books and blogs, including Manifest’s International Photography Annual 3, SlowSpace.org and LensCulture. Her presentations include “Handmade Photographs” at the Photographic Resource Center in Boston, Three Stones Gallery and Concord Art. Her work is housed in private collections. 

In addition to her own practice, Katz was a photo educator in settings that included Art Schools, colleges, and independent high schools. She brings that experience to her work as a portfolio consultant, helping people craft portfolios for college, grad school and art school admissions. Katz holds a BFA in Photography from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA in Photography from Bennington College. She maintains a studio at The Umbrella Arts Center in Concord, MA, is represented by Jessica Hagen Gallery in Newport, RI, and she lives in West Concord, MA.

The Griffin @ Lafayette City Center Passageway is located at 2 Ave de Lafayette in Downtown Crossing, Boston. The passageway connects Macy’s, the Lafayette Tower offices and the Hyatt Regency, Boston.

Jeff Larason’s Boston and Lynn Saville’s New York is a captivating exploration of quiet moments within two bustling urban environments.
This exhibition combines the powerful and evocative urban imagery of Boston photographer Jeff Larason and New York City photographer Lynn Saville. Both artists delve deep into the visual language of cities, capturing moments of solitude and reflection that are often overshadowed by the energy and chaos of urban life. Larason and Saville reveal a serene, reflective, and unexpectedly beautiful side of city life through their unique lenses.

Jeff Larason presents a deeply personal perspective of Boston, showcasing its familiar landmarks and lesser-known corners in a way that encourages the viewer to pause and appreciate the city’s quiet, contemplative moments. His work, often framed by strong architectural lines and vibrant tones, captures a timeless quality of the city’s urban life.

Lynn Saville, a widely renowned photographer known for her mastery of light and shadow, brings her iconic images of New York City into the spotlight. Her photographs of New York explore the intersection of light and the urban environment, often highlighting deserted streets and empty spaces that evoke a sense of tranquility amidst the towering skyscrapers and vibrant energy of the metropolis.

We are pleased to welcome the MFA students at Boston University’s department of Print Media & Photography to the Griffin’s satellite gallery at Lafayette City Center Passageway.

Dialogue presents work by Boston University’s Print Media and Photography MFA class of 2025. In this exhibition, each artist expresses their own artistic voice through an interdisciplinary approach that illuminates the nature of this unique MFA program.

Working in darkrooms, printmaking studios and beyond, the artists employ traditional and experimental techniques that oscillate between a variety of mediums to create a range of thematic dialogues.

Collectively, they explore issues of chance, feminism, identity, society, and politics. As you navigate the exhibition, we invite you to engage in these thematic dialogues, questioning and responding to the narratives contained within this body of work.

About the Artists

Shannon Johnson

I see connections everywhere and identify as a radical feminist in that I am constantly examining life through an understanding of structural patriarchy. It is through this radical feminist lens that I explore issues of feminism, bodily autonomy, social justice, intimacy, trauma, mental illness, and especially sexual violence. Using photography, printmaking, bookmaking, installation, and painting, I seek to explore and understand the relationships between the images, objects, and interpretations of the roles and values of women and our bodies. I collect a variety of materials including books, clothing, linens, and household objects as the foundation for many of these works: turning utilitarian, functional objects into works of art, now made neither functional nor utilitarian.

Text, images, and meanings are revealed and obscured through layers of ink, pastel, and paper, coalescing color, shapes, bodies, and subject matter, holes carefully cut through pages to piece together this web of patriarchy. By creating large impressions, I aim to place the viewer in an intimate space, removing the mask and closing the gap between the private and the public. I use self-portraiture and found images including didactic photography to reveal contradictions and, often unrealistic, expectations of the boxes we have been forced into. Through these different modalities, I aim to create an understanding and urgency regarding the intimate, emotional issue of women’s autonomy and freedom. The driving core of my work is the rallying cry of early feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s, “the personal is political.” I aim for my work to be confrontational, to incite urgency in the viewer. The goal of my work isn’t to soothe or please the viewer, but to create an intense reaction. My work is explicit, and its rawness and obscenity are essential to convey the urgency of my rage and my abiding need for freedom.

