The Griffin Museum at Greater Boston Stage Company

Susan Keiser photographs a family of mechanical dolls after a flood. She tells us “a flood can be an overflow of water or the outpouring of tears.” In each photograph “fresh visions appear, images aggregate into chapters, and the river flows on.”

Susan Keiser’s Flooded will be featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, February 18 – April 26, 2016. It runs parallel to the theater’s productions of “Sorry” and “Sweet Charity.”

A reception is Tuesday, March 29, 2016 at 6:30-8:00 p.m.

“My photographs describe my world, not the day-to-day of it, but the sun-born visions and night-bound terrors that can’t be seen or understood until pictured,” says Keiser.

“I work with a family of four-inch dolls, mass-produced over six decades ago. Once models of conformity, they are now faded and scarred, imbued by years of handling with unique personal histories, memories incarnate,” says Keiser. “I have multiples of each family member, and all have stories to tell, secrets to expose, emotional truths to tell. Intuitive, improvised, my photographs are created entirely in-camera and in available light.”

“Susan Keiser is a storyteller, psychic, and poet,” says Paula Tognarelli, executive director and curator for the Griffin Museum of Photography. “She builds her stories out of water and its power over us and leaves it to the viewer to discern the fiction from fact.”

Keiser was a Senior Editor at Oxford University Press and Manager of the Rock and Native Plant Gardens at The New York Botanical Garden. In addition to her photographic work Keiser has created site-specific sculptures commissioned by public and private institutions, including the Milwaukee Art Museum, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Rockefeller Center in New York, and the International Design Conference in Aspen. A New Yorker, Susan Keiser attended Pomona College and holds a BFA from Cooper Union and a diploma from The New York Botanical Garden’s School of Professional Horticulture. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, she was a resident teaching artist at the Lincoln Center Institute, curated a collection of handmade paper art for The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, and was selected for the viewing program and Artist Registry of The Drawing Center in New York.

Susan Keiser’s photographs have been juried into exhibitions at a wide range of institutions and galleries across the country.

Julie McCarthy’s series Edna at Steepletop is a biographical portrait of the late poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay. McCarthy photographed the poet’s home as she left it for over two years.

McCarthy’s Edna at Steepletop will be featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, November 12-January 31, 2015. It runs parallel to the theater’s production of “Christmas on the Air.” A reception is November 19th, 2015, from 6:30-8:30pm. The artist will be present and give an informal talk about the exhibition.

McCarthy focuses on the details that depicted Millay’s bohemian lifestyle, books piled high on tables, a blue box containing a braid of red hair tied with a blue ribbon. “When I finished, I felt that I had been in an intimate conversation with a brilliant and complicated woman,” states McCarthy, “the photographs convey a sense of mystery and time gone by. I chose details of her home that, to me, depicted Millay’s inner life and the dichotomies that describe her character”

“Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry commonly regarded the notion of memory. She’s referred to herself in I Think I Should Have Loved You Presently as “a ghost in marble of a girl you knew,” now resonating differently as we meet her through McCarthy’s intimate photographs,” says Frances Jakubek, Associate Director of the Griffin Museum, “The conversation bounces between past and present, temporal and everlasting, a concept that Millay would often reference as something doomed. The typewriter belonging to Millay stands sturdily by the bedside that has been empty for years. The photographs in this series act as another layer of Millay’s observance of death through the objects that outlived her.”

McCarthy grew up in New York City, acquired a BA in Education with the knowledge that she may never want to teach. In other ways, McCarthy spread her knowledge by receiving a Masters Degree in counseling and spent her career in social work, much of that time as a bereavement counselor. Her background in Hospice instilled her interest in learning about other people’s stories and she has used photography as the medium to tell her own.

McCarthy currently lives and works in Stockbridge, MA. She has studied at the Main Photographic Workshops and learned about photography through jobs at local newspapers and workshops around the country. Her work has appeared in national publications such as The Sun, Shots, and has been exhibited at the Monmouth Museum, Norman Rockwell Museum and many others. In 2015, she was the artist in residents at Chesterwood, home of the sculptor, Daniel Chester French.

