Griffin Museum of Photography

Susan Keiser Flooded

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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.

Tricia O’Neill, Celtic Pilgrimages: Ireland & Scotland

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Artist’s Statement

Celtic land, and landscape, holds a strong gravitational pull for me. A kind of genetic coding, if you will, that elicits a strong feeling of belonging, the feeling that I am where I should be.

My parents emigrated from Ireland to America in the 1950s. We started going back to Ireland in the 1960s to visit our family there, as we were and are the only members of our extended family here in the States. I was 8 years old when I first went to Ireland and have been traveling there ever since. Consequently the landscapes of both Ireland and Scotland naturally feel like home to me.

This work is an ongoing study of place and belonging; my hope is that through these images the viewer will sense my deep connection to the land.

Bio:

Tricia O’Neill has been making photographs since the 1970’s. She formalized her love of photography by completing a fine arts degree at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University in 2007. Tricia studied film photography and digital photography at the SMFA, rendering her a versatile photographer with knowledge of both analog and digital photography. Tricia also studied the art of hand lettering at Butera School of Art and founded the company Signs Unique in 1986. Photography and the completion of a fine art degree are fitting extensions of Tricia’s creative endeavors. Tricia’s years behind the brush–painting signs and murals–informs her photography.

Tricia works in a documentary style. Her work has been exhibited throughout the Northeast, in solo shows, juried shows, group shows and is in private collections.

www.triciaoneill.com

BULLET POINTS: PHOTOGRAPHS BY DEBORAH BAY, CHRISTOPHER COLVILLE, GARRETT HANSEN AND SABRINA PEARLMAN

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Guns and bullets have a mutual dependency. A gun without ammo becomes just a blunt object. A bullet without a gun’s hammer and chamber can’t generate energy for directed propulsion on its own. In our exhibition we have fine-tuned the focus to concentrate on ammunition, as the bullet alone seems to be the actual instrument of injury.

Bullet Points, an exhibition featuring the work of Deborah Bay, Christopher Colville, Garrett Hansen and Sabine Pearlman, will showcase in the Main Gallery of the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA from January 14 through March 6, 2016. An opening reception takes place on January 14, 7-8:30 p.m. Yorgos Efthymiadis will give the members’ talk at 6:15 PM on his exhibition “Domesticated: Seeing Past Seduction.” The talk is FREE.

“The paradox at work in each photographers’ body of work shown in “Bullet Points” is that there is an allusion to beauty while indirectly stirring, for the viewer, contrasted ideas of chaos, death, and destruction,” says Paula Tognarelli executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography “Since ancient times the act of violence has held our attention, sometimes to the point of desensitization as in the Roman arena,” she says.

About “The Big Bang” Deborah Bay says, “Although I did not intend to make an overt statement about gun violence, the [bullet shot through plexiglas] clearly depicts the immense amount of energy released on impact, requiring little imagination to realize their effect on muscle and bone.”

Photographer Christopher Colville says, “In the long term I want this work to be a more open look at our cultural obsession with violence.”

Each of Garrett Hansen’s “Void” images is created from individual bullet holes from targets he finds at gun ranges. Hansen says, “While shooting is fundamentally a destructive act, by bringing these holes into the darkroom, enlarging them and then processing and printing the results, I am able to balance this destruction with creation.” He also says, “The viewer is presented with something that speaks to the sublime – they are both attractive and terrifying at the same time.”

Sabine Pearlman’s cross-sections of World War II ammunition raise a variety of opposing responses. Pearlman says, “[Ammo is] the intersection of stunning beauty, frightening amorality, exquisitely lethal, exacting craftsmanship, and a whole host of other contradictions.” She also says, “The surprising anatomy and beauty of cross sections reflects a world of intention back at us. It’s a look under the hood, by which you come to realize that each design is very goal-oriented. With some of them, it’s like getting a glimpse into the psychology of warfare. The images are mesmerizing and also tragic.”

