Artist Talk

Atelier 33 | Jim Turner

Posted on March 8, 2021

Jim Turner‘s collection Seeing in Threes is on display in the Griffin Main Gallery as a part of the Atelier 33 exhibition, open until March 26, 2021. We wanted to learn more about Jim’s innovative and insightful way of representing nature, so we asked him a few questions.

Which of these images was the impetus for this series? How did it inform how you completed the series?

One of the exercises we did in the early part of the Atelier was a “conversation” with another artist where we explored someone else’s artistic approach then created our own work as inspired by theirs. I chose Brigitte Carnochan as my artist to explore. I have always admired her work and I share her appreciation of the beauty of the natural world and of the intricate patterns and detail found in nature. One of the things she talks about is slowing the viewer down so that they can appreciate the beauty in an image in more detail. A method she has used to accomplish this is to divide images into triptychs so the viewer can appreciate each panel on its own in addition to as a part of a cohesive whole. As I applied this idea to some of my own photographs I was immediately struck by how much I felt that certain images were significantly enhanced by converting them into triptychs. Two of these early attempts, “Daffodils” and “Maple Leaves” were the impetus to make a series of botanical triptychs my project for the Atelier.

How has your photography changed since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic? Has the Atelier been a motivator to persevere through these trying times?

Unfortunately, like most of us, my options for photography have been very limited since the beginning of the pandemic. I seldom go much further than our own backyard or local gardens. The Atelier was a lifesaver, it kept me focused and allowed me to interact regularly with other like-minded and supportive photographers.

What do you hope we as viewers take away from viewing your work?

I hope that viewers will be surprised and pleased, as I am, by the hidden beauty in what we often regard as everyday things.

Tell us what is next for you creatively.

I would like to continue to expand my series of botanical triptychs while I’m waiting for the inspiration for my next project.

To see more of Jim Turner’s work, visit his Instagram, @Jim_Turner_Photos.

Atelier 33 | Lisa Cassell Arms

Posted on March 6, 2021

Lisa Cassell-Arms’ collection Aide Memoir (An Aid to Memory) is currently on view in the Griffin Main Gallery as a part of the Atelier 33 exhibition, open until March 26, 2021. Lisa’s Atelier work centers around the curious truth of gardens and the way they can be a source of reflection and comfort for its visitors. To learn more about her process of creating Aide Memoir, we asked Lisa a few questions.

How has your photography changed since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic? Has the Atelier been a motivator to persevere through these trying times?

For me, the Atelier has been a game changer. Pre-Covid, I was creating photos and working very much on my own. Ironically, it was the lockdown itself that allowed me to participate remotely in the Atelier. I don’t live in MA, so under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have been able to take part. The benefit of working through projects with feedback from our instructor Meg, along with sharing perspectives and ideas with others in the Atelier was invaluable and will propel me forward.

What do you hope we as viewers take away from viewing your work?

I hope that viewers will take a few moments to imagine themselves in the quiet, early dawn of the garden, and allow a kind of free-association as they take in the shapes, shadows and clipped forms. And then let their gaze wander to the edges where the mood shifts and where the path may be harder to discern.

What is the significance of documenting both the cultivated and the wild or natural space?

I’m interested in the contrast between cultivated space, where human presence (and control) on the landscape is evident, and where we have historically retreated for comfort and healing; and the wild space beyond the edges of the garden, where human presence fades and nature is unbounded. Placing them side by side invites a contemplation of two very different natural spaces.

Tell us what is next for you creatively.

The project I’m working on currently is a series of merged landscape images, inspired by antique stereoscope cards. The aged cards have a slightly unreal quality that has always intrigued me. In my series, I pair landscape images that I’ve shot in different parts of the world, at different times, so that when placed together, they enter into a conversation with one another. The visual dialogue between forms suggests a new, hybrid land.

For more of Lisa Cassell-Arms’ work, visit her website and her Instagram, @SeasonsInVermont.

Atelier 33 | Amir Viskin

Posted on March 5, 2021

In this highlight of the At elier 33 exhibition, we take a closer look at the work of Amir Viskin. His series, Ephemeral Abstractions is currently on view in the Griffin Main Gallery until March 26, 2021. Drawing inspiration from natural aspects of everyday life, Amir’s work reflects a new appreciation for the world around us in these unprecedented times. We asked Amir a few questions for some insight into his collection.

