The Virtual Gallery

Because Myanmar (formally called Burma), abuts southern China, it is
easy to imagine that one is an extension of the other. But, nineteen
thousand foot high mountains divide the two countries, creating by
necessity distinct cultures. In Myanmar, although primarily a Buddhist
country, there is also a vibrant under-culture of animism, identified
by “nat shrines” dedicated to the spirits of local heroes, who have
attained a state in which they can answer prayers. Myanmar is a place
in which the religion(s) and the society in general are completely
intertwined. Weaving together the profoundly religious aspects of the
Burmese people with their love of storytelling manifests in the puppet
theater, which is the value carrier of cultural myth and is also
employed to safely voice political criticism. The images in Myanmar
Tapestry are drawn from aspects of this complex society.

This seascape series began in January of 2014. I live on the north shore of Massachusetts, within sight of the ocean, and I’ve spent many hundreds of hours patrolling the New England coastline, observing and discovering the personalities of its many beaches and rocky shores. The weather, the tide, and the terrain all play a part in how that interaction between land, sea and atmosphere displays itself. Remarkably, even with all those variables, each spot exhibits a unique character.

No other zone on earth so clearly conveys the pulse of our living planet. To stand at the edge of the sea, feeling the tug of a receding wave, is to have a finger on that pulse. This boundary layer, this ecotone, gives life to a third, and wholly mesmerizing, environment. The shore exerts is influence over the ocean openly and often flamboyantly as it trips each successive swell, while the sea molds sand and stone with a (sometimes only marginally) more patient hand.

One goal of these images is to reveal the relationship between wet an dry that goes deeper than an all-encompassing landscape. I search for personality traits, quirks, and tells that are peculiar to each seaside locale without ignoring the vastness to which it is connected.

Another more personal goal is to share my lifelong love for these places. I’ve played in the surf as a kid and later with my own kids. I’ve been soothed by it’s calm and humbled by it’s strength. We all have witnessed the incredible power of the ocean, yet I am often more impressed by it’s subtleties and little surprises. I still get a powerful sense of anticipation and a little adrenaline spike every time I approach the coast. Some of it comes from my expectation of new photographs and the rest from somewhere more primal.

Mark Thayer
Fine Art Photographer

A 1978 graduate of the New England School of Photography in Boston, Massachusetts, Mark Thayer began shooting commercial assignments while still in school. After a successful stint as staff photographer for a Boston-area advertising firm, he opened his own studio in 1983, and acquired such noted clients as Bose Audio, Titleist Golf, Bell Helmets, Raleigh Bicycles, Fischer Skis, Chase Bank, Hewlett Packard and American Express, to name just a few.

Mark developed a love of fine art photography in school and has never lost the desire to express his personal vision. His focus has been primarily on natural and urban landscapes.

After decades of building large portfolios of fine art photography, Mark finally decided to seek public venues for his art. He had his inaugural show at the True North Gallery in Hamilton, Massachusetts in September of 2012. He has since shown at several corporate gallery spaces in the Boston area.

Mark lives in Beverly with his wife Andi, he is an avid mountain biker and cross-country skier, and enjoys a fine IPA.

Washed Up Artist Statement
Alejandro Durán

Washed Up is an environmental installation and photography project that transforms the international garbage washing ashore on Mexico’s Caribbean coast into aesthetic, yet disquieting, works. During the course of this project I have identified plastic waste from fifty nations on six continents, all found along a single stretch of coastline in Sian Ka’an, Mexico’s largest federally-protected reserve. I collect this international debris, arrange it by color and form and use it to create site-specific installations. Conflating the hand of man and nature, at times I distribute the objects the way the waves would; at other times, the plastic takes on the shape of algae, roots, rivers, or fruit, reflecting the infiltration of plastics into the natural environment. Beyond creating a surreal or fantastical landscape, these installations mirror the reality of our current environmental predicament. The resulting photo series depicts a new form of colonization by consumerism, where even undeveloped land is not safe from the far-reaching impact of our disposable culture. Although inspired by the work of Andy Goldsworthy and Robert Smithson, Washed Up speaks to the environmental concerns of our time and its vast quantity of discarded materials. The alchemy of Washed Up lies not only in transforming a trashed landscape, but in the project’s potential to raise awareness and change our relationship to consumption and waste. As part of my work, I am also currently creating a Museum of Garbage on location in Sian Ka’an, which will include installations and photographs from the Washed Up series. It will be accompanied by an arts and education program for the children of Punta Allen, the local community in Mexico where I have spent the past 5 years working on this project. We will explore the issue through upcycling lessons, plastic pollution research, a beach clean and other interactive activities. Activism through art and education is an integral part of the Washed Up project and is my way to raise awareness regarding this global Scourge.

