The Griffin Museum at Greater Boston Stage Company

Virginia photographer Rebecca Biddle Moseman, in her series ‘Into the Moon’s Room,’ tells the story of “a boy’s honor and oath to his deceased aunt to carry on the story they created and threaded together about a black bird, and the moon.”

“Oh, to go where the clouds sleep, where the moons dance and the stars weep. I went into the moon’s room, Zoom, Zoom. There were stars in his closet and clouds in his bed, and lying in the corner a black bird with her feathery black head.”

“Into the Moon’s Room” will be on view in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Greater Boston Stage Company in Stoneham, MA, January 18 – April 29, 2018. A reception will be held on March 29, 2018 from 6:30-8pm.

“Moseman is an active observer,” says Paula Tognarelli, the executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography. “She sees through an artist’s eye that tunes her experience of the world around her. Through her art making she questions, compares, responds and articulates using the language of the photograph. Moseman’s sons are quite natural participants in her storytelling.”

Moseman received her BA in art from Virginia Tech in 1997, and her MFA in graphic design from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in 2001. She has been a professional graphic designer for the past 20 years, and a freelance/ fine art photographer for the past six years.

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“Into the Moon’s Room”, by Suzanne Révy on “What Will You Remember”.

Photographer, Suzanne Révy has been photographing her two sons through the different stages of maturation. In her newest series, I Could Not Prove the Years Had Feet, Révy makes images around her home in response to the changing relationship she has with her sons as they transition into adulthood.

 I Could Not Prove the Years Had Feet will be on view in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, November 8 – January 17, 2018. This show extended from January 14 to January 17. A reception will be held on November 8th from 6:30-8pm.

“My teenage boys seem to have gone into their rooms, and I’m not sure they’ll be coming out until they leave for college. As a parent, I have witnessed each chapter in their lives and have created a visual diary of photographs showing their creative and imaginative play, their explorations in the woods behind the house, trips to local pools or amusement parks, and—- more recently– their changing bodies, interior spaces and ubiquitous technologies,” writes Révy.

“They are hurtling toward an emotional departure from childhood at an alarming pace, and each chapter of their lives has proven to be fleeting and ephemeral. The selections presented are part of a third portfolio of images that were begun when my children were toddlers. The photographs are traces of the perils and poignancy in the day-to-day life of a family with two growing boys.”

Suzanne Révy grew up in Los Angeles, California. After high school she moved to Brooklyn, NY where she earned her BFA in photography from the Pratt Institute. While there, she was immersed in making and printing black and white photographs. After art school, she worked as a photography editor in magazine publishing at U.S. News & World Report and later at Yankee Magazine. With the arrival of two sons, she left publishing, and rekindled her interest in the darkroom. Her work has been exhibited at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA, the Fitchburg Art Museum in Fitchburg, MA, the Danforth Museum of Art in Framingham, MA, the Workspace Gallery in Lincoln, NE, the Camera Club of NY in New York City, the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester, NH, and the New England School of Photography in Boston where she is currently a member of the faculty. She is represented by the Panopticon Gallery in Boston.

Artist Statement

Sticks and stones, sheets and pillows. windows and shades are a few of the mundane objects that furnish, surround and illuminate the spaces we inhabit. My teenage boys have grown up in this suburban comfort, but as they have matured, a gnawing sense of their impatience with the familiar has emerged. My own fear is that their adolescence will slip into adulthood with a sense of haste— imperceptibly, and absent any fanfare or ceremony.

The boys have been my muses since childhood, but in recent years, they seem to have retreated into their rooms, becoming physically and emotionally less available. Turning my camera toward the prosaic and recognizable along with quick glimpses of their bodies and gestures, I search for deeper meaning in the spaces we share and in the objects we have all touched. These pictures have eased the tension between the trepidation and the elation I feel as my sons grow away and ultimately depart.

The images presented here are selections from an ongoing series called I Could Not Prove The Years Had Feet, which is the third of three visual diaries exploring the perils and poignancy of day to day life in a growing, changing family.

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Not as of Yet: Stories of Aftermath and the Unknown quietly explores ideas of both literal aftermaths alongside surreal images of unknown circumstances, the ambiguous nature of these photographs offering the viewer space for their own serenity or anxieties. The combinations of these landscapes become representations of Rachel Loischild’s history and perturbations. The exhibition runs during FlashPoint Boston.

Not As of Yet started in 2011 after Hurricane Irene caused the Connecticut River to overflow its bounds flooding its low-lying banks. After the water receded, the river left its silt and clay clinging to all it touched. The destructive waters marking the flood line of about nine feet, visually desaturating the lower half of the world, destroying crops, homes and affecting all it touched, creating a surreal environment Loischild could not ignore – or fully understand.

