Corona Exhibition

Corona | Dawn Watson

Posted on June 15, 2020

We close out our features on our online Corona exhibition with the powerful and graphic work of Dawn Watson. Message from Grace is a beautiful and unique vision of landscape with a call to action. Her work implores us to look, to experience, to take time and see what is around us. We asked her to be part of our online exhibition because her work shines a light both externally into the world around us, and emotionally radiates the soul of who we are in it. We asked her a few questions about her work, and what is next for her.

How does light play in your work?

I’m drawn to the play at the edge where light and shadow meet. My still life work takes advantage of the natural light that enters my home studio. The incremental, constant change of angle and intensity of direct sunlight or the softer fill of an overcast day means I need to be ever aware and responsive to what will best serve the mood or message. Being outside in the landscape requires the same intuitive presence as I am at the mercy of multiple elements but light is always the first defining aspect that I seek.

The Griffin featured Message from Grace in 2018. Your series plays on light and a new way of seeing our natural world. How did you find your palette to showcase the world around us?

While doing some research, I saw in a photo the color combination of brilliant blues and golds used for the external skin of the Mission satellites orbiting in space. By inverting my photographic image, these same tones appeared in the inverted field with little to no deeper adjustment to the color tone in the images. The reveal of the color negative upended my understanding of the natural elements. Sky became ground, sand a glacier, reflection a galaxy, invasive plant species delicate lacy delights, the brilliant sun a black hole.

In all of your images the combination of science, nature and visual engagement really invites us as viewers to experience and be thoughtful about our shared inhabited spaces. What is your hope for us as viewers to take away from your work?

There is this conversation of call and response in and with the natural world, each other, and the larger human community. How we respond now directly affects our future. Due to excessive human activity, weather intensifies, the world shape shifts and the familiar disappears. What is our relationship to loss, inequities, constant change? Where do we find shelter, sustenance and solace? How do we define beauty? What is its worth as the natural world morphs from the familiar to the unrecognizable and uninhabitable? My hope is this work inspires reflection that motivates action.

In this time of Corona, how do you find light in your day?

Forced confinement has been both a difficult challenge and, paradoxically, a gift granting me the chance to be still, to be quiet. Different each day, I track the passage of time as the sunlight makes it’s marks along the walls, ceiling, floors and furniture. I step outside often, turning towards the sun watching how it catches in the trees, how wind plays with the light.

What is next for you creatively? What are you working on?

Two new series have been gestating for a while. I was unsure of what I wanted to say and thought it best to let things be for a bit. Not until very recently did I reach some clarity. Drift/Bound visually translates my visceral response to how disconnected we feel as recent events have rocked our world. The crumpled, misshapen forms in my prints drift against fields of light and dark, unmoored, as we are, from any familiar world. ReRe is a still life series using saved plastic packaging material, natural elements and found or collected objects. It asks do we repurpose, recycle, redirect, reform and renew or let go of what remains?

About Dawn Watson –

After twenty-five years as a professional dancer, Dawn Watson shifted her artistic practice to photography, finding affinity in the visual storytelling offered by both live performance and the captured image. Watson’s photographic renderings continue to explore form, space, light, movement and storytelling, as she did as a performer. Nature serves as her muse, her subject of concern, a source of solace and healing.

Watson studied photography at the Maine Media Workshop, the ICP (International Center of Photography), as well as the Santa Fe Workshop. Her work has been featured online and in print, including in Lenscratch and The Hand magazine. She has exhibited her photographs and artist books throughout the United States and Europe including the Albrecht-Kemper Museum, A Smith Gallery, Center for Fine Art Photography, PhotoPlace Gallery, Ph21 Gallery, Tilt Gallery, Tang Teaching Museum, and in solo exhibitions at The Griffin Museum of Photography at Greater Boston Stage Company, the Los Angeles Center for Photography and Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts. Her work is held in private collections and at The Lodge at Woodloch.

To see more of Dawn Watson‘s work log onto her website. Follow her on Instagram here.

Corona | J. Felice Boucher

Posted on June 10, 2020

J. Felice Boucher‘s beautiful image Goddess is one of our featured images from our online Corona exhibition. The radiant light emanating from her subject is a moving tribute to the power of a soul. Her exhibition at the Griffin in 2019, Center of Quiet, featured portraits of women facing forward and showing strength in their quiet moments. We asked her some questions about her work and how she sees light in her day.

How does light play in your work?

Light is photography. I went to visit a young photographer at her studio and she said that “old timers wait for the right light. They should just take the damn photograph and fix it in PhotoShop.” That broke my heart. It took me many years to understand light and to really see it.