Jason Parent

Born in New Jersey, raised in Upstate New York, and now based in Boston, Massachusetts, Jason Parent is a visual artist and MFA Print Media & Photography candidate at Boston University. With an interdisciplinary skill set, Jason explores the concept of identity.

The hidden and forgotten,
swept under the rug,
buried six feet deep —

A devotion to the exposure of life’s cover-ups inspires my work. Through my interdisciplinary practice, I explore themes of identity, memory, and emotion. Grounded in the excavation of my own existence, my interests expand to issues of gender, sexuality, and the human condition.

Jerry Rodríguez Sosa

Jerry Rodríguez Sosa is an interdisciplinary artist from Brownsville, Texas and Monterrey, México. After earning a BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Texas at Austin, he worked in data analytics for multiple languages at Apple, followed by an internship in letterpress printmaking at Hatch Show Print in Nashville, Tennessee. Subsequently, he moved to Boston, Massachusetts to pursue his MFA in Print Media and Photography at Boston University.

My art is influenced by my heritage and identity. I primarily work with printmaking, photography, and drawing to explore how these intersections can help me craft personal and cultural narratives. My visual language incorporates bodies, symbolisms, text, photo archives, and geographical landscapes to examine and heal the internalities of my Mexican American, queer experience. 

Susan Swirsley

Susan is a visual artist who has traveled extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. Her diverse travel experiences and background in business and the social sciences offer a rich foundation for her work. The amalgamation of photography with other artistic disciplines, cultures and places opens up fascinating possibilities in her practice.

Currently based in Boston, she is a 2025 MFA candidate in the Print Media and Photography program at Boston University.

I am a photo-based artist who uses historical and contemporary processes to translate digital, film, and camera-less images onto paper, fabric, acrylic, and other surfaces. Resourcefulness, experimentation, and the use of “abandoned” materials such as expired paper and botanical remnants are integral to my practice. I create physical objects, large and small, including handmade books. 
 
My work is focused on the unpredictable intersection of abstract and representational images, weaving them together to create a new reality. I examine and question how photographic images function, what they represent and what we expect of them. Process, materiality, illusion, and the juncture of chance an preservation in photographic images play an important role in my artistic practice. I embrace the principle of chance by using materials (photographic paper and chemicals) in different ways than they are normally intended. This experimentation and element of surprise drives my work and extends to combining photographs with printmaking and painting processes and materials.

Tung Lin Tsai

Tung is a practitioner of everyday life who focuses on the relationship between mundanity and photography. As a photographer, he often incorporates everyday objects into his work. Items such as paper airplanes, plastic bags, office paper, and daily calendars are metaphorically placed in his pieces as political symbols. For Tung, these objects represent not only political language but also the reality of everyday life as a Taiwanese citizen — a citizen of a non-sovereign state. Tung is currently an MFA Photography and Print Media candidate at Boston University, navigating this complex world.

From analog to digital processes, from staged to candid images, I capture the mundane — like flying paper and plastic bags. When my strobes fire, they freeze a split second of reality. A strobe flashes for 1/500 to 1/25,000 of a second, capturing what human eyes can’t perceive. Yet, no matter how fast my strobes are, I can’t freeze this moment of peace. The lightness of everyday life is the true weight of Sisyphus’s rock, eternally rolled uphill. My work, therefore, carries the unbearable lightness of a piece of paper.

In the last days of August, we long for that last bit of summer warmth, to connection with family and hold close that moment of peace and quiet before we all head back into the fall with darker days, colder weather and dispersed family. Time vanishes here, days don’t matter, with days filled with kids splashing in the pool and the nights filled with BBQ, s’mores and ghost stories. Backyards are the American dream, a patch of land we can call our own. Backyards become the gathering space, the place we live outside and filled with individuality.

This Griffin @ Lafayette City Center exhibition in the last days of summer features two artists whose work revolves around the gathering place we call home and the intersection of natural and familial landscapes, urban and suburban living. David Oxton and Gary Beeber create an oasis of color, life and connection to nature in a confined space, suburban backyards. These two artists have given unique vision to how we inhabit the patch of land, urban or suburban.