Deborah Bay is a Houston artist. She holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from The University of Texas at Austin. She has exhibited throughout the U.S., most recently at wall space gallery in Santa Barbara, Vanderbilt University and the Phoenix Art Museum. The British Journal of Photography has featured her work on its cover, and her images have appeared in a variety of national and international publications. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz.

Born in 1974 in Tucson Arizona Christopher Colville received his BFA in Anthropology and Photography from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri and his MFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico. He currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona. He has taught in multiple institutions including as a visiting Assistant Professor at Arizona State University as well as working as the photography editor for Prompt Press. His work has been included in both national and international publications and exhibitions. Recent awards include the Ernst Cabat Award through the Tucson Museum of Art, Critical Mass top 50, the Humble Art Foundations New Photography Grant, an Arizona Commission on the Arts Artist Project Grant, a Public Art Commission from the Phoenix Commission on the Arts and an artist fellowship through the American Scandinavian Foundation. His work has been reviewed in national and international publications including the L.A. Times, Boston Globe and GUP Magazine.

Garrett Hansen graduated from Grinnell College as an economics and political science major. He completed his MFA in photography at Indiana University and has taught at several universities in the United States and in Asia. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Photography at the University of Kentucky. Hansen has exhibited in the United States, Europe, Indonesia, and Japan.

Sabine Pearlman is an Austrian born photographer currently living in Los Angeles, California. In 2013 she received the LensCulture Emerging Photographer Award for her AMMO series. The series went viral and has since been featured by PHOTO+ Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, WIRED, Der Stern, Esquire (UK), NEON Magazine (France), World of Knowledge (Australia), among many others. Her work has been exhibited internationally, most notably at PYO Gallery South in Seoul, Korea as a solo exhibition, entitled “Fatal Beauty.“

Boston Globe Article by Mark Feeney

Elin Spring highlights “Bullet Points”

Three artists highlighted in The Winchester Star

Photobook 2015

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PHOTOBOOK 2015 is an annual competition open to photographers in the United States and abroad who have self-published a photobook. This competition was offered by Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson NY for the sixth year. The competition results were exhibited at Davis Orton Gallery and thirty-four books are now traveling to the Griffin Museum of Photography. Karen Davis, co-director of the Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson, NY and Paula Tognarelli, executive director and curator of the Griffin Museum of Photography were the jurors for Photobook 2015.

Photobook 2015, is featured in the galleries at the Griffin Museum January 14 through March 6, 2016. An opening reception takes place on January 14, 7-8:30 p.m. Yorgos Efthymiadis has a members’ talk on his exhibition Domesticated: Seeing Past Seduction at 6:15 PM. The talk is FREE.

Best of Show photobooks were awarded to Mara Catalan – Williamsburg: A Place I Once Call Home, Anna Leigh Clem – Grounded, Keron Psillas – Loss And Beauty, and Andi Schreiber – Drift. Exhibitors include: Eldar Akbarov – Déjà vu, William Ash – Earth Water Fire Wind Emptiness: Tokyo Landscapes, Leslie Hall Brown – Through The Garden Of Childhood, Karen Bucher – Shadow Run, Mike Callaghan – Com (Me N Cement Notes),
 
 David Curtis – In The Moment: City Spaces, City Faces,
 Mark Diamond – Limitless World, Mario Digirolamo – Visione,
 Melissa Eder – Sunshine Daydream (Dedicated To Jerry Garcia), Michael B. Endy – Lost Highway: A Photographic Hymn To New Jersey, Jeff Evans – What’s Wrong With This Picture, Bill Gore – SWIPE, 
Paul Hockett – Negative Memory, Michael Hunold – The Stone Room,

 Jaclyn Kain – Postcard Stories, Sachiko Kawanabe – Sononite, Ken Konchel – Architectonic, 
Jack La Forte – The Lost Glove Series, Liza Macrae – Together In A Sudden Strangeness, GE Mckerrihan – Hearing Shadows Call, 
Linda Morrow – A Celebration Of Plums, Michael Nelson – Photos From Cuba, Cynthia O’Dell – 0-6, 
Nick Pedersen – Sumeru,
 Jaye R. Phillips – Into The Dark Of Night,
 Gilbert Rios – Look/See, 
Don Russell – Cowboys Of Color, Dan R Talley – Yesterday’s Coffee, Tomorrow’s Eggs, Andrew MK Warren – Some Pictures, and
 Rosemarie Zens – Carousel Of Time.

