August 20 – September 28, 2025
Reception for the artists - Saturday August 23 , 4 to 6pm
Jennifer’s class talk: September 10, 2025 6:30 to 8pm online
Emily’s class talk: September 11, 2025 6:30 to 8pm online
We are pleased to present the portfolios of the Photography Atelier 39 creative artists.
Photography Atelier is a portfolio and project-building course for emerging to advanced photographers taught by Emily Belz and Jennifer McClure.
Participants engage in supportive critical discussions of each other’s work and leave with a better understanding of the industry and the ability to edit and sequence their own work.
Instruction in the Atelier includes visual presentations based around an assignment which is designed to encourage experimentation in both subject matter and approach. Students learn the basics of how to approach industry professionals to show their work and how to prepare for a national or regional portfolio review. There is discussion of marketing materials, do-it-yourself websites, DIY book publishing and the importance of social media. Students learn the critical art of writing an artist’s statement and bio.
The students here were part of our year long portfolio development program from Fall of 2025 to Spring 2025 and we are thrilled to see their work in the main gallery at Winchester.
Students of Jennifer McClure:
Margaret Rizzulto | Judy Katz | Francine Sherman | Georgia McGuire | Linda Bryan | Shawn Ewald | Julia Buteux | Benita Mayo | Irene Matteucci
Students of Emily Belz:
Julie Berson | Jiana Cipriano | Janet Smith | Megan Riley | L. Jorj Lark | Donna Gordon | Craig Childs | William Feiring | Jennifer Erbe | Paul Baskett
Students of Jennifer McClure:
Paul Baskett: Uncertain Designs
Tension–between truth and fiction, clarity and opacity, assurance and uncertainty–drives my image-making. I believe questions fuel creativity, and my work embraces ambiguity as a space for exploration rather than resolution.
Uncertain Designs consists of a series of discrete images conceived as disconnected tableaux, stage sets seen just after the curtain rises and lights go up, but before actors appear or speak. In this hushed, liminal space anticipation builds, questions flourish, and narratives, still undefined, can go anywhere. These images combine multiple photographic and discrete AI-generated elements, digitally collaged and manipulated as guided by intuition, to create layered, open-ended narratives that resist fixed meaning, challenge certainty, and encourage curiosity. There are no answers here; I am, after all, only the stagehand. You are the director, the playwright. Take these sets where you will.
As we all increasingly are bombarded by lies masquerading as truths, as authoritarian authors disparage inquiry and promote absurdities as wisdom, our ability, willingness to question, to create unbounded by dogma, is more important than ever. By blending the “real” with the constructed, I invite viewers, both here and most especially once outside the gallery, to question, to engage with the unknown, to embrace uncertainty, and to find meaning not as delivered but on their own terms.
Jule Berson: Women Speak on the Election
Women’s rights were central to the 2024 election. As a woman I turned to art as a way to connect with other women in particular, across the entire political spectrum. I wanted to understand what they were thinking and feeling in these polarized times.
I worked in two media – photography and the written word – both photographing and interviewing each woman. I wanted their words to convey their thoughts and feelings, and the intimacy of the photographic portraits to reveal what words could not. No woman is identified with any specific quote, in order to dispel stereotypes. My own preconceptions were quickly shattered as I heard the layered and sometimes surprisingly unstereotypical ideas and thoughts that were shared with me.
The intention of this project is to bear witness to the common humanity of women from every political perspective. To offer the hope that we can reach for each with both empathy and accountability, even in the most extreme environment. In doing this work I learned that a deeper connection and understanding is possible for me and that every woman I spoke to was thirsting for the same thing, despite our differences.
Perhaps by having one conversation at a time, one connection at a time, “bird by bird”, we can be healed.
Craig Childs: Hardwick: Preservation of a Way of Life
Moving from rural Texas to Boston in the summer of 2020 I was searching for a link to home, having been away from city life for over 20 years. I found it at alocal outdoor farmer’s market, leading to friendships with several of the farmers from the village of Hardwick, Massachusetts.