In this work, Rachel aims to reinterpret the standard trope of the inviting bucolic large format landscape photograph. Still drawing the viewer in visually, but instead of inviting the viewer to visit the awe-inspiring vista of a national park, she presents subtle unsettling views of what has happened, both real and imagined. These photographs meander from the aftermath of hurricanes to the settings of the Catholic churches sex abuse, from visual mountains created in the building of a suburban mall to alien abduction, from the effects of floods to the venues of her childhood nightmares, from the disrupted terrain of new growth after a highway was rebuilt to the disquiet experienced as a woman when walking alone – the scheme of societal dangers imposing on one’s psyche. Altogether these images serve as quiet landscapes waiting for the viewer. This ongoing series of landscape based photos shot on film with a 4×5 camera explores the emotional complexity of the history of these spaces.

Rachel Loischild is a Boston-based artist and photographer as well as a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Photography. She holds her MFA in photography from Pratt Institute and her BA in studio art from Clark University. Her work has been widely shown nationally at galleries and museums, and internationally at the Jounju Photo Festival in Korea, she was also recognized by the Inge Morath Foundation in IM magazine for her photo essay Estate Sales and in Landscape Stories magazine of Italy for her project Drive-in. Her work is held in numerous collections including the Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and the Canadian based Magenta Foundation for Photography. Additionally, Loischild is a recent recipient of the City of Boston Arts Opportunity grant. Rachel teaches photography at Clark University and is the Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Pine Manor College.

Grace Weston creates narrative photography in her studio with staged vignettes that address psychological themes.

“The Long Night” and “Neo Noir” by Grace Weston are featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre from June 13^th through August 13^th, 2017. The opening reception will take place on June 13, 2017 from 6:30pm – 8:00pm. Weston will be giving a talk at the reception at 6:30pm.

“As an artist working in the genre of staged photography,” Weston notes, “I construct, light, and photograph miniature, staged vignettes in my studio to address the questions and contradictions of life, both large and small. Like other photographers who have staged their scenes, I am attracted to the open possibilities the “blank canvas” offers, using the camera to construct and express my narratives.” In the series, “The Long Night,” Weston’s use of isolated figures, directed studio lighting, and selective focus points to the nostalgic genres of film noir and 1930s spy films. Although there may not be humans depicted in her photographs, “…the human psyche is undeniably at the center of [her] work.”

A 2015 Artist Trust Fellowship Award recipient (Washington), Grace was nominated in both 2014 and 2012 for Portland Art Museum’s Contemporary Northwest Art Awards (Oregon). In 2012, her work was received with acclaim in her first European solo show at Paci Contemporary in Brescia, Italy. Grace received honorable mentions in the International Kontinent Awards 2013 and Center Forward 2013. She was a finalist in PhotoEspana’s Descubrimientos 2009 (Spain) and one of the Whatcom Museum 2008 Photography Biennial’s “Nine to Watch” (Washington). The Oregon Arts Commission honored Grace with an Individual Artist’s Fellowship in 2006. Public collections include those of the Portland Art Museum, University of Oregon, Seattle Public Utilities Portable Artworks Collection, Photographic Center Northwest, Portland Community College, 4 Culture King County, and the City of Seattle. She has exhibited widely in the United States, as well as in Europe and Scandinavia. Her work has been featured in print magazines in Italy, Spain, China, and the Netherlands, as well as on many international online magazines. Grace’s work is included in the book Microworlds, published in 2011 by Laurence King Publishing (UK).

Grace has also been commissioned to create her unique style of staged narrative photography in the editorial world, illustrating writings in “O the Oprah Magazine” and “Discover Magazine”, and creating the cover imagery for CDs, books and several city magazines, including “Portland Monthly”, “Seattle Metropolitan”, “Pittsburgh Magazine”, and Seattle’s weekly paper “The Stranger”.

Originally from New Jersey, Grace has lived most of her life on the West Coast, currently residing in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and biggest cheerleader, architect Michael Payne, and their two cats, who remain indifferent.

Grace Weston is represented by wall space gallery, Santa Barbara, CA

Delving into the past has long been a passion for photographer Ellen Toby Slotnick. It began with photographing on archaeological excavations, and then photographing the recovered artifacts. Years later, Slotnick is still photographing what has been left behind: abandoned churches, schools, farmhouses and the artifacts they hold. Fine art photographer, Slotnick started out as an archaeological photographer in Israel documenting excavations and photographing finds for publication. Her current work, Traces, reflects her early interest in what is left behind, in this case, in Rugby ND where individual farms are rapidly disappearing. Slotnick’s fascination with Rugby began in 2013 and called her back for the next three years.