There are growing options available for self-publishing a book such as on-demand (blurb, lulu, viovio, iphoto, etc.); small run offset or web printing/publishing firms, binderies. For the competition if photobooks submitted had been hand-made/bound, they had to be available in multiples of at least 25. Entrants could submit up to three different titles that are self-published photography books of any size, format, or style: hard cover, soft cover, case-wraps, landscape, portrait, square, color, black and white.

Submissions were judged on the basis of: cover design, strength of the photography, subject matter of the book, page layouts, editing and sequencing and emotional impact of the overall book. All Submissions had to be original works of authorship created by the photographer who submitted the Submission.

“A photobook relies on the image to form visual sentences,” says Paula Tognarelli, executive director and curator of the Griffin Museum of Photography. “A photobook that is produced well can transport us in time and place just as any book produced with the written word.”

Yorgos Efthymiadis, Domesticated: Seeing Past Seduction

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Yorgos Efthymiadis photographs guns from various collections. He finds most guns by referrals. He photographs each gun on carpets, chairs, tablecloths or pillows found in the homes of the collectors.

Efthymiadis’ series, Domesticated: Seeing Past Seduction, is featured in the Griffin Gallery at the Griffin Museum January 14 through March 6, 2016. An opening reception with the artist takes place on January 14, 7-8:30 p.m. Yorgos Efthymiadis has a members’ talk on his exhibition Domesticated: Seeing Past Seduction at 6:15 PM. The talk is FREE.

“When [guns] are seen as antiques, their initial purpose is camouflaged. The viewer, allured and captivated, tends to overlook and forget the past, mesmerized by the weapons’ fine craftsmanship, and artistry,” says Efthymiadis. “Yet, just beneath the surface, their artistic presence is haunted by a past that cannot be changed.” he says.
“The history of violence cannot be erased by transforming weapons into inert objects of beauty or works of art,” he says. “Although not visible, the blood, the mud, the fear and desperation will always be there.”
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Yorgos Efthymiadis lives in Somerville, MA. He graduated from the School of Business Administration and Economics at the Technological Educational Institute in Thessaloniki, GR with an MBA. Later he graduated from the New England School of Photography with a dual concentration in fine art and architectural photography. Efthymiadis is represented by Gallery Kayafas in SoWa. His work has been exhibited at the Danforth Museum, the Photographic Resource Center, Griffin Museum of Photography, The Nave Gallery, Somerville, Cambridge Art Association, San Diego Art Institute, Filter Photo Festival, Chicago, Photo Place Gallery, Vermont, Flash Forward Photography Festival, Boston, The Fence at Photoville, Boston and SohoPhoto Gallery, NY.

Marky Kauffmann, Landscapes and Prayers

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Massachusetts-based photographer and educator Marky Kauffmann’s photographs are inspired by her love of nature and of the land.

In Landscapes and Prayers Kauffmann’s images display a sense of peace, harmony and order, but also tension, destruction and chaos, as it exists in the natural world. “The story of these landscapes begins with my maternal grandmother, who studied the art of ikebana flower arranging while living in Japan at the end of World War II,” says Kauffmann. “As a child, I was completely captivated by my grandmother’s flower arrangements. Her use of line, shape, pattern, texture, color, symmetry and asymmetry seduced and mesmerized me. And so, as an adult, I became an arranger, too,” she says.

A series of Marky Kauffmann’s photographs called Landscapes and Prayers, is featured at the Griffin Museum at Digital Silver Imaging, 9 Brighton St., Belmont, MA, on January 15, 2016 through March 11, 2016. An opening reception with the artist will take place February 18, 2016 from 6-8 p.m.