About Gary Beeber –

Gary Beeber is an award-winning American photographer and filmmaker who has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the world.  He has had numerous solo photography exhibitions and his documentary films have been screened at over 150 film festivals.  Pfizer Pharmaceutical, Goldman Sachs and Chase Bank are Fortune 500 companies who collect his work.

About David Oxton –

David Oxton is Massachusetts north shore photographer who creates photographs that blend candid moments with constructed tableaus. Oxton is both a photographer and educator. Images from his Trackside project have been exhibited at Photographic Resource Center, Montserrat College of Art, and Lesley University; and published in Shots Magazine and Cape Ann Magazine.

David was a commercial and editorial photographer for 10 years before concentrating on fine art photo projects. David lives in Beverly and taught photography at The Governor’s Academy in Byfield for 32 years.

The Griffin @ Lafayette City Center Passageway is located at 2 Ave de Lafayette in Downtown Crossing, Boston. The passageway connects Macy’s, the Lafayette Tower offices and the Hyatt Regency, Boston.

Planting Roots, Growing Community is a visual portrait of the powerful connection between the land and our local neighborhoods. In a world that often feels fast-paced and disconnected, community gardens and family farms offer us a sense of belonging, of being grounded in the soil and history of the places we call home. These green spaces represent not only the growth of flowers, crops and shared harvests, but also the growth of our relationship with the land and with each other. These four photographers, Greg Heins, Ellen Harasimowicz, John Rich and Leann Shamash, through their lenses, share the quiet moments, the landscape and beautiful detail of our shared landscape, discover the roots of our local farms, and to celebrate the growth of the communities that tend them.

Greg Heins – Fall in the Garden

“The photographs respond to the sucesses or failures of the ones that came before. The process is visual. The artistic impulse may be driven by age and loss, anger and regret, by a need for play and freedom but the statement is the photographs. 

We do well to remember that there is no part of our equipment and materials – cameras, printers, ink and paper – that is untouched by the exploitation of others. And that our opportunities were not always granted to others of equal or greater abilities. So it behooves us to create work that is as true and honest and faithful to ourselves as it can be. And to remember that the freedom to do this must be seized again and again.

Greed, hatred indifference and love – in wildly unequal proportions – have given us the world in which we live. Soon enough we will be gone from it, individually and collectively. And yet: can it be that something, like an echo, will remain of our attempts to give sense to it all? We must believe it true.” – Greg Heins

Ellen Harasimowicz – Living Like Grass

“We all live in nature, but some live in it more intimately. Small-family farmers make their mark on the land, and the land provides nourishment and income for their families. They are the backbone of American agriculture, but earning a living wage is difficult, and finding hired help is nearly impossible. Operating expenses are rising, weather extremes are causing erratic crop yields, and farmers are aging out. For many, this way of life is vanishing.

I’ve been coming to Willard Farm in Still River, Massachusetts for almost three decades to buy sunflowers, corn, tomatoes, and pumpkins. For nearly 350 years, nine generations of Willards have lived and farmed here, rooted in the same soil as their ancestors going back to the Nashaway people. But three years ago, I noticed fewer offerings at the farm stand. Today, the primary farmer, Paul Willard, is 80 and moves slower. He shares the family farmhouse with his brother Wendell, a cabinetmaker, and Wendell’s wife, Elizabeth, a poet. The title of this project is from one of her poems.

For the last 20 years, I’ve photographed the farm, interested not only in the legacy of this land but also in the details of farm life. During the pandemic, when just about everything shut down, farmers still planted crops, and farm stands remained open. Willard Farm became my refuge and my muse. When I asked Paul what his plans were for the future, he said, “I don’t have any real plans. I think I’m just going to wind down. Keep doing what I’m doing, but less of it, and slower. And someday, slow will be indeterminable from still. And then we’ll be done.” That was three years ago. This spring, Paul sold vegetable plants that he grew in the greenhouses. Then he received some discouraging news from his doctor. Today, the fields are fallow except for a small kitchen garden. Their farm stand has closed. A few months ago, no one, not even Paul Willard, imagined the end was so close.” – Ellen Harasimowicz

John Rich – A Year Above the Gardens

“What I did during the pandemic (from mid-first wave through the Delta variant), was photograph the community gardens near my home in Brookline, from above, every two weeks for one year.