Carol Isaak ‘s photographs are what she calls “optical jokes about three dimensional space that is compressed into two dimensions eliciting questions about the subject.”

Isaak’s’ Layers of Illusion will be featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, August 27-November 5, 2015. It runs parallel to the theater’s productions of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and “Luna Gale.”

A reception is September 3, 2015, from 6:30-8:30pm. The artist will be present and give an informal talk about the exhibition.

“The portfolio Layers of Illusion is an inquiry into what is hidden and what is revealed; what is real and what is artificial; what is on top and what is underneath, and how we identify those aspects that are juxtaposed in these photographs,” says Issac. “Some of the images are painted onto tarpaulins covering something else, some are translucent, or perhaps they are pierced.”

Originally from New York City, Isaak attended Cooper Union where she first experienced photography. Isaak currently lives in Portland, Oregon. Selections from her work have been featured in exhibitions in Lishui, China; PhotoPlace Gallery, Middlebury, Vermont; A Smith Gallery Texas; Blue Sky Gallery; University of Oregon Law School Gallery, and Camerawork Gallery in Portland, Oregon.

See more of Carol Isaak’s work in the Virtual Gallery

Daniel W. Coburn’s photographs address the tragic events that haunt his family living in the Midwest. Trials involving substance and domestic abuse, suicide and mental illness surface in the imagery as he manifests a narrative from the archive and experiences in his life.

Coburn’s The Hereditary Estate will be featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, June 4-August 23, 2015. It runs parallel to the theater’s productions of “How to Succeed in Business” and “Sisters Summer School Catechism”

A reception is June 24th, 2015, from 6:30-8:30pm. The artist will be present and give an informal talk about the exhibition and the recently published book will be available.

“I collect and manipulate found family photographs in an attempt to amend and correct the idealized narrative present in my own family archive,” says Coburn, “These images are a tangible manifestation of memories and experiences acquired during my journey to adulthood, and function as a supplement to the broken family album assembled by family members.”

“The Hereditary Estate is an honest approach to dealing with severe issues within a family structure. Oftentimes matters likes these are swept under the rug but Coburn embraces the faults and tragedies within his family and acknowledges how they have shaped him,” says Frances Jakubek, Associate Director of the Griffin Museum of Photography. “An avenue of self discovery is uncovered as he repurposes segments of his family’s albums.”

Coburn lives and works in Lawrence, Kansas. Selections from this body of work have been featured in exhibitions at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art and the Chelsea Museum of Art in New York. Coburn’s prints are held in collections at the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), the University of New Mexico Art Museum, the Mulvane Art Museum, the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, and the Mariana Kistler-Beach Museum of Art.

His first artist’s monograph, The Hereditary Estate, was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2015. Daniel’s work has been published widely, most recently appearing in the International New York Times. Coburn received his MFA with distinction from the University of New Mexico in 2013. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Photo Media at the University of Kansas.

Susan Goldstein has been creating hand assembled collages from vintage photographs, ephemera and discarded objects and printed matter found in flea markets, garage sales and antique stores around the country. For the artist finding the elements to construct these one-of-a-kind art objects is like excavating on an archeological dig.

Susan Goldstein’s Bending Time: Antique Photo Collage will be featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, April 2 – May 31, 2015. It runs parallel to the theater’s productions of “Neville’s Island” and “How to Succeed in Business.”

A reception is May 7, 2015 at 6:30-8:00 p.m.

“The only requirement I have imposed on myself when finding elements to incorporate into my artwork is that each collage includes some element that is a photograph, negative, or other material related to making an image using a camera and film,” says Goldstein.

“I always credit the photographer when known as well as identify the subject used in the artwork if a name or location has been noted on the print,” says Goldstein. “Sometimes a print is signed by the photographer or a portrait is identified by name, but more often than not I am working with nothing more than an anonymous visual record.”

