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.

July 9, 2012 (Winchester, MA)_ Alysia Macaulay says her project The Quiet “was created as a visual response to chaos, both past and present, in my life.”

The Quiet is featured in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin Museum July 19 through September 2. An opening reception with the artist is July 19, 7 p.m.

“Centered within the intimate confines of my family and home, this series takes the viewer from the first break of dawn into the hollow hours that pass through the night,” Macaulay says. “Each image illustrates quiet, a necessary documentation, as chaos overpowers and often erases any memory of existence.

She continues, “Through this project I explore the beauty, poignancy and loneliness of quiet. While it is something we often crave and strive for, it is easily bypassed or abandoned altogether.”

Macaulay says that living in a digital age, people are compelled to stay connected even when alone.

“How then does one process and reflect before moving forward?” she asks. “Quiet gives us that opportunity, however, it has to be recognized and ultimately balanced. Too much quiet is often equated with loneliness and the lack of it leaves one overwhelmed. Due to its very nature, quiet is easily overlooked. This series is meant to bring the viewer into a place of quiet.”

Macaulay, a native of Boston who now lives in New York, graduated from William Smith College with a degree in art history and studied at the International Center of Photography in New York.  Her work has been widely exhibited.

St. George is a fishing town of 2,800 people and not a single traffic light. It is situated on the Bay of Fundy in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. The magnificent bay is known for the highest tides on earth, frigid waters, and dramatic skies. The short maritime summers with long evenings are cherished as a time for gathering around bonfires as they have been for generations.

St. George’s economy is based on its thriving farm raised salmon industry. To give you a sense of the scale, Cooke Aquaculture annually sells more than 160 million pounds of Atlantic Salmon. Because the traditional catch of herring or cod have diminished, independent fishermen now meet the demands of expanding global markets by scuba diving for sea urchins, harvesting periwinkles and seaweed, and hauling in lobsters.

Being a photographer and new to the Bay of Fundy, I documented our family adventures in this landscape. As friends and neighbors shared antidotes about their home, I recognized it was in flux, and decided to create a more enduring document to speak to the collective memory of the people of St. George and New Brunswick.

This body of work consists of two distinct series, “Shades and Shadows” and “Skylight Views”.

These images were taken in my home, an intimate and familiar place to me. They take on temporal qualities of a slow, quiet nature as I observe their constantly shifting features. Shown in sequences or assemblages, they reflect on the act of deliberately looking; creating a visual language of fragmented moments, layering the complexities of the human capacity to comprehend

In Shades and Shadows I have recorded the light and shadows cast on a window shade. Ever changing in their appearance, yet remaining constant in their physicality; light, and time transforming the viewer’s experience. Each photograph is a suspended moment, continuous and fleeting.

Skylight Views are observances seen through a skylight. They are, at first, spatially ambiguous until one grasps their unique perspective, evoking a somewhat uncomfortable or disorienting sensation. The viewer is invited to look at and through the glass surface, observing the presence of time through the changing seasons and light.

Viewing each work becomes an experience relating to the viewers understanding of his own surroundings. These ephemeral images evoke the passage of time, seasons and weather. They heighten our sense of impermanence. The subject matter becomes the experience of seeing; common encounters in intimate and familiar places explore moments where content and meaning become inseparabl