Which of these images was the impetus for this series? How did it inform how you completed the series?

One of the images that was an impetus for this series is “untitled – ice, frost, leaf.” During the fall I experimented with Macro photography, in an effort to photograph ephemeral elements (ice, frost…), and use them to construct abstract images evocative of imaginary landscapes. This led to a series of abstract compositions in which I also used symmetry and superposition.

How has your photography changed since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic? Has the Atelier been a motivator to persevere through these trying times?

I am first and foremost an outdoor photographer. The pandemic forced me to look for creative opportunities indoors or close to home. That meant finding small objects (stones, ice cubes, milkweed pods), or using Macro photography to get close (frost on a leaf, dew on a spiderweb). The Atelier was a welcoming, safe space in which to create, share ideas with my other talented colleagues and overcome the challenges of isolation.

What do you hope we as viewers take away from viewing your work?

I hope that they view my images as an opportunity to reflect on the shifting meaning of permanence, of what lasts and what disappears, and what is important in this new “normal.”

What did you discover about yourself and your surroundings through the art of abstracting reality?

I became more aware of the beauty of small and ephemeral objects, and their ability to open an internal conversation on the meaning of time and space.

Tell us what is next for you creatively.

I plan to continue using light, abstraction of composition as tools to explore the challenges we face as we begin to process the meaning of our collective experience this past year.

You can see more of Amir Viskin’s work on his website.

Atelier 33 | Angela Douglas-Ramsey

Posted on March 4, 2021

Angela Douglas-Ramsey‘s collection Carbon Copy is currently on display as a part of the Atelier 33 exhibition in the Griffin Main Gallery until March 26, 2021. Interested to know more about her deeply personal project of photographing her relationship with her daughter, we asked her a few questions.

Which of these images was the impetus for this series? How did it inform how you completed the series?

The image that is the foundation of my project is called “Looking Forward.” It embodies everything the project is about. My daughter is coming into the adult world as I watch. It is bittersweet. This project is ongoing. My goal is to continue it until she leaves for college. The Atelier helped me expand the way I photographed this project. My daughter and I do a daily “call and response.” It is a funny and meaningful visual conversation with a preteen and her mother.

How has your photography changed since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic? Has the Atelier been a motivator to persevere through these trying times?

Oh my gosh, yes, so much. I started creating self portraits and working on my thoughtful work. As a documentary photographer, when the pandemic hit, I had no more projects. I had to reinvent myself. The spring was a very trying time for me and photography gave me a purpose. I feel lucky to have gotten the last spot in the Atelier. The class has taught me so much. I see photography is a different way. Meg has been a great teacher. I have been challenged with each assignment and enjoy the challenges.

How has this project brought you closer to your daughter? Did you find yourself photographing your family in a different way than you did prior to the pandemic?

Yes. We go on photo walks together and giggle a lot during our portrait sessions. I could create an entire zine of our funny outtakes. Pre-Covid, I only documented my family. Now, I pose and use more of a narrative approach to tell stories within my family.

What do you hope we as viewers take away from viewing your work?

I hope the viewers see the relationship between a mother and a daughter. I hope they see the love and see the pull. The pull that my daughter is slowly starting to do.

Tell us what is next for you creatively.

I will continue to work on my long term projects. I have a new motivation for all of them. I am also working on a new self portrait project. I am still very much in the research phases and look forward to creating images in the coming months.

For more of Angela Douglas-Ramsey’s work, visit her and her Instagram, @AngelaDouglasPhoto.

Katalina Simon | Land Beyond the Forest

Posted on August 20, 2020

We are thrilled to be hosting an online conversation with Griffin exhibition artist Katalina Simon tonight, August 20th at 7pm Eastern.

For tickets see the Events page of our website.

Her beautiful series Land Beyond the Forest is hanging in our satellite gallery Griffin @ WinCam here in Winchester. The exhibition ends September 27th. We hope if you get a chance to get to Winchester you stop by and see this lovely body of work.