“In Bending Time: Antique Photo Collage, Susan Goldstein assembles images that hint at the absurd, add a touch of surprise for the viewer, and express her wry sense of humor and wit,” says Paula Tognarelli, executive director and curator for the Griffin Museum of Photography. “Each unique art piece evolves from an explorative creative journey.”

Originally from Indianapolis, Indiana where she was born, Susan Goldstein graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder CO in 1976. After graduate study in Photography, Goldstein has had a varied photographic career. She has worked at newspapers doing freelance editorial work as well as photographing historic architectural sites. All the while in her career Goldstein found time to pursue her fine art personal projects.

Her work is collected in institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Museum of Modern Art, Joaquim Paiva Collection, Rio De Janiero, Brazil S.A. She has exhibited widely in Denver, CO where she resides.

Jenny Riffle has been photographing Riley, a modern day Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and treasure hunter. Riley has been scavenging for treasure since age eleven. Riffle photographs Riley as he hunts utilizing a metal detector in the dirt and on sandy beaches. Riffle then photographs the objects Riley finds and collects.

Jenny Riffle’s Scavenger: Adventures in Treasure Hunting will be featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, January 9 – March 26, 2015. It runs parallel to the theater’s productions of Young and Co. offerings, “Loretta Laroche,” and “That Hopey Changey Thing.”

A reception is February 19, 2014 at 6:30-8:00 p.m.

“I explore the line between documentary and fantasy as I look at [Riley’s] objects, what drives him to continue and the mythology and history of the treasure hunting persona,” says Riffle.

“I express my romantic view of his life and his treasure hunting obsession and choose not to show his daily activities outside of that,” says Jenny Riffle. “By only showing one side of his personality I create a larger than life character. I photograph him in Twain’s spirit, as a mythical adventurer, like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.”

Mark Twain writes in the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, “There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.”

“A monetary value often can not be placed on hidden riches,” says Paula Tognarelli, executive director and curator for the Griffin Museum of Photography. “It is the journey and the process of seeking treasure in the mundane and forgotten that is alluring.”

Jenny Riffle received her MFA in Photography from School of Visual Arts in 2011 and her BA in Photography from Bard College in 2001. She currently lives and works in Seattle, WA. In 2014 Riffle was chosen as one of PDN’s 30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch. She received the Aaron Siskind Individual Photographer’s Fellowship grant in 2013.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1988 and moving many times through various tract house suburbs, Peter Croteau understands the differences and similarities in the landscape across the United States. He considers himself to be an explorer of mundane spaces looking to transform the everyday into something otherworldly through the use of 8×10 and 4×5 view cameras.

Peter Croteau’s Unnatural Wonders will be featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, October 21 – January 8, 2015. It runs parallel to the theater’s productions of “The Addams Family Musical”, “Meet Me in St. Louis“, “New York Voices” and “Loretta Laroche.”

A reception is November 20, 2014 at 6:30-8:00 p.m.

Peter Croteau creates drosscapes. These are the in-between waste spaces in the landscape. They are formed as a result of sprawl and are in a constant state of flux between use and disuse. “Peter Croteau fashions mountains out of everyday mound hills like clay and salt piles and construction fill,” says Paula Tognarelli, executive director and curator of the Griffin Museum of Photography. “His landscapes are not what they appear to be at first glance. Through perspective and exacting optics, he manufactures a gallery of unnatural wonders.”

“I explore these mundane spaces using the camera as an apparatus that can reframe and order the world,” says Croteau. “I set up a dualistic relationship between earth and sky in order to reference painterly representations of the sublime.”

Peter Croteau received his MFA in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design in 2012 and his BS in Photography from Drexel University in 2010. He currently lives and works out of Providence, RI.

For Bill Chapman Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama represents the color of baseball. Over the course of 12 years Chapman has visited and photographed America’s oldest baseball park and its visitors. His friend, Dr. Ernest Withers, the master of social documentary photography who photographed the civil rights movement, told Bill Chapman countless stories of the Negro Leagues in Memphis and Birmingham. Withers introduced Chapman to the world of the Memphis Red Sox and the Birmingham Black Barons as well as Rickwood Field.

