Shows Archive

Gary Briechle Critics Pic

Posted on January 17, 2013

Artist Statement
Gary Briechle makes portraits of his family and friends in the small towns and rugged terrain that hug the Maine coast. Briechle photographs using large-format cameras and the wet-plate collodion process. He works with a portable darkroom on location –– in the driveways, living rooms and backyards of his subjects, deliberately forgoing the predictability of the studio. When making a photograph he hopes for an image, which is something other than he intended. He says of his work: “the tension between the demands of the process and the demands of the moment make each successful image more a gift given, not a photograph taken.”

Briechle’s portraits span the decades of life from newborns to elderly. Similarly his images cover the gamut from rich darkness to delicate highlights and sharp detail to fading focus. Brenton Hamilton writes, “Gary’s images are caught between two worlds, one that is mortal and wounded and another beautiful and luminous.”

Artists Bio
Having been a sculptor for many years, Gary Briechle has an appreciation for surfaces and materials. His non-photographic work can be found in the Jersey City Museum, The Hunterdon Museum of Art, and the New Jersey State Museum. Briechle has been working with photography for 13 years but continues to be drawn to textures and much of his photographic work, layers the intricacies of skin with the blemishes inherent to wet-plate collodion. Briechle’s photographs are represented by the Catherine Edleman Gallery, http://bit.ly/UG2PnU. The book Gary Briechle Photographs was recently published by Twin Palms Publishers, http://bit.ly/TJSBjq.

Critic Bio
Maggie Blanchard, Director
Twin Palms Publishers, Santa Fe, NM, USA
www.twinpalms.com

Maggie Blanchard is Director of Twin Palms Publishers. For over thirty years Twin Palms has published exceptional photography and art books with an emphasis on monographs. Each beautifully made book honors the original work while creating an object that has a life of its own. Formerly, Maggie was Co-Director of Center, whose aim is to help photographers identify their creative goals and accomplish them through feedback, support and opportunities. Maggie is also a photography teacher, reviewer and juror.

Judy Brown: Elliot

Posted on January 14, 2013

Judy Brown grew up in a small, rural Texas town and went on to become a scientist and educator in New England. Following her career, an interest in photography rekindled her passion for horses.

A series of her photographs, Elliott is featured at The Griffin Museum at the Aberjona River Gallery, 184 Swanton St, Winchester, MA, December 3 through February 24.

“My admiration and longing for the horse began with a Shetland pony while I was in kindergarten in a small town in Texas,” Brown says. “We had class in front of the teacher’s house; the pony was kept in the back. It appeared each morning to be ridden by each of us for a short distance back and forth. Then it was put away, but remained in my imagination.

“So large and beautiful to my young eye and more important at that age, such fun to ride, this pony became the symbol of the unattainable as I grew up without one of my own, ” Brown says.

Brown attended Rice University and the University of California at Berkeley earning B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in physical chemistry. After nearly three years of postdoctoral work in physics outside Paris, she returned to the states in 1964 to a position in the physics department at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she spent four decades. During half of that she was also a visiting scientist at the MIT Media Lab studying computer perception of musical signals and later computer classification of marine mammal sounds. Currently Brown, of South Natick MA, is Professor of Physics Emeritus at Wellesley College.

Since taking a Photoshop II class at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2007, she has devoted most of her time to photography, taking two more classes in digital photography at RISD and two studio art classes at Wellesley College.

When a fellow student in a RISD course suggested she take pictures of what she loves for a landscape assignment, she chose horses. “I like doing minimalist images of horses in their stalls where the background is simple and the abstract form of the horse can dominate,” she says.

“I came to appreciate the expressive power of form and texture, used in these abstract images to communicate the unattainable and mysterious qualities of horses,” she says “This set of 18 minimalist images of a spirited pony in his stall were taken with natural lighting against a dark background isolating the form of the pony from his environment.

“They best capture my vision of the spirit and beauty of line of the horse, the ineffable; but are more the product of the occasional luck of the shutter release than a `defining moment’ ” she says. “They are dedicated to my subject, Elliott, the Little Leprechaun’. ”

The Griffin Museum at the Aberjona River Gallery is at the Aberjona Rehabilitation and Nursing Center, 184 Swanton St., Winchester, MA. It is open seven days a week, 11 AM – 5 PM. Visitors should enter at the parking lot entrance and see the receptionist.

