Moving Image

We are excited to bring two artists to your attention, Lucia Ravens and Steven Parisi Gentile as part of our 28th Annual Members Exhibition. Traditionally just stills, we have expanded our gaze to moving image and this particular selection focused on water and how we see, experience and surround ourselves with this precious resource.

Lucia Ravens Flow takes us into a fanciful world designed by imagination. Using LIDAR and light, we float through sculpture of her design.

Lucia Ravens is an image-maker, storyteller, and international award-winning photographer, her work presently focuses on our planet’s natural resources by developing creative initiatives that address and illuminate environmental issues. She has cultivated a diverse practice ranging from photography, installations, sculptural photography, performance, and ‘art with purpose’ projects which encourage her audience to question societal norms about the stewardship of the natural environment and to develop an awareness to champion solutions.

Her endeavors draw upon the philosophy of ecology to explore intersections between issues of ecological and social sustainability, examining the impact of sense of place, dissolution of form, and displacement on the contemporary cultural dynamic. Ravens inspirits the viewer’s perceptions and expectations, resignifying cultural cursors, and re-calibrating the day-to-day with the extraordinary.  Her lens-based sculptures ‘Portrait of Peace and ‘Cut’ reveal the evolution of her artistic praxis. Focusing on the camera as a tool she draws attention to the relations between photography, sculpture, and art history of the 20th and 21st centuries. Lucia acknowledges the influence of photography with its technical possibilities and its potential for discerning the condition of objects and space, contributes vastly and will continue to contribute to the change in the aesthetic of sculpture.

An Alumna of Rutgers University she holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology and attended UCLA  for Post Bac studies. Combining her love of science with the arts she acquired a certificate from the University of Oxford Balliol College in England in the affiliate BADA program sponsored by The Juilliard School. She received a merit scholarship to pursue her graduate studies at TUFTS University, The School of Museum of Fine Art in Boston; while undertaking her MFA, she was endowed The SMFA Presidential Research Award, the MIT CAMIT grant from the Council of the Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and curated into Boston’s Museum of Fine Art Annual Medal Award Event.  In 2016, her work was a select finalist for the ‘Biomimicry’ themed Amsterdam Light Festival in the Netherlands.  The summer of 2018 designated her installation ‘Forest Canopy‘, which was designed for the Museum Serralves Gardens in Porto, Portugal, as a select finalist in Portugal’s OPP Initiative.   In November 2019, she was selected by Tufts University Institute of the Environment of Boston to be a delegate at the Climate Summit in Madrid, thus nominated by the United Nations to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties 25.  Her installation concept ‘Forest Canopy‘was presentedat the Tufts / MIT booth in Madrid, Spain in December 2019.  The artist’s project ‘FLOW‘was presented at The Venice International Art Fair in Venice, Italy during the Venice Biennale Architecture 2021 from June through November.   Subsequently, 2021 concluded with her work being recognized for the Olympic Art Prize in Rome, Italy and the Lenardo da Vinci Art Prize in Florence, Italy which included select highlights in Art International Contemporary Magazine*.  In April 2022, she was a recipient of the Caravaggio Art Prize in Milan, Italy at The Museum of Science and Technology.

She has exhibited at such venues as; The MIT Museum Studio in Cambridge, MA., The Illinois Institute of Art, Chicago, The Palm Springs Contemporary Art Museum, The Smithsonian Affiliate Hubbard Museum in New Mexico, The Museum of Botany and the Arts at Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Florida, The Woodmere Museum in Philadelphia, PA. – to name a few.  Also, her work has shown at numerous galleries in the USA.  A landmark exhibition in her career includes the invitation to exhibit at ‘The Cultural Exchange’, ‘Newark Between Us’.  An International Artworks and Installation Show held in Metro NY, alongside numerous established master artists such as Yoko Ono and Jasper Johns. Moreover, Lucia’s work was recognized at the International Photographer of the Year IPA Lucie Awards with an ‘honorable mention’ in the Deeper Perspective category.  An award venue held annually at Lincoln Center in NYC.  As an image-maker she has worked on the cutting edge of the digital media frontier with her limited edition fine art photography collections and photographic art installations; as well as, spending numerous years working as a creative on Hollywood’s top commercial films and TV shows.  The influences which informed her art practice during her fortuitous creative experiences on the stages of Hollywood and TV studios of New York to International art venues, have played a paramount role in the cultivation of her visions and inspirations.  Living and experiencing the flora, fauna, and culture from the Peruvian Amazon jungle of her heritage to the fertile South Pacific tropical rain-forests and beaches of Hawaii, has enriched her with a unique global and artistic sensitivity.  Her works are in private and public collections.