Alejandro Durán – Biography

Alejandro Durán was born in Mexico City in 1974 and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He is a multimedia artist working in photography, installation, and video. His work examines the fraught intersections of man and nature, particularly the tension between the natural world and an increasingly overdeveloped one. He received an MA in Teaching from Tufts University in 1999 and an MFA in poetry from the New School for Social Research in 2001. Durán received En Foco’s New Works Award and was included in the Bronx Bienial of Latin American Art in 2012. He has exhibited his work at the Galería Octavio Paz at the Mexican consulate in New York and he is currently Hunter College’s Artist-in-Residence for 2014-15. His solo show, Washed Up: Transforming a Trashed Landscape, was exhibited at Hunter’s East Harlem Art Gallery in 2015. Publications include Land Art, published in France in 2013, which also includes Andy Goldsworthy, Robert Smithson, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Olafur Eliasson, and Marina Abramovic, among others. Art & Ecology Now was published by Thames & Hudson in 2014 and will include images
from Washed Up, as will Unexpected Art, a publication by Chronicle Books published in 2015. Notable press includes a photo essay published in Germany’s Die Zeit, as well as a feature article in New York’s El Diario/La Prensa and mentions in New York Daily News and The New York Times. Durán has taught youth and adult classes in photography and video since 2002 and has worked as a museum educator at The Museum of Modern Art and The International Center of Photography. He is also a video producer whose clients include MoMA, The Museum of Arts & Design, and Columbia University.

For me, photography is the greatest form of self expression. It communicates with my soul; a kind of a “catharsis scream”. This offers me a mental release from my professional career. After using my left brain all day, it is nice to use my right brain to create something meaningful. This brings a yin and yang to my life.

When I pick up my camera after work, I prefer to shoot inanimate objects. Using light, shadows and selective focus, I am attempting to give the objects a life force; allowing them to tell a story. Because of this, I sometimes tend to become lost in my perception of light and shadows. It allows me to constantly visualize different angles and perspectives of spaces and even people around me.

When I photograph people, I am drawn to capturing them in communal areas. I usually try and catch people off guard to create a pensive state of being which is a window into their souls. You would be surprised how much people tend to let their guard down and become relaxed when they think no one is watching. (Ever notice how differently children behave when they know they are being watched?)

I’ve come to this place of artistic expression after experimenting with several other approaches to photography. I finally listened to an art director and a close friend of mine and I redirected my work to reflect my own true artistic expression.

Over the past 10 years I been documenting real estate projects in and around Manhattan as part of a larger body of streetwork that I’ve produced since moving to the city in the mid-nineties. I was initially drawn to the novelty of observing how, once shrouded in plywood, readily identifiable locals would be transformed into anonymous corners, as if Christo and Avedon co-conspired to emphasize the cities populace. One thing I found loathsome was the encroachment of the supersize vinyl advertisements which announced the impending arrival of the corporate brand that was to displace what may or may not have been a cherished only-in-NY institution. I was
only just recently made aware of my fellow New Yorker and photographer Natan Dvir, when he gained acclaim for his series “Coming Soon”, pictures of ostensibly the same subject matter. I find it interesting to compare our approaches particularly since we were photographing many of the same corners, each unaware of the other’s project. The images from Anatomy of a Corner are from a single intersection on 5th Avenue that I photographed over the course of 6 or 7 weeks during my lunch break. They are comprised of up to 4 or 5 vertical images whichI’ve stitched together in Photoshop, which allows for the grander sense of scale and slightly wider field of view I feel landscape work requires.