Ellen Toby Slotnick’s  Traces will be featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, April 11 – June 11, 2017. A reception will take place on April 11 from 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM. Traces runs parallel to the theater’s productions of “Gabriel” and “MacBeth and I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spagetti.”

 

“Each vacated farmhouse, church or school I came upon was vacated for basically the same reason. Economics,” says Ellen Toby Slotnick. She goes on to say, “The business of farming has become such that it is far more cost-effective to farm square miles rather than square acres. So consortiums were formed and fields were planted where families had lived. The families moved into town. The remnants of the lives that inhabited the structures make each and every building tell its own story,” she says.

Ellen’s work is held at the Danforth Museum of Art, Newton-Wellesley Hospital and in private collections internationally. She is a 2016 Finalist in Critical Mass, an international portfolio online competition.

Ellen holds a BS degree in photography from Rochester Institute of Technology. She also holds an MBA from Simmons College in Boston.

DARK CITY

Photographs by LYNN SAVILLE

 

January 19, 2017__ Lynn Saville describes “dark cities” as places that has been “stripped of their agreed-upon attractions. A city is no longer about its architecture or the people that inhabit it but instead is an empty skeletal set where lights and shadows showcase an uninterrupted dance.”

“Dark City” by Lynn Saville is featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre from February 7^th through April 9^th, 2017. The opening reception will take place on March 21, 2017 from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. Additionally, Saville will be teaching a “Twilight Photography Workshop” on March 22, 2017 from 6pm to 9pm at the Griffin Museum. Register today through the Griffin Museum website, limited seats available!

Lynn Saville photographs cities at twilight and dawn or as she describes, ”the boundary times between night and day.” Saville explains, “I began my series titled, “Dark City” to pursue this contrast between aesthetic perception and the subtext of economic distress, a contrast that evoked a disquieting beauty. In effect, I was seeking to capture the ways in which urban places become spaces and vise versa.”

In her photographs she hopes to document buildings and places that have undergone urban decay and renewal in recent years. Award winning Geoff Dyer writes in his introduction titled “The Archeology of Overnight” to Saville’s book, Dark City, “Empty premises become difficult to date so that they seem sometimes to have dropped not only out of time but of history.”
Lynn Saville is a fine art photographer currently based in New York City. She studied at Duke University and Pratt Institute. Saville is known for her photographs of cities and rural settings at twilight and dawn. She has published several books including her most recent book published in fall of 2015, Dark City: Urban America at Night. Saville has taught at New York University, International Center of Photography and will also be teaching a workshop at the Griffin Museum. Saville’s photographs are part of permanent collections, museums and corporations and are also in private collections. Saville is a recipient to numerous awards including, fellowships from The New York Foundation for the Arts and a Premio in the Scanno, Italy Festival of Photography. Saville is currently represented by Gallery Kayafas in Boston, MA and Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York City.

The Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre is open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 1-6 p.m., and one hour before each theater performance. The gallery can be accessed through the Stoneham Theatre’s lobby at 395 Main Street in Stoneham, MA.

During the rush of everyday life, one forgets about the visual beauty that light creates. Donna Tramontozzi’s photographs are a representation of those moments that disappear.

Optical Shards by Donna Tramontozzi, is featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre from November 29, 2016 through February 5, 2017. The opening reception will take place on September 13, 2016 from 6:30- 8:30 p.m.

Tramontozzi says of her work, “When I photograph reflections, I muse on feelings I had forgotten to feel, details I must have missed, dreams I can’t quite recall, conversations I don’t understand, and places I didn’t experience in my rush through life. Just out of reach, but for me, still worth pursuing.”

Currently based in Boston, Tramontozzi has studied at the Santa Fe Photographic workshops and has participated in Atelier 22, 23 and 24 at Griffin Museum of Photography. Her work has also been part of the juried show, Projections! Art on the Brewery Wall, at the Jamaica Plain Open Studios. Her photo has also been featured as the cover of the best selling textbook. Currently, Donna is a corporator on the Griiffin Museum Board of Directors.

Sandy Alpert’s photographs resemble detached figures, ghostly shadows within shadows that represent her own ghosts from the past. These beautiful figures created by negative space and light are visually similar to the long shadows dancing across the frames captured by our very own founder, Arthur Griffin.
Sandy Alpert’s, Ghosts Who Now Dance, will be featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, September 20 – November 27, 2016. Alongside Alpert’s work, three of Arthur Griffin’s pieces will be exhibited. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, September 29, 2016 from 6:30-8:00PM.

“When I began this project in 1998, I was haunted by the ghosts of my past, Feelings of isolation and loss infused these images. I was too close to it. It was too close to me. I had to leave it—unexpressed,” says Sandy Alpert. “As I now reflect upon these images, I see a sense of grace. I see fluidity. I see a silent rhythm. I see ghosts who now dance. The realization of this work is, in itself, an act of forgiveness. Forgiveness of others and of myself,” she goes on to say.