Marky Kauffmann is a graduate of Boston University and the New England School of Photography. She has been working as a fine-art photographer and educator for more than thirty years. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including two Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship Finalist grants. Most recently, she won First Place in Soho Photo Gallery’s National Alternative Processes Competition, and was a finalist in the 7th Edition Julia Margaret Cameron Worldwide Gala Awards in three categories, including fine art, portraiture, and landscapes photography.

Kauffmann has taught photography at numerous secondary schools, including Buckingham Brown and Nichols School, Shady Hill School, Dana Hall School, Milton Academy and Weston High School. She also spent twenty years teaching photography to adults as part of the New England School of Photography’s Evening Workshop Program. Currently she teaches at Milton Academy’s Saturday Course.

Krista Wortendyke, (RE): Media

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(Re): media is an exploration of the way imagery and information from movies, videogames, newspapers, and the Internet come together to form our perception of war. As most have not experienced war, it is the media’s images that have informed our understanding of conflict. Wortendyke’s ongoing work examines violence through the lens of photography.

Wortendyke’s series, (RE): Media, is featured in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin Museum of Photography January 14th through March 6th, 2016. An opening reception will take place on January 14th, 2016 from 7-8:30pm. Yorgos Efthymiadis will lead a members’ talk at 6:15pm before the reception. The talk and reception are free.

“Explosions are war’s most universal and most spectacular signifiers,” says Wortendyke. “I have made use of these magnetizing [media] images to show not only how the lines between fiction and non-fiction blur, but also to show how a mediated experience can become indecipherable from a real experience.”

Krista Wortendyke is a Chicago-based conceptual artist. She received her MFA in Photography from Columbia College in 2007. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Packer Schopf Gallery and David Weinberg Gallery in Chicago, SOHO20 Gallery in New York, and many other venues across the United States. Additionally, Krista’s work is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Museum of Contemporary Photography. Krista is currently an adjunct professor of photography at Columbia College Chicago and Northeastern Illinois University.

Harvey Stein Workshop Exhibit-Photographing People

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This exhibition is a direct result of a workshop for the Griffin Museum led by photographer and educator Harvey Stein. The 3-day workshop took place in June 2015 on the streets of Boston. It focused on providing each student knowledge of and experience in photographing people in a variety of ways, including on the street, indoor locations, and in the subject’s environment. The workshop also focused on creating inventive portraits that are personally based and meaningful. Stein juried the images for this exhibition from photographs submitted by workshop participants.

The Griffin Museum will be offering Harvey Stein’s 3-day Photographing People workshop again in June 2016. Watch for details on our website.

Exhibitors include: Kay Aubrey, Robert Bass, William Daniels, Pippi Ellison, Rebecca Field, Vivien Goldman, Sureita Hockley, Helena Long, Judith Panagotopulos, Tiziana Rosso, Eileen Scullen, Shawn Soni, Joe Staska, Anne Umphrey, and David Whitney.

Winter Solstice Exhibit Members’ Open

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For the third year, The Griffin Museum has invited all of its current members to exhibit in the Winter Solstice Exhibition. From across the world, artists entered one piece to be on display for December 2015. Over 140 photographs are represented in the Main Gallery of the Griffin and display a spectrum of genres and processes. The opening reception is Thursday, December 10, 2015 from 6-8pm. Sales are encouraged and many artists have donated the proceeds back to the Griffin.

Steven Duede Selections from the Evanescence Series

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In much of my work I’m dealing with subjects that are in a transitory state. The Evanescence series features images from composted organic materials. In this body of work I’m exploring the mechanics of transition through time, neglect and natural decomposition. I hope to establish images that can be beautiful and chaotic. Subjects that in their own specific way function as a part of a transient process. This ongoing series has been developed over the past two years and included are some of the newest selections.

Our thanks to GTI Properties and SoWa Boston for their continued support of the Griffin Museum in bringing this exhibit to the public.

Reception with the artist: Friday, February 5, 2016 from 6-7:30 pm

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