Griffin Museum of Photography

Primal Waters

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Statement
Many of the swamps, ponds, and streams that were once plentiful still remain. Water, though a simple molecular formula, is an extraordinary substance subject to dramatic physical change depending on ambient conditions. Recent interplanetary explorations have confirmed that water, so fundamental to life, is distributed throughout the solar system. Early life forms may have emerged in the fecund swamps and ponds that surround us. Primal Waters is a close study of these dynamic systems where the surface always changes according to fluctuations in temperature, currents, and wind. I study the surfaces for patterns and naturally occurring geometric arrangements that intrigue me.

Most often, the shallow waters along the shore display the most dramatic effects of increasingly extreme temperature variations. This is where the freeze/thaw cycles of water, ice, and snow are most visible.  In warmer weather, the pollen deposits on the surface make the subtle currents and whirlpools visible. Episodic overgrowth of “invasive species” such as milfoil or algae blooms indicate an ecosystem under new kinds of stress. All these stressors have given rise to phenomena I have never seen before.

The black surround on each image was first suggested in the field while I handheld a lens hood in front of camera. The blackness appealed to me, since I wanted to evoke the idea of an intense gaze as though seen through a microscope or telescope. The black surround at once distances the viewer and concentrates the view. I aim to choose just the right amount of black; too much makes the image too distant, too little doesn’t hold the image still enough for intense focus.

In some of the images, I like the confusion of scale. With the black surround some of the images, particularly the pollen patterns, could be mistaken for the shifting cloud and vapor systems on distant planets suspended in space.
– CWT

Bio
Catherine Wilcox-Titus has pursued creative expression in words and images for over 40 years. The poetry of images has most recently engaged her full attention, and she has explored this medium in film and digital formats.

She has exhibited her work in collaborative two-person shows, group shows, and solo shows. Primal Waters reflects work she has done in the past two years as she has explored the fresh water ponds, swamps, and streams that surround us. The close study of the surface patterns on the water and the aesthetic potential of these  dynamic systems continues to fascinate her.

She is the recipient of grants from ARTSWorcester and Worcester State University, and won awards in many regional exhibitions. She has a Ph.D. from Boston University in Art History and writes and lectures on topics in art from the 19thcentury to the present day. Catherine teaches at Worcester State University in Massachusetts and curates the campus gallery.

PhotoSynthesis XIII

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PhotoSynthesis is a collaboration of the Winchester High School and Burlington High School brought to you by the Griffin Museum of Photography.

By creating photographic portraits of themselves and their surroundings, students from Burlington High School and Winchester High School have been exploring their sense of self and place in a unique collaborative program at the Griffin Museum.

In its thirteenth year, the 5-month program connects approximately 20 students – from each school – with each other and with professional photographers. The goal is to increase students’ awareness of the art of photography, as well as how being from different programs and different schools affects their approach to the same project.

The students were given the task of creating a body of work that communicates a sense of self and place.  They were encouraged to explore the importance of props, the environment, facial expression, metaphor, and body language in portrait photography.

Students met in November with David Weinberg, who after a 28-year career as an academic pathologist at a Boston teaching hospital, decided to pursue his longstanding interest in photography on a full-time basis. For many years his research explored the use of digital imaging to detect and classify human disease, so it was entirely natural for him to adopt digital photography for his personal work. In 2006 he obtained a Certificate in Professional Photography from the Center for Digital Imaging and the Arts at Boston University.

His personal work consists mainly of portraits, landscapes, cityscapes, and still life. His photographs are an attempt to deal with the mystery of the visual world, which he sometimes find humorous, sometimes soothing, and often confusing. Although the various series of photographs in his portfolio may at first appear unrelated, they are linked by desire to discover a spiritual connection to the subject. His series, “Palimpsest,” is perhaps most explicit in this regard.

Keiko Hiromi met with students in February and discussed her photography journey especially her project on survivors of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan. Keiko Hiromi is a Japanese photographer based in Boston, USA & Tokyo, Japan.   Her work has appeared on NYT, People Magazine, Vanity Fair, El Pais, Der Spiegel, Diamond Weekly (japan), Boston Globe, PRI and ABC news and many more publications around the globe.  Keiko is a regular contributor for Huffington Post Japan.  She is available for assignments world-wide. She has international honors, has exhibited widely and is represented internationally in museum collections internationally.

Students also met with photographer Sam Sweezy to discuss sequencing of images. Sweezy is a professional fineart and commercial photographer and educator who resides in Newton, MA. He has exhibited at major photography venues including the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY.