Sue D’Arcy Fuller: Memory

Posted on January 14, 2013

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

Patricia Lay-Dorsey: Falling Into Place

Posted on January 14, 2013

Patricia Lay-Dorsey was a marathon runner, long-distance cyclist, and dancer when she experienced her first unexplained fall in 1988.

Eight months later, she was diagnosed with chronic progressive multiple sclerosis. She was 45 years old.

Lay-Dorsey used art and poetry to express feelings about the changes she was undergoing, progressing from a cane, to a walker, to a motorized scooter.

“It was not until I got serious about photography that I dared look intimately at my body,” she says. “I started taking self portraits with the intention of showing from the inside the day-to-day life of a person with a disability: that person being myself.”

A series of her self-portraits, Falling Into Place, is featured in the Griffin Gallery of the Griffin Museum January 17 through March 3. An opening reception with the artist is January 17, 7-8:30 p.m.

Lay-Dorsey uses a wireless remote-control shutter release and self-timer on her camera to capture herself involved in every day activities.

“It is one thing to photograph someone else’s struggles and quite another to turn the camera on your own,” she says. “There is no place to hide.

“I tell myself that any pain I feel is worth it because these photographs will give people an inside view of what it is like to live with a disability,” she continues. “I realize now I was doing it for myself. I needed to become intimate with this stranger, my body.”

Lay-Dorsey says taking self portraits has “helped me see my body for what it is: a warrior, an ally, my best friend. It is an amazing partner who works unceasingly to help me live the life I choose.”

“Sure, I have to respect its needs and limitations, but in return it gives me the freedom to be myself, my true self. What more can I ask?”

Paula Tognarelli, executive director and curator of the Griffin Museum, says Lay-Dorsey “boldly leads the viewer to bear witness to her aging and disabled body. These photographs are also a means for her discovery as if reacquainting with an old friend.”

“She can no longer walk or run marathons, but Lay-Dorsey moves whatever she can to make a dance,” Tognarelli continues. “In her 70s, she’s active, determined, and certainly no bystander in life. Her photographs are hopeful and vibrant and inspirational to those of us who need a dose of resilience every now and again.”

A gallery talk for museum members by Lay-Dorsey is at 6:15 p.m. January 17, prior to the opening reception for all exhibits.

David Pace-Burkina Faso: Night and Day

Posted on January 14, 2013

After more than 25 years as a photographer, David Pace says a 2007 visit to Burkina Faso – a small, rural, and poor country in West Africa – changed his life.

“A week in the remote village of Bereba opened my eyes to a whole new world of photographic possibilities and projects,” he says. “The people were warm and welcoming. The landscape was stark but compelling. The culture was a complex mixture of tradition and modernity. Despite the logistical problems and the personal discomfort, I was determined to return to the village and explore it more in depth.”

And he has, every year since.

A series of his photographs, Burkina Faso: Night and Day, is featured in the Main Gallery of the Griffin Museum January 17 through March 3. An opening reception is January 17, 7-8:30 p.m.

“Everything began to change after I started photographing in Burkina Faso,” Pace says. “I soon switched from shooting film to using a digital camera. I began working in color instead of black & white. I started to feel at home in the village and comfortable with this lifestyle.”

He helped create a study abroad program through Santa Clara University in California that allows him to spend part of each year in the region.

“I have earned the trust of my friends and neighbors in the village and been allowed to photograph freely as a member of the community,” Pace says. “I have become a participant in the life of the village rather than an observer.”

He began attending weekly dances at a small outdoor club in Bereba, where he ventured on to the dance floor and began taking photographs. The series, called Friday Night, “has become a central component of my exploration of village life,” Pace says.

Paula Tognarelli, executive director and curator of the Griffin Museum, observes, “David Pace’s very kinetic Friday Night images triggered a corporeal response in me as I viewed them for the first time. I could imagine the heat and sounds of bodies dancing in the dark on the small dance floor of Le Cotonnier against the rhythmic beat of music.”

The exhibit also includes photos of the Karaba brick quarries and the Tabtenga brick basin.

Tognarelli says the images “hover between performance art and land art as workers carve a bounty from the land…The workers and brick cubes move indiscriminately across the landscape forming temporary installations against a backdrop of rich earthen hues.”

Pace says his goal is to be a “witness for the community of Bereba, to document the changes that are occurring at an ever faster pace and to create a visual record of the time we have shared.”

“Life in Bereba never ceases to be challenging,” he adds. “The constant heat, the insects, the poor roads, the lack of electricity and running water – all of these things require patience and firm resolve. But the vitality of the people, the austere beauty of the landscape and the sheer intensity of every moment keep me engaged day and night.”