With their promise of growth and renewal, the gardens were truly an oasis for me during the isolation of lockdown. I piloted a camera/drone to shoot the terrain from the identical vantage point each time, showing the gardens in moments of bloom, decay, and rest.

By focusing on a landscape transformed through seasonal change and human intervention, these images allow us to connect to the earth and perceive the affirmative power of change.” – John Rich

Leann Shamash – Community Gardens

“A piece of land, 12x by 12x, in the midst of other similarly parceled spots.

What to do in this puzzle of growing spaces? Community gardens are for growing things. Some use the space for bushes and small trees, some for fragrant herbs and many for vegetables.  Some grow a few flowers and add a chair to create a living space in the midst of the field. 

Community gardens are for gardeners, a special breed of people, who each year attempt to defy the odds and grow vegetables, despite attacks of unpredictable weather, insects, disease, and animals that tunnel and jump over fences.  Gardeners are eternal optimists, who love to share their challenges and successes with one another.

I love to garden and to see how things grow, knowing that I fail more than I succeed at growing things. I love to observe what gardeners bring from the world outside of the garden into their spaces to uniquely individualize their space, for isn’t that something we all do in our lives?

Last, gardens, both community and private are nothing more than canvases which we can design and paint how we wish.  These canvases offer us quiet and an escape from the world outside the garden, truly a place to meditate and a place to grow.” – Leann Shamash

We are pleased to welcome the MFA students at Boston University’s department of Print Media & Photography to the Griffin’s satellite gallery at Lafayette City Center Passageway. These five students are the first cohort of the program, and we are thrilled to see their culminating work in this exhibition. On view from October 2, 2023 through January 7, 2024, “Rendering Experiences” combines five artists’ perspectives on how stories of the self are formed, shaped, interpreted, and valued in our world.

About the Artists

Sofia Barroso is an artist from Mexico. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Print Media and Photography from Boston University College of Fine Arts. In her work, Barroso explores the themes of self-discovery and present-moment awareness through an ongoing conversation between the fields of painting, photography, and printmaking. Barroso has presented her work both nationally and internationally including Paris Contemporary Art Fair and Art Basel Miami. Her work will be shown in an upcoming exhibition at the Griffin Museum in Boston and will be an artist-in-residency at the Fans Masereel Center in Belgium. Along with her artistic practice, Barroso holds an editorial photography business. She maintains studios in Boston, Massachusetts, and in Mexico City.

Sofia Barroso, Glare Instant, 2023

Julianne Dao completed her BFA with a concentration in Printmaking at University of North Texas and is currently earning her MFA in Printmedia and Photography at Boston University. Raised in suburban Dallas, Texas, she has consistently sought out the extraordinary in mundane environments. Drawing inspiration from nature and daily life experiences, she creates abstract works using printmaking  and photography.

Dao has exhibited in juried exhibitions nationally and  internationally, including the IMC Sumi-Fusion International Exhibition. Along with exhibiting and curating, she has taught  printmaking workshops and will be an artist-in-resident at the Fans  Masereel Centrum in Kasterlee, Belgium. She resides and maintains a  studio in Boston, MA.

Julianne Dao, Walking Shadows, 2023

Delaney C. Burns is a printmaker and bookmaker from Maine. She graduated with a BFA in Studio Art and a BS in Business Marketing from the University of Maine and is currently pursuing her MFA in Print Media and Photography from Boston University.

Burns has exhibited work at various locations, including Zillman Art Museum, the Lunder Gallery at Lesley University, and Piano Craft Gallery. She received a McGillicuddy Humanities Center Fellowship and a Charlie Slavin Research Grant. Burns has an upcoming show at the Griffin Museum at Lafayette City Center in Boston and a residency at the Frans Masereel Center in Belgium. She currently maintains her studio in Boston, Massachusetts.

Delaney C. Burns, One in Four, 2023

Emily Taylor Rice is an artist and an educator with a BS and MA in Art Education. She is a 2024 MFA candidate in Print Media + Photography at Boston University College of Fine Arts. Her teaching experience includes K-12 art education both nationally and internationally.