Sandy Alpert is an award-winning photographer and composer. Her photographs have been exhibited in many national and international; galleries, and are in many public and private collections including The Museum of the City of New York and the International Center of Photography School/ Education Gallery Collection, NYC. Her scores for musical theater productions have been produced off-Broadway.

By mid 1930s, Arthur Griffin became the exclusive photographer for the newly created Boston Globe, Rotogravure Magazine and the New England photojournalist for Life and Time Magazines. He went on to become a pioneer in the use of color film and provided the first color photographs to appear in the Saturday Evening Post—a two-page layout on New England. One of Arthur’s biggest gifts to photography was the non-profit Arthur Griffin Center for Photographic Art, or as it is now call, The Griffin Museum of Photography. The Griffin Museum houses his archives of over 75,000 images and provides gallery space for rotating exhibitions devoted to the art of photography.

The Elevated Selfie, is a group series that celebrates the conversation around contemporary self-expression. Alongside the selfies are included narratives that express deeper meaning, a collection of key experiences that grapple with trauma or celebrate moments of joy.

The group show, juried by Photolucida’s Laura Moya and Laura Venti, The Elevated Selfie: Beyond the Bathroom Mirror, is featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, July 12 through September 16, 2016. The opening reception will take place on September 13, 2016 from 6:30- 8:30 p.m.

Laura Moya and Laura Venti explain the selfie to be ubiquitous, celebrated, mocked, and curiously irresistible. “In designing this exhibition, we wanted to create a richer dialogue around this vernacular mode of self expression. The goal was to create an exhibit that would go beyond navel-gazing to get at something a little bit deeper.”

The group exhibition includes photographers: Rebecca Akporiaye, Suzanne Beaumont, Sheri Lynn Behr, Beata Bernina, Lika Brutyan, Lorenka Campos, Carol Dass, Elizabeth Bailey Dyer, Shana Einhorn, Cheryl Fallon, Jennifer Henriksen, Erika Huffman, Diana Nicholette Jeon, Kinsey Kline, Lauren Koplowitz, Patricia Lay-Dorsey, Elizabeth Clark Libert, Andrew Lucchesi, Caroline MacMoran, Kelsey Magennis, Susanne Maude, Jennifer McClure, Kathryn Mussallem, Michel O’Hara, David Pace, Catherine Panebianco, Connie Gardner Rosenthal, Barbara Ruffini, Jacinda Russell, Sunny Selby, Ilma Szekeres, Randall Tosh, David Wolf, Shelley Wood, and Birgit Zartl.

Photolucida is a nonprofit organization based in Portland, Oregon an arts organization that provides opportunities and career building programs to connect emerging and mid-career photographers. Their most important mission being to expand, inspire, educate and connect the different photography communities.

Klaus Enrique photographs different parts of the human anatomy that he shapes with different organic elements. He tells us “I saw a face where no face existed.” In each photograph he captures “our powers of abstraction, a power that is uniquely human.”

Klaus Enrique’s “Arcimboldism” will be featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, April 27 – July 7, 2016.

A reception will be May 18, 2016 at 6:30-8:30 p.m.

“Working on a photograph in which I surrounded a human eye with thousands of dried leaves, I was struck by the idea for this project: “make face with leaves”, I wrote down.” says Enrique.

After extensive research Enrique found out that someone had already created a similar idea, he explained, “Knowing that other people before and after Arcimboldo had done similar work was not reason enough for me to create my own series, however. For me the reason came from my own original moment of Pareidolia. I saw a face where no face existed. The reality was simply hundreds of leaves randomly arranged over a human eye. Yet my mind was telling me that a face was there.”

Born in 1975, Klaus Enrique grew up in Mexico City. He studied genetics at the University of Nottingham, England, and received an MBA from Columbia Business School in the City of New York. Enrique was a freelance SAP consultant before he turned to photography, which he studied at Parsons and at the School of Visual Arts. Enrique began to receive worldwide attention in 2007 when his portrait of “Mother & Daughter” was considered for the Photographic Portrait Prize at Britain’s National Portrait Gallery. Subsequently, Enrique has been nominated and short listed for various awards. In 2011, Klaus Enrique was the winner of Photo District News Curator Award / Emerging Artist of the Year for Still Photography. In 2013, Enrique’s “Vertumnus” was included in “The History of Still Life in Ten Masterpieces”, as the Tenth Masterpiece alongside works by Cezanne, Goya, and Warhol. In 2015, Enrique was commissioned to create the Peter & Gwen Norton Family Christmas Card. Enrique’s work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Leslie/Lohman Museum and the Haggerty Museum of Art. He currently lives in New York City.