Katalina Simon is a British/Hungarian photographer whose work centers on the passage of time and cultural memory. Her interest in photography began when, as a child, she was told that taking pictures was not allowed in many public spaces in communist Hungary and she observed how precious photographs were to her family separated by the Iron Curtain.

Simon’s photography emphasizes her strong connection with history and the mood of the environments she photographs. Her image making is only part of a larger goal of experiencing a place, learning about a new culture or community.

Katalina holds a BA in Russian from the University of Bristol in England and is a graduate of the Professional Photography Program at the New York Institute of Photography. She is an exhibited member of the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA, PhotoPlace Gallery in Middlebury, Vermont and Fountain Street Gallery in Boston, MA.

The Land Beyond the Forest is an ongoing series depicting a fading way of life in rural Transylvania. This mountainous and remote region of Eastern Europe is steeped in history and lore. The rugged Carpathian Mountains kept invaders at bay and kept the remote villages isolated from the passage of time.

I am drawn time and again to this region and these people because it reminds me of a way of life that I experienced at my grandparent’s village in Hungary every summer. As a child, I was oblivious to the hardships that people faced and experienced only kindness and warmth. With my camera I work to recapture this feeling of storybook wonder and show domestic tableaux and rural people as I remember them.

For this exhibition I am focusing on the last generation of women who live this traditional rural life. My hope is to show the magic and poetry of the women who inhabit the “The Land Beyond the Forest.”

Bill Franson | Mason Dixon Line

Posted on May 13, 2020

The Griffin Museum continues to bring creativity to the photo community through our Artist Conversations. May 17th is the next installment, presenting photographer Bill Franson. The conversation will focus on his series of photographs along the Mason Dixon line. Hoping to get a preview of this what promises to be an engaging conversation, we asked Bill a series of questions. For more information and tickets, see our events page for more information.

What drew you to the Mason Dixon line to create this series. Why did you not take a more traditional tack and follow the line? What was it that led you to its periphery?

My older son was in college in N. Carolina and every year I’d travel down to drop him off or pick him up and during the solo portion of the trip I would slowly wander, taking a few days photographing along the backroads of the South. Crossing the Maryland/Pennsylvania border I’d usually see a Mason Dixon sign and I got curious and discovered the Line predated the Civil War by one hundred years, predated the Revolutionary War by about ten.

How could that be, when most of what we hear about the Mason Dixon Line is related to the Civil War? It was fascinating to discover that the intention of the line was to end a violent land dispute between two families, the Penns and the Calverts, whose land grants were ill defined. The astronomer Charles Mason and surveyor Jeremiah Dixon were sent from England to “draw” the line, utilizing the stars to establish their position. By the early 1800s the Mason Dixon Line was already considered a demarcation between free states and slave states, now a dispute over human property. Land as property and slaves as property and never mind the indigenous tribes!

Granite mile stones were placed every mile, larger crown stone every five. My original intent was to discover as many of these stones as I could, an attempt to touch history, and simply look around and see. I discovered two things. One is that over time property overlaid property, and many of the stones were not publicly accessible. The second is very few roads follow the Mason Dixon Line, which leads me finally to answer why I photographed the periphery. Because it is what I could do. It was very exciting to come across a mile or crown stone but much more exciting to park my car in a border town, wander, and photograph what caught my eye. As I followed the line west or south, I was literally spinning circles over the line, stopping, wandering, moving on.

The Mason Dixon Line lives in a historical context like a story in a book, for most Americans. Your work is not to document the line so much as to explore the edges. How do you seek to visualize the line in context of that historic demarcation?

The Mason Dixon Line is as mythic as it is historic, and the line is blurry between the mythic and the historic. If I am working within a documentary tradition I am, with all humility, following Walker Evans, and Robert Frank. Photographs can describe accurately, and suggest poetically. I’m all for the later, within the former. I never want to hit someone over the head with one interpretation.

Do you have a single image you go back to again and again as a personal favorite? What is it about the image? Composition, timing or was it in the capture, the moment of shutter release?

I often tell students as they are working on a project that there are “sticky” photographs and there are “stand alone” photographs, both have their functions. Mason-Dixon: American Fictions contain both, the sticky ones are supportive, the stand alone’s are iconic. Even though the project is five years old the difference is still pretty fluid. When you ask what it is about certain favorite photographs, the composition, timing, moment of shutter release, my hope is I can suck my audience in to that moment, to feel me there, the now when all of that collides. When I look at photographs, that is what I imagine, and it’s an electric thrill.