Rice has exhibited her work at Boston University, VanDernoot Gallery, Roberts Gallery, Ramp Collective, Piano Craft Gallery, and Griffin Museum at Lafayette City Center (Fall 2023), Boston, MA; the American International School of Kuwait; Indiana New Growth Arts Festival, Kipp Gallery, Indiana, PA; and the U.S. Capitol Building, Washington, DC. Rice has curated exhibitions in Boston, MA, and juried art competitions such as the YCIS Puxi Community Photography Competition in Shanghai, China. Her artist residencies include Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, CO, and the Frans Masereel Center in Kasterlee, Belgium. Rice has garnered a variety of awards and honors for her scholarship and is a United States National Art Award Winner. She maintains a studio in Boston, Massachusetts.

Emily T. Rice, Something Must Give, 2023

Xinyan Kong is a Boston-based Chinese-born photographer who earned her BFA degree from California College of the Arts and is currently pursuing an MFA degree at Boston University. Her work has been exhibited in several galleries across the United States, including The Contemporary at Northern Waters Resort Art Gallery in Michigan and Las Laguna Art Gallery in California. Xinyan’s art explores the intersection between the natural world and man-made objects, using her images to depict the intricacy and subtlety of human emotions and feelings. Her artistic vision is inspired by a deep interest in both Eastern and Western aesthetics, and she is driven by a desire to capture the essence of sentimental moments through the lens. Examples of Xinyan’s work can be found on her website: www.xinyankong.com

Xinyan Kong, Snow Has Fallen for Months, 2023

Photography has always been a powerful medium for evoking an emotional response in the viewer -whether awe, revulsion, sadness, or joy. By framing the context and using light, shadow, focus and depth of field and visual imagination, the viewer is invited into the world of the artist. The juxtaposition of shapes and lines, the use or absence of color, the dimensionality of a piece, all contribute to creating a moment that can resonate deep within the viewer’s psyche. There is alchemy in both the creation of imagery and in the intimate engagement with a stranger who now views the work. No more interpretation is required; simply stop, notice and engage in self-inquiry. Like a modern-day Rorschach, each of the nine bodies of work begins a conversation of meaning between artist and viewer. As you transit this hallway, pause for a moment to enjoy that brief exchange and take it with you into your day.

The works of nine talented artists are included in this exhibition: Julia Arstorp, Anne Berry, Cathy Cone, Sandra Klein, Joan Lobis Brown, Marcy Palmer, Sara Silks, Vicky Stromee and Dawn Watson all present images to tell stories, ask questions and engage us in visual richness.

The Griffin @ Lafayette City Center Passageway is located at 2 Ave de Lafayette in Downtown Crossing, Boston. The passageway connects Macy’s, the Lafayette Tower offices and the Hyatt Regency, Boston.

Reception for the artists – July 15th, 2023

Artist talks –
September 6th, 2023: Sandra Klein, Anne Berry, Dawn Watson
September 13th, 2023: Marcy Palmer, Cathy Cone, Sara Silks
September 20th,2023: Vicky Stromee, Joan Lobis Brown, Julia Arstorp

The Griffin Museum is excited to bring Ruben Natal San Miguel to Lafayette City Center to celebrate his magnum opus, Women R Beautiful. This solo exhibition featuring the portraits of women Natal San Miguel crosses paths with are stunning. Frank and honest, the women are confident, self aware and direct with their gaze into the lens. This exhibition is featured during Women’s History Month, and we are excited to showcase the diversity and breadth of the female gaze and shared experience of portraiture at its most pure.

RUBEN NATAL-SAN MIGUEL is an architect, fine art photographer, curator, creative director and critic. His stature in the photo world has earned him awards, features in major media, countless exhibitions and collaborations with photo icons such as Magnum Photographer Susan Meiselas. Gallery shows include: Asya Geisberg, SoHo Photo, Rush Arts, Finch & Ada, Kris Graves Projects, Fuchs Projects, WhiteBox Gallery, Station Independent Projects Gallery, LMAK Gallery,  Postmasters Gallery  Rome  & NYC  and others. His work has been featured in numerous institutions: The New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Griffin Museum of Photography, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, African American Museum of Philadelphia, The Makeshift Museum in Los Angeles, University of Washington, El Museo del Barrio and Phillips Auction House and Aperture Foundation. 