Brian Sargent Bio

Death of Goldie Series – Artist Statement
A reflection on routine and repeating habits we create in our daily lives.

We go through the motions and experience new things with the inevitability of death lingering heavily above our heads. We clutch at ephemeral pleasures, desperate to assuage the crushing monotony of existence. The various risks or changes we make for love, murmurs of joy, or happiness only suffice for an instant in our otherwise blip of a lifespan.

Illustrative of our own evanescence, the betta fish and goldfish are commonly recognized as short-term pets. Destined to sit on a shelf or a table, confined in a glass display, hoping the owner remembers the only required task of feeding them in order to continue their instinctual act of swimming in circles.

There is a primitive requirement of being submerged in water, as we are in air, that if subtracted, one would cease to exist. Even though we sometimes equate discomfort in the human realm to a “fish out of water”, in the aquatic world it would inevitably lead to death. We lightly empathize with the sensitive ecosystem needed to maintain a well-balanced existence.

Unlike fish, our desire and ability to achieve happiness, no matter how short lived, dwells inside us. We take leaps of faith in the self-serving pursuit of happiness. Everyone dies and life is full of events, some beneficial, some debilitating. Having the ability to digest those incidents, we deduce which direction to take next. When it ends, one venture is over, but others continue. We each go through our separate journey seeking our own sublime path.

Amanda Francoeur – Artist Bio
Primarily trained in digital arts and graphic design at the AiMiami International University of Art & Design (2008), she has since fallen in love with the tactile nature of the photographic darkroom. After extensive exploration of alternative photographic processes, she came to appreciate the rawness of the photogram.

The current economic crisis knocked on our door on October 28th, 2011. In one 24-hour period, life as we knew it came to a screeching halt when my husband and I were laid-off within hours of each other on the same day. In the morning, when I was told my longtime position in publishing had been eliminated, I froze. But when my husband texted me two hours later say he had also been cut loose, I went numb. It was on my drive home, with my personal possessions stuffed in a cardboard box beside me, that something broke. I had to pull the car over and absorb the shock. For three years, I’d been half-listening to the unemployment stories on NPR during my morning commute. And now, with one grand gesture of bad timing, I found myself with my own story of a husband and a wife who have become a part of the 13.3 million unemployed Americans.

We are a typical middle class American family: one mom, one dad, one girl, one boy, and one day. The five of us live in a one-story 1,100 square foot blue brick ranch in the foothills of Colorado. By nature an optimist, I’ve always endeavored to show the shimmer just below the surface of everything, but now I see that shimmer as a fragile illusion. Since October 28th, I have been photographing ordinary moments of family life, partly to remember, but also to document life living with the burden of worry and the struggle of two unemployed parents raising a family, while trying to remain hopeful. I’ve discovered that life does not stop with unemployment –or with children. Birthdays and holidays continue, breakfasts need to be made, laundry needs to be done, and each day we put on a brave face and try to find meaning in this experience.

In many ways, being unemployed has given me the ability to see the world differently and given me the power to bring voice to the ordinary.

While wandering through towns from British Columbia to Louisiana, I find myself captivated by trees. We take this living plant and carve, prune and decorate it. We also take the surface of an exterior wall and imagine the tree upon it.

The tree is a potent symbol. It can suggest beauty and happiness, protection and strength, or balance and healing. Individual trees represent very particular characteristics. The elm is intuition; the aspen determination; the willow magic and dreams.

In an urban habitat trees may survive and even thrive. They can spring from cracks in concrete, reaching up to light and life. In curious combinations, renderings of trees sometimes sit beside the living plant. Other times the painted tree is hidden in grimy alleys and parking lots. The tree’s deep relationship with us, like its living branches or sketched leaves, remains both real and imagined.

Biographical Sketch:

Whether photographing family life or urban settings, my interests lie with people. How we impact, respond to, and change our environment is one facet of a project like Trees Real and Imagined.