Alison Nordstrom, the former curator of the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., and photographer Sweezy gathered with students for a one-on-one discussion of their work and a final edit was created for the exhibition at the museum.

“In collaboration and through creative discourse these students have grown,” said Paula Tognarelli, executive director of the Griffin Museum. “We are very pleased to be able to share this year’s students’ work. We thank the mentors and teachers for providing a very meaningful experience for the students. We also want to thank the Griffin Foundation and the Murphy Foundation, whose continued commitment to this project made learning possible. To paraphrase Elliot Eisner, the arts enabled these students to have an experience that they could have from no other source.’’

Message from GRACE: Imaginings of an Altered World

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My work is inspired by my deep connection to nature. My former career as a dancer and choreographer has influenced my art-making, and fueled my interest in how we inhabit both our interior and exterior worlds. As an environmentally conscious artist, I use photography and artist books to explore our changing environment. I am drawn to the process of both becoming and diminishing—not just in life’s flourishing peak compositions, but in the inevitable process of decomposition. Each stage has intrinsic beauty as it transforms shape and content to reveal a different truth. I use photography to make sense of our off-kilter world.  – Dawn Watson

Message from GRACE: Imaginings of an Altered World

…”the places are what remains, what you can possess, are what is immortal. They become the tangible landscape of memory.” Rebecca Solnit, The Field Guide to Getting Lost

Earth’s axis tilts, gravity pulls, seasons shift, ice melts, flooding waters rise, or the earth is left parched. The natural world changes beyond recognition. Human activity contributes to these seismic shifts in Earth’s mass and atmosphere. Heightened awareness of our ever-changing world leaves bodies and spirits under stress from this increased vulnerability. Adapt and change to a new way of being or turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to the comprehensive observations from elders, science and experience warning of the consequence of denial.

Orbiting in space, NASA’s GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) mission satellites relay data that has transformed our analysis of the Earth’s system. Here on Earth, I make photographs that visually interpret the GRACE data. These twin satellites—two bodies in constant motion—dance a back-and-forth duet. The distance between these partners is measured by microwave sound, signaling gravitational shifts of water and mass. In this work I re-visit my landscape photograph archives and capture new imagery to create an alternative reality based on the potential effects of these seismic shifts, offering an inverted reality that is present but not yet seen. Delicate details or vast landscapes are familiar yet strange, holding both beauty and decay, alarm and possibilities.

NASA’S GRACE Mission satellites, (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) relay data that has transformed analysis of changes in the Earth’s system. GRACE-FO, scheduled for launch in late 2017, will continue the work of tracking Earth’s water movement to monitor changes in underground water storage, the amount of water in large lakes and rivers, soil moisture, ice sheets and glaciers, and sea level caused by the addition of water to the ocean. These discoveries provide a unique view of Earth’s climate and have far-reaching benefits to society and the world’s population.” https://gracefo.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/overview”

GRACE and GRACE-FO is a joint partnership between NASA and Germany’s Space Program. GRACE-FO is now scheduled for launch in early 2018.  Jon Gertner’s recent article www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/magazine/what-could-we-… offers in-depth background supporting the need for continued support of the GRACE mission’s data-gathering regarding climate change.

Bio

Dawn Watson is an artist and activist. Her work examines the fragility of both the natural environment as well as our relationship to it and to each other. After twenty-five years as a dancer and choreographer, Watson transitioned to photography, finding affinity in the visual storytelling offered by both live performance and the captured image. She has exhibited her photographs and artist books throughout the United States including The Griffin Museum of Photography, Albrecht-Kemper Museum, Tilt Gallery, Tang Museum, and a solo exhibition at the Los Angeles Center for Photography.

CV

Awards and Features

Far from the Madding Crowd and Losing the Farm

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By request for this exhibition photographer and Photography Atelier educator, Meg Birnbaum has assembled a collection of work from Judy Brown’s Far from the Madding Crowd and her own photographs from Losing the Farm.

Far from the Madding Crowd Artist Statement

As a child growing up in a small town in Texas I dreamed of living on a farm surrounded by animals. In suburban Massachusetts a couple of years ago, I discovered that my fantasy farm exists just up the street. While visiting the farm I formed attachments and developed trust with the animals;  I made images in a style I developed over the last decade. Concentrating on fine details, I find beauty in dirty faces and dripping saliva.

My images focus closely on portraits of individual animals. I capture their personalities and humanlike qualities – their questions, their curiosity, their wish for affection, and their offer of friendship along with their ever powerful appetites. Ideally I hope my images might help lead to more humane treatment for farm animals such as advocated by Temple Grandin and others. I hope my photographs lead people to view the animals with respect, as sentient beings similar to our pets and worthy of protections and humane treatment.