You work in black and white. What is it about the absence of color that illuminates your narrative?

Why black and white? There are several reasons for this, (a) that I consider black and white to be one step of abstraction away from experience, and more poetic, for me. There are photographers working in color who make amazingly poetic images. (b) I prefer the darkroom to the computer screen as a working environment, (c) maybe most important, I think working within limitations is critically important for creative endeavors. The encouragement that one can do anything with a digital image gives me hives, a sandbox has edges.

You shoot many images interspersing churches, religion or expressions of faith combined with the local surroundings. I see you also have a series on HolyLand. How does faith play into this work?

On the presence of religious symbols, churches, expressions of faith in my photographs: A simple answer is that churches, crosses, faith expressions are as abundant as the flag. The Christian religion and American pride feel like the warp and weft of the culture within this section of the United States. I’m actually very conscious of how many images containing flags, crosses, gun culture I make. Do I need more, am I saying something new? I grew up in a Sunday Christian family if you know what I mean. Belief didn’t necessarily extend beyond Sunday.

Like many teenagers I ran away from church soon after my confirmation, only to run back to it in Art School when I started reading the bible backward. A fertile imagination and a sense of a world gone wrong took the apocalyptic vision of the book of Revelation and ran with it. I actually took a break from Art school, eventually transferring to study philosophy looking for answers, diving deeply into the problem of evil, time and eternity, the mind/body problem, language and knowledge. Along the way the qualities of an angry, judgmental, there’s only “one way” God were replaced by compassion, grace. If faith enters into this project I would have to say it is not dogma and judgement but the desire to accept, attempts to be compassionate and open, that have cooled suspicious minds, opened doors, properties, and photographic possibilities.

In building a portrait of this region, what would you like us as viewers to walk away from this series with?

Regarding what I want my viewers to come away from, I’m not sure that has ever been one of my motivations. As a philosophy student “The un-examined life is not worth living”, as a photographer ”The un-photographed life is not worth living.”

About Bill Franson –

“If your everyday life appears to be unworthy subject matter, do not complain to life. Complain to yourself. Lament that you are not poet enough to call up its wealth. For the creative artist there is no poverty — nothing is insignificant or unimportant.”
Rainer Maria Rilke

Observe, and get on with it.

This is the short form:
Co-opted the family cameras in my youth. Who doesn’t?
Studied Photography at the Art Institute of Boston and earned a BA in Philosophy at Calvin College in Michigan.

I worked as a staff photographer at several production houses in the Boston area until going out on my own in the mid 90s.
Clients include Johnson & Johnson Innovations, Polaris Venture Partners, Paul Russell and Co., Classic Cars Magazine UK, Childrens Hospital-Boston, Brigham and Womens Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare, Lahey Clinic, Massachusetts General Hospital, The Peabody Essex Museum, The Boston Globe, Genuine Interactive, The Governors Academy…..

I’ve exhibited in numerous solo and group shows in Massachusetts, Michigan, New York and NYC, New Hampshire, Vermont, Virginia, Texas, and Toronto Canada. Personal highlights have been the Danforth Museum New England Photographers Biennial in 2015, 2011, and 2003, Strange Days at Philips Exeter in 2015, A Nickel and a Kopek at the NESOP Center for Photographic Exhibitions in 2008, Calvin College in 2011, and Panopticon Gallery in 2013. My work resides in various institutional and private collections. In 2014 I curated 21st Century Monochrome, an exhibition at the Barrington Center for the Arts at Gordon College, an exhibit created to highlight select contemporary Boston area photographers and their chosen materials and processes.

In 2006 New England School of Photography offered me a teaching position. I’ve never looked back. Teaching has reconnected me with those who are passionate about image making and actively exploring its possibilities. I taught my last class at NESOP in their 2019 Spring semester, finishing up two days before the school announced that it will close in 2020.

I am currently professor of photography at Gordon College in Wenham, MA. and am represented by Gallery Kayafas in Boston.

You can see more of Bill Franson‘s work on his website.

Artist Talk

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