I graduated from the University of Colorado with a major in Sociology and minors in Fine Arts and English. Since 1986 I have lived in Portland, Oregon, serving as longtime volunteer on the Blue Sky Gallery board and exhibition committee.

My work has been exhibited, among other places, at Blue Sky Gallery, the Portland Art Museum, Portland International Airport, Froelick Gallery, City Club of Portland, the Internationale Fotoage in Germany, the Center for Fine Art Photography, A Smith Gallery, and the San Diego Art Institute. Images are held in private and public collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Portland Art Museum, the Visual Chronicle Collection of Portland, and the Whatcom Museum of History and Art.

Ann Kendellen
Resume

I have a long history of temporary relationships punctuated by extended periods of isolation. As forty loomed closer, I decided to examine the meltdowns and the patterns to find out where I was responsible. I restaged my memories in hotel rooms, which are as impersonal and unlived in as my romances tended to be. The opening of old wounds unintentionally shed light on current patterns as lines blurred between the past and the present. The hotel rooms (sets that were always surprises) took on a different role: they came to stand for the complete lack of control that I feel in relationships.

I have been chasing an image that doesn’t exist. I am more comfortable dreaming about relationships than being in one. The stories I tell myself about my loves are far more dramatic than the actual shared experiences, and the disconnect between fantasy and reality became increasingly apparent with each staged narrative. This project is a mourning for an entire system that no longer works.

“Amorous passion is a delirium; but such delirium is not alien: everyone speaks of it, it is henceforth tamed. What is enigmatic is the loss of delirium: one returns to…what?”
Roland Barthes A Lover’s Discourse

Jennifer McClure is a fine art and documentary photographer based in New York City. She uses the camera to ask and answer questions. Most importantly, she wants to know why anyone ever gets out of bed in the morning. Jennifer turned the camera on herself after a long illness limited her access to other people. The self-portraits have become for her a way to stay in one piece, a way to be able to collect herself. She is interested in appearances and absences, short stories, poetry, and movies without happy endings.

Jennifer was born in Virginia and raised all over the Southeast. The child of a Marine, she moved frequently and traumatically. Photographs were the proof that she lived in this place, was friends with those people. She decorated her walls with traces of her past. After acquiring a B.A. in English Theory and Literature, Jennifer began a long career in restaurants. She returned to photography in 2001, taking classes at the School of Visual Arts and the International Center of Photography. Her work has been included in several group shows and online publications, and she was recently awarded CENTER’s Editor’s Choice by Susan White of Vanity Fair.

View Jennifer McClure’s Website

a slip of paper
marking a moment in time
sparks my memory

Artist’s Statement
In scanning my bookshelves, I noticed many books with tiny slips of paper sticking out; items that I had left behind. As I opened the books to pages marked with ticket stubs, receipts, handwritten notes, postcards, airline tickets and more, a flood of memories overtook me. Some memories were very specific regarding a place and time or a person; others suggested a new insight about my life… something learned.
I left the bookmarks on the exact pages where I found them, thinking that, consciously or not, there was a reason they were placed there. I chose not to alter the bookmarks physically, yet I sensed that I was slightly changing the memories they evoked merely by reminiscing with the benefit of time and experience.

This series of photographs represents memories, not only literal memories but more broadly, the human experience of reflecting on one’s life. The title of each photograph reflects this process of memory intersecting with time and experience.

Bio:
Photographer Sue D’Arcy Fuller’s recent work centers on personal discovery. Her photographs of her own books and the bookmarks left behind reveal a window into moments in time that have sparked her own memories and recall the commonality of all of our experiences.

She has exhibited her work at the deCordova Museum Salon Shows, the Post Road Center for the Arts, Memorial Hall at the Cary Library in Lexington, MA, and the Griffin Museum of Photography. Sue was also the studio photographer for the full length documentary AshBash: A love story, directed by Heidi Sullivan. The film is an award winner at the Boston International Film Festival 2012 and Woods Hole Film Festival 2012.
Sue has studied photography at the deCordova Museum, Mass College of Art, Westchester Art Workshops, New England School of Photography, and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

View Sue D’Arcy Fuller Website