Michael Burka has served in various capacities on the Griffin Museum Board of Directors since 2012. He developed an interest in the technical aspects of optics and photography as a child. This developed into a professional career designing optical instruments and a passion for the photographic arts and sciences. Michael and his wife, Barbara, are longtime residents of Winchester.
Fern L. Nesson
Fern L. Nesson is a graduate of Harvard Law School. She received an M.A. in American History from Brandeis and an M.F.A in Photography from the Maine Media College. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She practiced law in Boston for twenty years and subsequently taught American History and Mathematics.
Nesson’s photographs have been shown internationally in solo exhibitions at the Politecnico University in Torino, Italy, Les Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles, France, Ph21 Gallery in Budapest, Hungary and at The University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. In the United States, Nesson has had solo exhibitions at the Griffin Museum of Photography, at MIT and Harvard, and at the Beacon Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts, the Pascal Gallery in Rockport, and Maine, and Through This Lens Gallery in Durham, NC. Additionally, her work has been selected for numerous juried exhibitions in the U.S., Barcelona, Rome and Budapest. Nesson’s photobooks, Signet of Eternity and WORD, won the 10th and the 12th Annual Photobooks Award from the Davis-Orton Gallery. Her photography can be found at www.fernlnesson.
Pip Shepley
Pip Shepley is a lens-based artist who is fascinated by the interplay of the artistic and technical sides of photography. Shepley frequently captures using infrared, his imagination piqued by capturing a subject which the eye cannot perceive. His photographs explores the unseeable feeling of a place or object by paring it down to a simpler level.
Currently he is exploring the capabilities of a camera obscura which he designed and built. The process merges tremendous digital control with the unpredictability and mystery of analog processes. It touches his passion for science and creativity.
Pip started photography while at Milton Academy, completing the offered courses as well as an independent study project in photography. He ran lab sessions and was photo editor of the yearbook and newspaper. He has since studied art and photography at many venues including Maine Media Workshops + College, New England School of Photography, Griffin Museum of Photography and MassArt. His teachers include Brenton Hamilton, Tillman Crane, Michael A. Smith, Jon Cone, Stephen Tourlentes, and David H. Wells. He continues to work with photographers John Paul Caponigro, Vincent Versace and Ron Rosenstock. Pip was a member of the Griffin’s Atelier 20 and 38.
Shepley’s photographs have been in over 60 exhibits, including the Griffin Museum of Photography, Center for Photographic Arts in California, A Smith Gallery in Texas, PhotoPlace Gallery in Vermont, Black Box Gallery in Oregon, and Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts. He is a Board member of the BCA Photo Group in Bedford, MA, where he invites renowned photographers to present to the organization.
Shepley’s 32 year career at Mass. Electric Construction Co. was in the cradle-to-grave financial management of the design and building electrical mega-projects, primarily the signals, traction power and communications systems for rail systems throughout the US. He retired in 2013 after 17 years as Vice President.
Pip holds a BA in Romance Languages from Colorado College. He enjoys sailing, skiing, and hiking with his wife, artist Martha Wakefield. They live in Belmont, MA.
Donna Tramontozzi
Boston raised, Donna Tramontozzi has had a wide and varied career that focused on communicating using different media. A graduate of Boston College, she began as an English teacher and then transitioned into the burgeoning New England high tech industry.
Donna worked at Digital Equipment in a number of capacities, starting out as a technical writer and evolving into the Technical Director for the 1,200 person software services organization. She was repeatedly recognized by the organization for her exemplary leadership skills and creativity.
After honing these corporate skills, Donna took full advantage of the Internet as a medium. As co-owner and Chief Strategy Officer of New Tilt, a Boston-based interactive agency, Donna led large, complex award-winning website projects for Massport, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, MIT, Brown University and Dartmouth College. She also led the company’s museum and culture practice, working with the Smithsonian Institution and various small museums. In 2006, she sold her interactive agency to a publicly held company and started a boutique strategy consulting firm that focused on large-scale interactive projects, primarily in healthcare and non-profits.
Since retiring, Donna has devoted herself full-time to her love of photography and to exploring her vision of the natural world. Donna has studied at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, the Maine Media Workshops and the Griffin Museum of Photography. Her solo show, Optical Shards, has been shown in various Griffin–affiliated galleries and she has also exhibited in a variety of venues throughout the country. She was a finalist in 2023 Critical Mass.
Anthony Attardo
Tony Attardo is retired finance professional who is actively involved in the non-profit community near his home in southern New Hampshire. Known for his kind and compassionate demeanor, he provides support to their missions by donating his financial and organizational skills, and at times, direct client care. His love of photography and the Griffin Museum’s welcoming, vibrant, and creative community were the perfect match that began back in Atelier 24. Board service is his way of “Paying it Forward’.
His professional experience, highlighted by a 30-year career with Massachusetts based Raytheon Company, included the positions of Financial Systems Subject Matter Expert, Finance Manager of Mission Assurance and Quality, and Operating Budgets and Planning and Manpower. He retired from Raytheon in 2014.