A gallery talk for museum members by Patricia Lay-Dorsey – whose exhibit Falling Into Place is featured in the Griffin Gallery – is at 6:15 p.m. January 17, prior to the opening reception for all exhibits.

Mary Beth Meehan: City of Champions

Posted on January 14, 2013

Mary Beth Meehan grew up in Brockton, MA, the great-granddaughter of Irish immigrants.

“Growing up in the 1970s and 80s, I was surrounded by friends who were, like me, the children or grandchildren of immigrants: Lithuanian, Italian, Lebanese, Greek,” she says. “Our fathers were firemen and gas company men, mechanics, and grocery store clerks.”

She left Brockton for Amherst College in 1985. Over time, her parents and friends who remained behind described a changing city. Factories were closing, people were moving out, and the population was changing from an 80 percent white to mostly minority community.

Racism was rampant.

“In 2006, I began to use my camera to look into these impressions, to push past them, and to meet my hometown anew,” Meehan says.
A series of her photographs, City of Champions, is featured in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin Museum January 17 through March 3. An opening reception is January 17, 7-8:30 p.m.

“As I worked, I met immigrants from all over the developing world – families, small business people, students, musicians, churchgoers,” Meehan says. “They were this century’s version of the 19th –century European and they were people of color.

“But, these people were arriving on a stressed, tattered landscape and, unlike by great-grandparents, had no jobs to greet them,” Meehan says. “The old timers misunderstood and resented them. And the press, with its selective focus on crime and dysfunction, only deepened the cultural divide between old and new.”

Meehan says her photographs are “meant to push past headline, nostalgia, and stereotype and humanize this changing place….From the Irish politicians desperate to hang on to power, to the Haitian bride on her wedding day, to the young boy at his friend’s grave, these are human beings living in a city – a community – that has been battered by forces out of its control.

“But, they are still human beings and their lives make up the fabric of the United States,” she says. “They deserve to be seen.”

Meehan graduated from Brockton High School and earned a degree in English and fine arts from Amherst College. She has a master of fine arts degree in photojournalism from the University of Missouri.

She was a staff photographer for the Providence Journal 1995-2001 and is now a freelance photographer and educator, including being a member of the photography faculty at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She lives in Providence, RI.

Meehan presents a gallery talk about City of Champions March 2 at noon. It is free to museum members, $7 for non-members.

Saul Robbins: Initial Intake

Posted on January 14, 2013

Saul Robbins examines the empty chairs and office surroundings of psychotherapy professionals based in Manhattan, New York, from the point of view of the clients.

“From this vantage point I wish to reference the perceptions, associations, and responses to this very private environment, and the work that takes place there,” he says.

A series of his photographs, Initial Intake, is featured in the Griffin Museum at the Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, MA, January 22 through March 17. It runs parallel to the theater’s concert by The Edwards Twins.

A reception with the artist is January 31, 6-7:30 p.m.

“For many, the role of a psychotherapist holds significant weight and the importance attributed to him or her is one of profound influence in many of our lives, “ Robbins says. “Viewers are encouraged to consider the inherent personality in each of these environments, and the place of power being held across from them on a regular basis.”

Robbins’ family includes psychotherapists and he says, “This series stems from the belief that long-term challenges can be resolved by examining patterns in personal and familial history. It grew directly out of my response to one particular therapeutic relationship, and the necessity of questioning the efficacy and treatment of working with that practitioner.”

Robbins earned a master’s of fine arts degree from Hunter College in New York in 1999 and teaches photography at the International Center of Photography and Pratt Institute in New Work, as well as master workshops in Europe.

Robbins is speaking at the opening reception of Initial Intake.

John Hirsch: And Again: Photographs from the Harvard Forest

Posted on January 9, 2013

A psychology major turned photographer and educator, John Hirsch urges viewers of his work to probe and reflect on the ideas of community, recreation, and land use in America.

A series of his images, And Again: Photographs from the Harvard Forest, is featured at the Griffin Museum at Digital Silver Imaging, 9 Brighton St., Belmont, MA, January 18 through March 24. A reception with the artist is February 21, 6-8 p.m.

The subject of his photographs is a research forest that has been owned and operated by Harvard University since 1907.

“The forest offers a place where times passage is more consciously studied than almost anywhere else on the planet,” Hirsch says. “A place where technology and nature are so viscerally and overtly entwined that cables and wires emerge from the ground and descend from the sky, where trees are wrapped in plastic and metal, and the growth and movements of all things are tracked with unending precision.”