Judy Brown Biography

Following a career as Professor of Physics at Wellesley College and Research Scientist at the MIT Media Lab, Judy Brown has combined her long-time passions for animals and photography. She is particularly interested in form, texture, and lighting in images and is attracted to subjects for their simplicity and beauty of form. Her “Elliott” portfolio of a spirited pony in his stall has been given a number of solo shows including two in Griffin Museum satellite galleries and an MIT Architecture Department Tele-exhibit. Selections from her “Antique Skin” and “Elliott” portfolios as well as other images have been selected for over a dozen juried exhibitions including Asbury University, Wilmore, KY “The Horse: A Juried Exhibit”, Texas Photographic Society Members Only Show , and SE Center for Photography “The Contemporary Nude”. Most recently she has spent much of her time photographing the animals on a farm in South Natick, MA consummating a childhood passion for farms and animals while growing up in rural Texas.

In the last decade Brown has taken several courses at Rhode Island School of Design and New England School of Photography. She has also taken studio art courses in drawing and design at Wellesley College. Workshops include Equine Photography in Southern France with Tony Stromberg, Maine Media’s “A Certain Alchemy” with Keith Carter, and Atelier 26 with Meg Birnbaum at the Griffin Museum of Photography.

Website

Losing the Farm Artist Statement

On a spring day in 2015, I entered a call for entry from a local arts organization seeking to match 10 artists with ten farms. The hope was to build community and educate the public about the local raising and growing of food.

The 10 artists, of all mediums, were tasked with telling the story of a year in the life of a small Massachusetts farm. I was matched with ‘Pete and Jen’s Backyard Birds,’ a pig, chicken, and turkey farm.

I learned, among many new things, that unless a person inherits a preexisting family farm it is common practice to lease land from a larger farm that is not able to use all of what they own. That is what Pete and Jen did. Sadly, shortly after I started my project they were told that their time was up. The mood and tone of the farm changed to a heaviness that matched the crushing heat.

I followed the farm through moving day, watching the farm deconstruct day by day. The animals went to market, the greenhouses came down, the fruit trees dug up. The farm was lost.

Since, Pete and Jen are still farming but in a completely different venue. They are stewards for a community farm owned by the town of Lincoln MA. Jen is the Director of the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project, a beginning farmer training program at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.

Meg Birnbaum Biography

Meg Birnbaum lives and works in the Boston area. She is a graphic designer, educator and photographer. She has had solo exhibitions at Gallery Tanto Tempo in Kobe, Japan, Corden Potts Gallery, San Francisco, The Lishui International Photography Festival, China, the Museum of Art Pompeo Boggio, Buenos Aires, the Griffin Museum of Photography, Massachusetts, Flash Forward Festival, Boston and others.

Meg teaches portfolio building classes (called the Photography Atelier) at the Griffin Museum of Photography  where she also designs catalogs, signage, their website and is a member of their exhibition committee. Her work is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, the Lishui Museum of Photography in China, the Meditech Corporation, and private collections.

Website

Read what Kathleen Stone of Artsfuse.org has to say on Judy Brown and Meg Birnbaum’s exhibit.

Grace Weston: Art·tri·bu·tion

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artrəˈbyo͞oSH(ə)n/
Made up noun by the curator.

Overarching Idea
The action of regarding something (in a photograph) as referencing an art piece, art medium, art form, art style, movement or artist. Made up definition by the curator.

Grace Weston – In our on-line gallery selections from Short Stories/Tall Tales

Artist Statement
In this ongoing series, “Short Stories/Tall Tales,” the artwork addresses anxieties common to adulthood through child-like fantasy scenes. The use of miniature characters, constructed sets and vivid colors allows Weston to play with weighty issues in a lighter way. The selections for Art·tri·bu·tion from Short Stories/Tall Tales either have references to an artist, art piece(s) or art style or movement.

Grace Weston Biography
Grace Weston creates narrative photography in her studio with staged vignettes that combine humor with psychological themes. 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. 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 and one of the Whatcom Museum (Washington) 2008 Photography Biennial’s “Nine to Watch”. 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”, and “Pittsburgh Magazine”.  In July 2013, Seattle’s weekly paper The Stranger featured one of her images as the cover.

Gallery representation includes Paci Contemporary (Brescia, Italy), Wall Space Gallery (Santa Barbara, CA), and on-line through Photo-Eye’s Photographer’s Showcase (Santa Fe, NM).

Arttribution

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artrəˈbyo͞oSH(ə)n/
Made up noun by the curator.