Hardwick, a township in central Massachusetts was established in 1739 and consists predominantly of the village of Hardwick, and Gilbertville, which began as a mill town in the 1860s. At first, the visitor sees a New England common of colonial era homes, buildings and churches, begging to be on a Christmas card. The surrounding small family farms, pastures, and greenhouses stand in contrast to the larger scale industrial farms of the Midwest. The village of Gilbertville, with its depression era mills, evoke memories of long departed New England textile manufacturing.
Hardwick has become dear to this Texan’s heart. It’s a place where the residents tell the stories of local villagers who founded the town in the aftermath of King Philip’s War that opened central Massachusetts to European settlement. Stories of those who fought in the “French War”, of those who were the patriots and who were the Tories at the outbreak of the “Rev War”-all of which inform the conversations after a day of planting, or harvesting, or rebuilding a rock wall or repairing a tractor. Shay’s rebellion is discussed with respect. A place where the local farmers sell their produce in farmer’s markets, preserving a way of life inherited from colonial days.
This ongoing photo project begins with what it means to love where you live and what you do. Yet, along side the resilience of the farmers, Gilbertville struggles yet with the poverty, crime, and joblessness left behind by the departure of manufacturing. Understanding this community requires an appreciation of these tensions, without which the narrative of the small farming community would be incomplete.
Jaina Cipriano: Title
At 17 time stops. You have forever briefly in your grasp. You remember, don’t you? Any thing was possible and nothing mattered. The future is a beautiful dream, never approaching.
Trouble has no meaning and boundaries are meant to be pushed. To learn when to stop, you have to go too far. And you are a lucky one if you don’t write your future on an unfortunate incident.
This time in my life has been deeply etched in my memory and I can’t let it go. It haunts me. And I think I somehow always knew it would. The photographs are visual journals, I kept a meticulous record of this time. It was the only way to cope with the change I knew was coming.
These photographs are the last of time before the internet became a place. We wandered aimless as kids. Our flip phones, always dying and being charged on the go, gave us a way to connect- “where u at?” and that was it. Life was outside the phone.
Now phones are an extension of ourselves. When the phone and the camera fused with smartphones photographs stopped being memories and started becoming content. Our photos weren’t personal documents anymore, they were public.
When the camera turns on people now there is a new awareness-where will that photo go? Who will see it? And what will they think of me?
I see a freedom in these images that is of that age, yes, but that is also of the time. We were living on the cusp of change, the very last of a free world.
Jennifer Erbe: Dislocation
I was raised as an only child by adoptive parents who loved me dearly, but never really understood me. I never fit the way my mother wanted me to be. I was a curious kid who spent a lot of time by myself. I loved to explore outside, finding clay and picking wild strawberries. My hair was tangled, and invariably I had dirt on my knees, despite the smocked dresses and patent leather shoes she favored for me.
The photographs in this project document spaces in the middle–between two worlds. Trails that wind along the Charles River and back onto commercial neighborhoods. City parks and urban residences. They contain unseen characters and stories. These places ask questions of me when I’m walking: Are these stories about the family I grew up with, or the one I never knew? Am I making narratives? Self-portraits?
These in-between spaces feel familiar. They inhabit two opposing identities–natural beauty and practicality, industrial spaces and beautiful light, nature and concrete. The odd character of these spaces reminds me that being a little off is okay. Often there is a human presence in an unexpected place, or a portal that calls me to come and explore. Usually, though, the portals only expose more questions. Questions about myself, little hints of who I am–but no answers.
William Feiring: Feel The Music
The power of music is universal.
Most of us have songs we love. Music can remind us of people, places or experiences that hold meaning for us, as well as evoke feelings of joy, excitement, or sadness. When I Listen to “Mother’s Song” by Gregory Porter, I always think of my mom and how important she was to me in my life.
For this project, I asked people to listen to music that holds meaning for them while being photographed. I wanted to capture their emotions to the music. Some of the songs chosen I new, and during the sitting, I often found myself absorbed by the melody or lyrics and forgetting I was supposed to be taking a photo.
Just like the many genres of music, many kinds of feelings were evoked, from sorrow to happiness. Some were meditative as they listened, others more physically expressive. Before a session, many people voiced that they were apprehensive about being photographed, however the power of the music moved everyone beyond self-consciousness. Four days after sitting, Brown, ninety-four, old me “Been a long time since I’ve taken the time to enjoy those musical pleasures.” Eight days later Brown passed away.