Tony made a successful transition to the non-profit sector as a tutor in adult literacy and adult education. In a volunteer engagement that lasted several years and included various roles he helped displaced families remain together while working toward economic self-sufficiency. He also has experience in the manufactured housing sector as an organizational development specialist, providing resident community training on by-laws, board elections and roles and responsibilities, and short-and-long term planning.
Tony served as an Artist/Mentor in NH Seacoast Mental Health Center’s Art of Recovery Program: a collaboration between professional artists and clients, who together create original works of art which in turn supports clients progress on their journey to their own personal recovery.
Today, he is directly involved in a community bicycle organization dedicated to providing basic transportation to Nashua, NH area’s most vulnerable residents. Tony actively supports the Alzheimer’s Association MA/NH Chapter Ride to End ALZ committee and participates in its cycling events.
Erin Carey
Erin Carey is an independent curator, educator and artist based in New England, having earned her B.A. in Art History and Criticism from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.F.A. in Studio Arts from Tufts University and SMFA Boston. She is the former Academic Director and Gallery Director at New England School of Photography, where she had the privilege of working with more than one hundred artists from around the U.S and Europe, exhibiting diverse photographic projects and collaborating on public programming with regional institutions and educators. Erin is a regular contributor to regional portfolio reviews for emerging professionals and undergrads in Boston and has been featured as a juror at Photoville’s The Fence (2016 and 2019) , Dodho Magazine of Barcelona (2020) and currently serves on the Board of Directors at the Griffin Museum of Photography. Erin’s photographic work explores the of the American landscape and its vernacular. Her most recent project, A Spring that Love Remembered, debuted in the summer of 2020 and addresses the landscape of loss and the experience of ecstatic time. To see an archive of Erin’s curatorial projects and her own photographic work, please visit her website at erin-carey.com
Elizabeth Clark Libert
Elizabeth Clark Libert is a fine art photographer who lives and works in Cambridge, MA. She received a BA in Fine Art from Amherst College, a post-baccalaureate certificate from SMFA, and a Masters in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts. Her photographs have been exhibited nationally, and featured in various online and print publications such as the New York Times T Magazine, the New Yorker’s Photobooth, Mockingbird, and Lenscratch. Some of her photo heroes include Sally Mann, Larry Sultan, David Hilliard, Francesca Woodman, Nan Goldin, Tina Barney, and Alessandra Sanguinetti. Currently she serves on the board at the Griffin Museum of Photography and several local philanthropic committees. In her free time, she consumes indie movies, novels and photo books. She also enjoys live rock, historic homes, fashion, jogs, and spending time with her family of boys.
Judith Donath
Judith Donath is a writer, designer and artist whose work focuses on the co-evolution of technology and society. She has published numerous articles about social media, AI, ethics and anonymity, and is the author of The Social Machine: Designs for Living Online (MIT Press). As the former director of the MIT Media Lab’s Sociable Media Group, she and her students designed innovative interfaces for on-line communities; their art projects examining the future of identity, privacy and mediated life have been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide. Currently, she is a faculty fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center and is writing a book about technology, trust and deception.
Andrew Epstein
Andrew D. (“Drew”) Epstein is a partner in the firm of Barker, Epstein & Loscocco, a full-service Boston, Massachusetts law firm.
Drew represents hundreds of design and image professionals especially photographers, illustrators, design firms, advertising agencies, museums and other individuals and businesses involved in photography, art, illustration, and imaging. Drew also has an extensive knowledge of antiques and regularly represents antique dealers, appraisers and auctioneers. In addition to general business law and litigation, Drew’s practice focuses on copyright, trademark, contracts and licensing issues.
Drew is an accomplished trial attorney with over three decades of successful jury and non-jury trial and appellate court experience in both Massachusetts and Federal courts. Drew has successfully represented clients in a wide variety of cases, including multi-million dollar personal injury actions, $1.1 million for copyright infringement, and $1.2 million for damaging several works of art.
He is a former president of the Board of Directors of the Photographic Resource Center and has been on the Board of the Griffin Museum for the last seven years.
Drew was an adjunct professor at Boston University for six years where he taught Legal Issues for Arts Administrators in the graduate school Arts Administration Program. Drew has been a frequent guest lecturer to academic, professional, business and legal groups on copyright and trademark law, art law and general business law. He writes frequently on copyright law, contract law and legal and business issues for photographers and artists. Drew was awarded the first annual Attorney of the Year Award by the Massachusetts Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts in 2002.
Frances Jakubek
Frances Jakubek is an image-maker, independent curator, and consultant for artists. She is the co-founder of A Yellow Rose Project, past Director of the Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York City, and Associate Curator of the Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts.
Recent curatorial appointments include Potential Space: A Serious Look at Child’s Play featuring works by Nancy Richards Farese; Critical Mass, Portland, Oregon; Filter Photo, Chicago; The Griffin Museum of Photography; British Journal of Photography; Les Rencontres d’Arles, France; Save Art Space, Los Angeles; and Photo District News.
Jakubek has been a panelist for the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Photography fellowships, speaker for SPE National and Colorado Photographic Arts Center, and lecturer for the School of Visual Arts, University of New Mexico, and Washington and Lee University. She has taught workshops for the Cambridge Art Association, Maine Media, and the University of Iowa and serves as an advisor to the Rhode Island School of Design and Clark University program.