Bill Chapman’s The Color of Baseball will be featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, August 14 – October 16, 2014. It runs parallel to the theater’s productions of “Picnic at Hanging Nook”, “Spamalot“, “Argonautika” and “Doubt, a Parable.”

A reception is August 20, 2014 6:30-8:00 p.m.

Bill Chapman says, “Rickwood [Field] is more than a well-preserved, century-old nostalgia piece. It is a sanctuary and haven for all of the players and fans of baseball that have played and passed though its gates over the years. Encapsulating more than just the charm of old parks, Rickwood has a unique charisma.”

Chapman is a graduate of Massachusetts College of Art. He has been in numerous exhibitions and his photographs have populated many books on baseball. He is the staff photographer and columnist for Boston Baseball Magazine.

Mr. Chapman resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Bill Chapman’s gallery talk on The Color of Baseball exhibit at Stoneham Theatre.

The four fundamental states of matter are solid, liquid, gas and plasma. In the Griffin Museum’s exhibition Light Matter, flowers are immersed in the solid and liquid states of ice and water. In addition the focus is turned on the tiny secret universe inside an icicle. In her “Ice Gardens” Mary Kocol creates “botanical ice tablets.” Judith Monteferrante stages floral compositions in water and ice. Susan Simon explores the interplay of light on ice.

Kocol’s, Monteferante’s and Simon’s photographs, Light Matter, are featured in the Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA,
May 15 – August 5, 2014. It runs parallel to the theater’s productions of “The Secret Garden.”

A reception is June 12, 2014 6:30-8:00 p.m.

Mary Kocol says, “I am inspired by gardens within my urban midst…..The blossoms are frozen into ice and photographed in sunlight to become fanciful and ethereal constructions. Blooms and ice are temporary; the photograph becomes the permanent art object – the record that they once briefly existed.”

Judith Monteferrante says, “When I plunge a blossom into a pool of water, the elegant flower expresses its stalwart agility under water. By photographing the flower, I can share my appreciation for beauty in nature, the purity of light and its reflections, as well as refine the viewers’ eyes to see more simply.”

“I am most inspired by the minute details of the natural landscape,” says Susan Simon. “My photography practice began as a means of meditation and seeking solace from the tumult of the classroom.”

Mary Kocol is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design MFA in Photography program. She has had a numerous solo exhibitions and is collected widely. She resides in Somerville, MA. Her photographs are courtesy of Gallery NAGA, Boston.

Aside from her noteworthy career as an artist, Judith Monteferrante was a practicing cardiologist for over 25 years, specializing in heart imaging and female cardiac issues. Upon retirement from her medical career, the artist received her MA in Digital Photography (MPS) in 2009 at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Dr. Monteferrante exhibits nationally, including group and solo exhibitions in Massachusetts, Arizona and New York. Dr. Monteferrante resides in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Susan Simon is a retired middle school teacher and photographer living on the Cape in Barnstable, MA.

Robbie Kaye was trained as a classical pianist. She came to photography looking for visual melodies. She found a captivating study at the beauty parlor.

A series of Kaye’s photographs, Beauty and Wisdom, is featured in the Griffin Museum at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, March 20 – May 11, 2014. It runs parallel to the theater’s productions “Somethings Afoot” and “Unbleached American.”

A reception is March 27, 2014 6:30-8:00 p.m.

Beauty and Wisdom highlights the women of the beauty parlor. They have been going regularly to the salon once a week, not as a luxury, but as a necessity for most of their adult years. Kaye explores the graceful, courageous and brave surroundings in which these women age. “Ironically, these women opened doors for generations of women,” says Kaye. “They are now part of an invisible generation.”

“The women in this fading generation may be invisible to many, but hey are quite visible to me,” says Kaye. It is even more apparent to me since I began driving throughout the country to photograph and interview them for Beauty and Wisdom.”

Kaye, originally from New York, now resides in California.