I. Jorj Lark: Urban Stutter
Initially there were moments of reflection. I’d pick up in my camera to capture reflections upon glass or shiny surfaces, or water. Puddles, seas, raindrops. Did you know that the whole world lives upside down in a dew drop. Do you know how many dewdrops there are in the grass in the early morning? In these reflections, the cityscape was inverted, curved, managed into a multiplicity of itself. This became my notion of urban stutter. That the street environment has multiple, moving, variable points of view at any given instant. Dynamic. Irrepressible experiences that are multifaceted, fractured, refracted, reflected, repeated over and over until the myriad voices strung together create a new meaningful whole.
The scent of wet cement, for example, and textures, and sounds, a vital gust of wind, evolved my definition and moments to capture as reflected environment. Also the notion of nature inserting herself in countless ways. And lately, as I live in wonder at the cacophony and quietude of macro to micro, it dawns on me how very many decisions have been made by individuals to concoct these environs. Stunning.
As a street photographer, primarily, I’m moving from literal to abstract visual moments as I’m documenting “exactly” what i see. One spot can bring about impressionism, surrealism, any fine art painterly modality, all inspire me. My photography is bold. Bold colors, shapes and I give a moment for things that inhabit the sidelines or act as backgrounds in our lives to inhabit the center, to be considered elegant and sublime and meaningful.
I feel like I’m stalking beauty. That the world itself, all of it, each singular component is ineffable, remarkable, a profound miracle of existence. The edges of texture, scent, the thunder of a working construction site all substantial, amorphous and impermanent. I wonder who made you? For what? And why are you so beautiful? Or ugly beautiful? I share these images with you in the hopes that you will see it too. On my very worst days, I remind myself that I get to see in color. Here for you are some of my best days.
Megan Riley: Self, Preserved
As I march firmly into my sixties, I can’t help but notice (and yes, participate in) the absurd lengths women–in life and on social media–go to in an attempt to stop the unstoppable, aging. We are bombarded with a staggering variety of creams, potions, procedures and exercises designed to keep us young. The results are often hilariously cringe-worthy. More horrifying than if we did nothing at all. Beneath all this lies society‘s demand for youth and perfection, and to erase the physical manifestations of a life lived. Our worth tied to how well we preserve the physical version of ourselves that once was.
Self, Preserved is about the desire to resist time and the folly in trying to control what is meant to change. Using metaphor and humor, I explore this concept by sealing physical representations of women’s body parts (including my own) in plastic. These plastic encased objects become distorted and unnatural, just like we become the harder we try to stop the natural process of aging. The irony being that the more we attempt to preserve the bits of ourselves, the more disconnected we become from our whole, authentic self.
Janet Smith: Unexpected Beauty
Three dead hosta leaves in my driveway marked the beginnings of this project. They were pretty, all curled and graceful so I saved them. In walks around the neighborhood, I found more leaves that had let go of their anchors and so began what has become a multi-year still life project.
My leaf collection grew to include other types of plants and new discoveries were everywhere: on walks in the woods, in fields, by ponds, at the edges of parking lots and wherever wild things grew. As I walked through the seasons, I selected new subjects based on their delicate and graceful shapes, interesting textures, and patterns of their branches.
During this time, I also photographed the changing light on the landscapes around me and used these photos as backdrops for my still life arrangement. This process transformed simple photos of botanical forms into quiet moments where a still life and a landscape dissolved into one another.
The plants preserved in my photographs make me marvel at finding beauty in nature where we least expect it. They are memories from seasons past and invite pause, stillness and reflection on nature and the passing of time. When I complete this project, I will say goodbye to my collections and return them to nature.
Students of Emily Belz:
Linda Bryan: Title
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Julia Burteux: Title
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Stacey Ewald: Title
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Judy Katz: Title
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Benita Mayo: Title
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Irene Matteucci: Title
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Georgia McGuire: Title
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Margaret Rizzuto: Title
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Fran Sherman: Title
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