Overarching Idea
The action of regarding something (in a photograph) as referencing an art piece, art medium, art form, art style, movement or artist. Made up definition by the curator.

Featured photographers:

Tami Bahat – Dramatis Personae in the Main Gallery

Mark Chen & Shiao-Nan Chen – Renewed in the Main Gallery

Niki Grangruth & James Kinser – Muse in the Main Gallery

Torrie Groening – Grand Scenarios and Out of Studio in the Main Gallery

Calli P. McCaw – Imagine That in the Griffin Gallery

Lori Pond – Bosch Redux in the Atelier Gallery and Main Gallery

Grace Weston – selections from Short Stories/Tall Tales in the on-line Critic’s Pic Gallery

 

Read what Elin Spring writes on “Art-tri-bu-tion.”

What Boston Globe’s Mark Feeney writes on “Art-tri-bu-tion.”

 

The Divers

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We all remember that suspenseful moment. The one right before you jump, when your feet are still on the ground, and time slows down as you contemplate leaping into the unknown water below. For some, the experience is one of play and excitement. For others the recollection may incite different feelings, possibly of anxiety and fear or of wonder at what lies beneath in the water below. These images, culled from Arthur Griffin’s archives, are frozen transitory moments depicting divers suspended in air and swimmers floating in water. Now frozen in time, Arthur Griffin has captured these brief moments in between take off and landing and just before they sliced the water. The images are reminiscent of childhood, of places hidden in the woods reserved for summer vacations, or of public city pools, where children gather to keep cool. Arthur’s photographs are reflections of a familiar experience; one that many can recollect.

Witness and The Book of May Be

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Witness

The time is 5AM on a late summer morning, at the change of seasons when the earth is warm and the air is cool and a fog has risen. These trees, standing tall for over a hundred years in the hills of New Hampshire, were destroyed by a freak storm in the spring of 2016. Witness, a series of images in both print and artist book, invite us to honor and remember, to enter in and be present to the wonders all around us. Trees bear witness, holding the mysteries of the world told through folklore and fantasy, science and study, revealing secrets and answers, offering comfort and healing. Past events and processes are recorded in the rings of growth, marking time, age and conditions. Not just metaphor, communities of trees take care of their own, nurturing and protecting by a symbiotic network rooted below the surface, spread by threads of fungi, connecting one tree root system to another. This connectivity is echoed through out the natural world.

Arches water color paper for binding, band and 3 fold cover wrap
8.25 x 14 inches, concertina binding
Belly band of paper with image detail
Nine images ©2012 printed on Epson Hot Press Natural paper
Archival cardboard box

Limited edition, excluding 2 artist books, 2 exhibition copies
Edition #1-2 $275.00
Edition #3-4 $300.00
Edition #5-6 $325.00
Edition #7-8 $350.00
Edition #8-10 $375.00

The Book of May Be

As if waking from a dream state, “The Book of May Be” explores malleability of memory. This diminutive body of work, nested in a slipcase and wrapper, is a series of 2 x 2 inch diptychs, each in conversation with its partner and in relation to the other snippets of image and memory. These images string along like an old film strip, collaged from bits and pieces of story, sounds, smells, places and people creating a visual tone poem. Though we think of life as linear, it is always in a flow state, shape-shifting as in a lucid dream where memory, time, and place converge out of sequence and clouded recall.  Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, maybe it will be…

36 images, 2 in x 2 in accordion fold
Epson Ultra Premium Presentation Matte Paper
Four fold wrapper/slip case, various materials, by Linda Lembke
Archival cardboard box

Limited edition, excluding 2 artist books, 2 exhibition copies
Edition #1-2 @ $200
Edition #3-4 @ $250
Edition # 5 @ $275
Edition # 6 @ $350

Bio

Dawn Watson is an artist and activist. Her work examines the fragility of both the natural environment as well as our relationship to it and to each other. After twenty-five years as a dancer and choreographer, Watson transitioned to photography, finding affinity in the visual storytelling offered by both live performance and the captured image. She has exhibited her photographs and artist books throughout the United States including The Griffin Museum of Photography, Albrecht-Kemper Museum, Tilt Gallery, Tang Museum, and a solo exhibition at the Los Angeles Center for Photography.

 

Linda Morrow: Echoes of Ovid II Artist Book

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Artist Bio
Linda Morrow can say that photography is in a sense her voice and often her meditation. She retired early from teaching college English in order to focus more on the visual image which may explain her interest in book-making. She has in recent years begun working with alternate structures for the photobook such as the concertina, the pivoting panel and the map book. Her intention always is to make [photographs] that inspire the mind and engage the heart. Linda lives in Long Beach, CA.

