The Virtual Gallery

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