International art fair representation includes: Outsider Art Fair, SCOPE, PULSE, Art Chicago, Zona Maco, Mexico, Lima Photo, Peru and Photo LA. and Filter Photo Festival in Chicago Ill.  His photography has been published in a long list of publications, highlights: New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Time OUT, Aperture, Daily News, OUT, American Photo, ARTFORUM, VICE, Musee, ARTnet and The New Yorker, PBS and NPR. In 2016, Ruben’s Marcy’s Playground was selected for both the Billboard Collective and website for Apple. His photographs are in the permanent collections of El Museo Del Barrio in NYC, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY, The Contemporary Collection of the Mint Museum Charlotte, North Carolina, The Bronx  Museum for the Arts, School of Visual Arts, NYC, The Fitchburg Museum of Art, Massachusetts, The North Carolina Museum of Art at Raleigh, NC., The Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, The Studio Museum of Harlem and The Museum of The City of NY, The Provincetown Art Museum, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Museum Center at Vassar College and The Museum of Fine Arts , Boston, MA. 

The Griffin @ Lafayette City Center Passageway is located at 2 Ave de Lafayette in Downtown Crossing, Boston. The passageway connects Macy’s, the Lafayette Tower offices and the Hyatt Regency, Boston.

In history and art, the still life image is ubiquitous and synonymous with masterworks of art. A collection of objects, filled with meaning, beauty, life and transition. This collection of images looks at how we value our things, how we engage with our objects, craft them into art.

Stephanie Shih’s Asian American Still Life and Matt Siber Collective Consciousness look at the way we imbue preconceived notions of what the object holds, and how we re-envision that object in a new context.

We see objects of importance through family lines with the works of Parrish Dobson and Beth Galton. Yorgos Efthymiadis looks at how a singular object can obtain mythic proportion in both personal and public persona. Rebecca Horne’s constructions defy dimension, organic and structural textures at odds but also symbiotic. Stefanie Klavens series How We Live looks at our surroundings, and Vicente Cayuela‘s Juvenilia explores the way we gravitate to objects at any age, especially as we grow in an emotional and intellectual context. Jo Ann Chaus uses object as introspection. Her use of images and object create entire personas we as viewers can indulge in, question and dream of the possibilities of who we are and who we want to be.

Crafting a typology, Jennifer Booher shows us Beachcombing, while Marcy Juran‘s Humble Beauty takes a closer look at what is often discarded or missed in simple organic form.

The eleven artists who share their work with us look at the myriad ways of showcasing objects of importance. In a world of clutter, we find beauty, in a landscape of objects we see a microcosm of identity, statements of personality and ultimately open to interpretation the items we hold close. In each photograph, each visual construction and unique still life animates ideas, invent connections, shares ideas and showcases a depth of understanding of the photographer illuminating their subject.

The Griffin @ Lafayette City Center Passageway is located at 2 Ave de Lafayette in Downtown Crossing, Boston. The passageway connects Macy’s, the Lafayette Tower offices and the Hyatt Regency, Boston. Hours are open between 9am and 9pm. Saturday and Sunday access is limited by entry through Macy’s and the Hyatt Regency.

We are pleased to present the portfolios of the Photography Atelier 36 creative artists.

Photography Atelier is a portfolio and project building course for emerging to advanced photographers taught by Elizabeth Buckley. Participants engage in supportive critical discussions of each other’s work and leave with a better understanding of the industry and an ability to edit and sequence their own work.

Instruction in the Atelier includes visual presentations based around an assignment which is designed to encourage experimentation in both subject matter and approach. Students learn the basics of how to approach industry professionals to show their work and how to prepare for a national or regional portfolio review. There is discussion of marketing materials, do-it-yourself websites, DIY book publishing and the importance of social media. Students learn the critical art of writing an artist’s statement and bio.

The students here were part of our Spring 2022 program and we are thrilled to see their work on the walls of the Lafayette City Center Passageway.

Scot Langdon – Finding Home

Ann Peters – In the Shadows

Anne Piessens  – Origin Stories

Vanessa R Thompson – The Spoils

Michael Rodriguez Torrent – Short Stories

Sean Sullivan – Eighty-Sixed

Heather Walsh – Breathwork