CV of Exhibitions

Artist Statement for Echoes of Ovid II – a pivoting panel book
When my turn came up to work with one of the models in a workshop with Kim Weston, I chose to photograph her outside in Kim’s greenhouse where his tomato plans were flourishing that summer. Soon I realized that a leitmotif was offering itself that I could develop in terms of women in nature, women whose lyrical shapes and curves could mingle with lines and shadows of the vegetative. Over time I continued the project, working with models in my own garden in California and in gardens I found in Louisiana and New Mexico and seeking to make images that would suggest a fine line between the feminine and the botanical. Margaret Langhans was commissioned to write the poem called “Metamorphosis,” and the project was complete: in the story by Ovid, Daphne’s transformation into a tree is touchstone for each portrait in the series.”

Linda Morrow’s Website

States of Grace

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Wendi Schneider’s “States of Grace” will showcase in the Griffin Gallery of the Griffin Museum on March 6th through April 10, 2018. The reception will be March 8th from 7 – 8:30 PM. Wendi will do an informal talk on “States of Grace” at 6:15 PM.

Artist’s Statement

In States of Grace, I illuminate beauty amidst the chaos. I’m calmed by the simplicity of a graceful line and the stillness of the suspended moment and am compelled to share an impression of the serenity I find there. I capture the ephemeral movement of light on organic forms, to preserve that mystical moment that stills time for me. Photographing intuitively – what I feel, as much as what I see – and informed by a background in painting and art history, I portray a personal interpretation by layering the images digitally with color and texture, to find balance between the real and the imagined.

The images are printed digitally with archival pigment ink on vellum. White gold, silver or 24k gold leaf is then applied behind the image, creating a silken luminosity on the print’s surface. Throughout history, civilizations have prized the use of precious metals for their beauty and sanctity. The leafing process suffuses the intrinsic value of the treasured subjects with the implied spirituality of the gold. The perception of luminosity varies as the viewer’s position and ambient light change. Within the limited edition, the prints may differ in color or texture, and, as the effect of gilding inherently varies, each of the limited edition prints is unique.

Paula Tognarelli, executive director of the Griffin Museum says, “There is an elegance that emanates from Wendi Schneider’s photographs. It can be seen in the turn of a flamingo’s neck, in hanging fog or flick of a betta fish tail. Schneider’s photographic gestures are not rare sightings but daily gifts from the natural world for those with the patience to see them.”

About the Artist

“I’m still drawn to the scent of oils and turpentine. The aroma evokes glimpses of my mother and grandmother at their easels at my childhood home in Memphis, coffee-with-chicory nights in the Newcomb studios in New Orleans, the inherited easel by the window overlooking Park and 35th St. in New York, and finally to it’s current home in Denver. I tend to see the world in vignettes, and am calmed by the visual balance of a good composition. I struggle to balance my need for solitude with time for interaction, and my anxieties with confidence. After years of creating images for book covers, Victoria Magazine and others, designing for print and web, art directing, and various artistic endeavors, I’m compelled to share an impression of the serenity I find in the simplicity of a graceful, organic line and the stillness of a suspended moment. My current work employs only tools of the earlier process – the luscious, soft brushes, nestled near my mother’s paint-splattered easel.”

Wendi Schneider is a visual artist currently working in photography and precious metals. Born in Memphis, she holds an AA in Art History from Stephens College in Columbia, MO and a BA in Painting from Newcomb/Tulane in New Orleans. She turned to photography in the early ‘80s to capture moments of her models for her paintings. Missing the sensuality of oils, she began layering glazes on her photographs to create a more personal interpretation. After she photographed, designed and produced the award-winning re-creation of the 1901 Picayune’s Creole Cook Book for The Times-Picayune, she moved to New York, where she photographed nearly 100 book covers and was a major contributor to the original Victoria Magazine. She moved to Denver in 1994, and after several decades of photography, design and art direction for clients, she recently returned to fine art photography.

Gilded vellum photographs from her current series States of Grace have been exhibited in more than 60 venues, including A Gallery For Fine Photography, The Griffin Museum of Photography and the Berlin Foto Biennale, and featured in Diffusion, B&W Magazine, Silvershotz, Adore Chroma, and as a Rule Breaker on Don’t Take Pictures. A Critical Mass finalist in 2017, Schneider has been honored by the International Photography Awards, the International Color Awards, the Gala Awards and the Julia Margaret Cameron Awards. She is represented by A Gallery For Fine Photography in New Orleans and Galeria Photo/Graphic in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Website

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