Hirsch says that like the work scientists do in the forest, his images “seek to find a balance between description and intervention.”
He adds, “This work is about a desire to understand, describe, and predict the evolutions of our surroundings while showing reverence for the sublime moments in a place.”

Hirsch, of Roslindale, MA, received a certificate in photography from the Maine Photographic Workshop in 2002. He has taught workshops in Maine and Boston and is now teaching photography at Noble & Greenough School in Dedham, MA.

The Griffin satellite gallery, which had been at 4 Clarendon St. in Boston’s South End, has moved back to its renovated and expanded space in Belmont.

Robert Moran: Relics

Posted on November 11, 2012

Robert Moran’s personal photography projects have taken him around the world. But for this series of images, he focused his lens on “common objects that are past their prime.”

Of the objects in the series, Moran says, “Once relied upon, they have been forgotten or discarded. I photographed each item singly in order to reveal its individual essence.

“Cracks and scuffs of hard use. Mended hinges. Patches worn smooth by frequent polishing”

Moran adds, “I came to appreciate how often function dictates form, and how frequently the form is right.”

He said in some cases the objects were used for years by one person, while in other cases they passed through many hands.

“They’ve been used in homes, offices, a school gym, and taken on house calls by a country doctor,” Moran says. “All of them have stories.”
Selecting and photographing the items caused him to “think about the events in my life to which objects have borne witness. In a sense, they are our partners in life.”

Moran says that over the years he has taken pictures of everything from classic cars to icebergs “and now…a table fan.”

“Each time, I strive to capture something of my subject’s essential spirit,” he says. “In this project, I have tried to achieve that by selecting items that display a unique aura, and in many cases, reveal wear and tear obtained from many years of use.”

Moran, a fine art photographer, lives on Mount Desert Island off the coast of Maine. His interest in photography began at age 12. After studying art at the University of Maine, he ran several businesses over the course of 20 years.
During that time, he pursued personal photography projects on trips to Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific. His recent undertakings have taken him to Cuba and Antarctica.

Moran’s work has been shown in galleries and museums throughout the U.S. His photographs are included in private collections in the U.S., as well as in Australia and Europe. His award-winning photographs have recently been published in The Photo Review, Shots Magazine, and B&W + Color Magazine.
The Griffin satellite gallery, which had been at 4 Clarendon St. in Boston’s South End over the past year, has moved back to its renovated and expanded space in Belmont.

State Fair

Posted on April 3, 2012

June 1, 2012 (Winchester, MA)__Christopher Chadbourne is a Boston-based photographer and storyteller intrigued with “accidental communities” comprised of strangers who momentarily and randomly occupy a common physical space.

He uses the relationships between subjects and between subject and context to explore culture, rituals, and place.

A series of his photographs, State Fair, is featured in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin Museum June 7 through July 8. An opening reception with the artist is June 13, 7-8:30 p.m.

“State fairs are both America’s most democratic institution and a stage upon which the idiosyncrasies of human behavior play out against a backdrop of color, contextual complexity, and human diversity,” says Chadbourne.

He describes state fairs as “a place of sensual overload on the eyes, ears, and digestive track.” And, Chadbourne says, “”It is a beloved American ritual to which people come by the millions every late summer and early autumn.

“They represent the spectrum of American diversity – in income, ethnicity, race, age, education, and occupation,” he says. “In no other venue in America does such equality and diversity occur…I wanted to photograph this American institution – engulfed in the crowd – subject and context intertwined; to capute the exuberance, the motion, the color, the facial expressions that suggest stories buried within.”

And, Chadbourne says, he wanted to document the unique tradition of state fairs at a time when many of them are becoming extinct. “While thriving in some states, the economic viability and the balancing act between the regional authentic and the anywhere generic are in many of the states increasingly precarious,” he says.

Chadbourne taught design for a decade in the graduate schools of design at Princeton, Columbia, and Harvard. He was founder and creative director of a design firm that crafted stories, exhibits, and multimedia for some of the country’s most prestigious museums.

In the past year, his photography has been exhibited in galleries and museums in Boston and New York City. He was a Critical Mass finalist, was included in the New England Photography Biennial, and was chosen as one of 10 photographers from New England whose work appeared in the International Flash Forward Festival in 2011 and the New York Photo Festival in 2012.

Chadbourne presents a gallery talk for museum members June 13, 6:15 p.m., prior to the public reception.

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