Steven Parisi Gentile takes us to a zen place.

His beautiful video cause + effect is a moment for us all to breathe and take a moment to be quiet.

Please take a look at these two very different ideas about water.

We showcase the video works of Minny Lee this month. Her two videos, Strand and Bunad are introspective, memorizing and memorable.

The Griffin is excited to have Minny in the Griffin Zoom Room on June 22nd at 7pm Eastern to discuss her installation of her current work Field Notes and her residency and exhibition with Datz Press. For more information about her online Artist Talk head to our events page for more information.

About Minny –

Minny Lee is a multimedia artist whose work explores our relationship to the environment within the confines of time and space. Minny was born and raised in South Korea and until recently, the majority of her time was spent in the New York area where she obtained her undergraduate and graduate degrees (MA in Art History from City College of New York and MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies from ICP-Bard). Minny was awarded a fellowship from the Reflexions Masterclass in Europe and participated in an artist-in-residence program at Halsnøy Kloster (Norway), Datz Museum of Art (South Korea), and Vermont Studio Center (USA). Her work has been exhibited internationally, including the Datz Museum of Art, Center for Fine Art Photography, Camera Club of New York, Espacio el Dorado, Les Rencontres d’Arles Photo Festival, Gwangju Design Biennial among other venues. Minny’s artist’s books, Encounters (Datz Press, 2015) and Million Years (Datz Press, 2018) are in the collection of the ICP Library, New York Public Library, Special Collections at the University of Arizona, Special Collections at Stanford University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Amon Carter Museum, The Poetry Center and other public and private collections. She lives and works in Honolulu, Hawaii.  

Xuan Hui Ng
Serendipity
March 29 – April 30, 2020

The beginning

I began photographing as a form of self-therapy.  I was grieving over the loss of my mother, who had been both my confidante and my moral compass.  I ran from grief and buried myself in work.  Relationship issues compounded the pain and left me at the lowest point in my life.  

A volunteer cum sight-seeing trip brought me to Tibet. It was there sitting on the edge of Lake Natmso that I savored a sense of peace that had eluded me for the longest time.  Its vastness gave me a sense of perspective while its beauty reignited in me a sense of wonder and adventure.  Nature reminded me that life is beautiful, that there is so much to live for and to explore.

The present

Initially, the urge to photograph stemmed from an almost desperate desire to prolong the serenity they brought. More time spent photographing translated to longer periods of peace for my mind.  Overtime, I began to enjoy simply being immersed in nature, marveling at its beauty and being grateful for having yet another serendipitous encounter.

Ephemeral – Many moments of nature are ephemeral – the fog lifts, the petals fall, the sun shifts and snow bugs die.  The four-character Japanese idiom, 一期一会 (ichi-go ichi-e) best illustrates the fact that many encounters with nature are once in a life time and cannot be replicated.

Precious – Some natural phenomena like sun pillars are difficult to come by as they demand a confluence of multiple factors – e.g. clear sky, extremely low temperatures, high humidity and calm windless conditions.  As global temperatures warm and the weather becomes increasingly erratic, sun pillars are becoming even rarer to behold.  I fear that there will come a day when this amazing phenomenon may become extinct and it is this concern that has driven me to photograph in greater earnest.

Healing – Nature has been pivotal to my own healing and growth.  Studies have shown that nature and even images of nature can provide symptom relief, lower stress levels and reduce depression and anxiety.  I hope that my images can contribute to such a meaningful cause.

I dedicate these tokens of memories to kindred spirits, the weary, the lost and the lonesome. I hope that they too can experience the joy I felt when I laid my eyes on these magical landscapes.

Xuan-Hui Ng