We highlighted your image Goddess from Center of Quiet, an exhibition featured at the Griffin last year. The Goddess image really showcases her power and strength, radiating from her soul. How did you work with her to capture that?

I ended up photographing two beautiful sisters. I met one of the sisters at a bank where she was a teller. When I photographed her she invited her sister to join us and I photographed her too.

I love fabric and textures so I found fabrics that would highlight their gorgeous faces and skin tones. They have such strong and beautiful features so I wanted to capture those.

“Red Headed Girl” © Felice Boucher

Your images have a beautiful textural quality to them, like paintings. What led you to this technique to accentuate the quiet strength of your female subjects?

I do try to capture the strength of women in a direct sensuous but not sexual way. For me there is a huge difference between the two; sensuous and sexual. The light and texture in the Old Master paintings are compelling to me. So I add texture of colors over my photographs to give them a painterly look.

In this time of Corona, how do you find light in your day?

I haven’t photographed since the Covid-19 hit us. I had been photographing my models in a little corner of my bedroom and it is no longer a possibility to bring people into my home. But I am always photographing in my mind even without a camera in my hands. I love watching how light falls on someones face, on a landscape, or a strong shadow created by a flower in a vase.

“Forgiven”, © Felice Boucher

What is next for you creatively? What are you working on?

Good question. Who knows. On my walks I pass a neighbor’s mustard colored dingy and rust colored chickens in the warm evening light…that pulls at me.

About J. Felice Boucher –

J. Felice Boucher has been a photographer with a career that has spanned 27 years. She earned her BFA from the Maine College of Art, as a non-traditional student and single mother of two young children. And was awarded the Master Degree, Craftsmanship Certification by the Professional Photographers of America. She opened her photography business and photographed weddings, portraits and commercial projects both locally and around the country for over 23 years. Recently she has given up the wedding and portrait work and now focuses on real estate photography and her fine are work. Her fine art photography has appeared in museums, galleries and private collectors.

Corona | Liz Calvi

Posted on June 9, 2020

One of our featured artists in our Corona online exhibition, Liz Calvi’s work illuminates inner beauty and light. Her series, Lost Boys was featured at the Griffin in 2014. Her Corona highlighted image, Christian, comes from that series. We wanted to know more about the work, and how she finds the beauty and strength within her subjects.

How does light play in your work?

The relationship I have to light varies for each series I make, but I would say a common thread would be that light is a defining factor when I create my work.

David, © Liz Calvi

For Lost Boys in particular, I wanted to use natural light to express a quiet beauty and a feeling of reverie. When I made this series, the narrative depicted my generation highlighted the success of women in the workplace and the decline of a 1950s mentality of men as masculine financial providers. We left high school in 2008 and entered either the job market or college during a financial crisis. The narrative excluded the hardship that many of us were feeling and, coincidentally, how these new circumstances were chastising men for not living up to an outdated view of masculinity. The young men I photographed were all living at home (as was I) and I wanted to use light to show a softer side to masculinity while concurrently evoking empathy towards our generation.

We highlighted your image from the series Lost Boys, featured at the Griffin back in 2015. The connection you have with your subject is truly captured in this intimate moment. How did it come about?

Christian, © Liz Calvi

Christian and I are from the same town, our childhood homes are right around the corner from each other. We became friends in high school so we already had an established relationship prior to making this photograph. As with most of the young men I photographed for Lost Boys I didn’t go in with a preplanned idea. I went to Christian’s home one afternoon and we chatted while walking around the different rooms in his house. I surveyed the light while listening to his stories as he told me various memories he had from different places in his home. We took a few photographs that day, but I settled on this one in his room because of the balance between the distortion and grace in his gesture, complemented by the dappling light.

In this time of Corona, how do you find light in your day?

Booker, © Liz Calvi

I’ve tried to see this time in insolation as a way to reexamine my relationship to light and nature which we tend to overlook in our typical fast-paced consumer society. I’ve been using my digital devices less frequently and taking my camera outdoors or simply just enjoying nature hands free. Light has been providing happiness and relaxation for me, it has been a solace in our time of Corona. I’ve also been making time to reflect in the spring light and hope it provides others with a similar time for personal reflection but also a time to consider how our society is structured and what it prioritizes.

Installation View Ms. World, © Liz Calvi

What is next for you creatively? What are you working on?

Recently I’ve been focusing on the representation of women in digital spaces and how this impacts identity from an autobiographical and collective cultural memory lens. This direction has led me to make videos and writing to go with my photographs in larger installations. I finished grad school this past year and am in the beginning phase of research, writing, and storyboarding for new video work.

About Liz Calvi –

Liz Calvi (b. 1990 Hartford, USA) lives and works between London and NYC. Her practice encompasses photography, video, writing and installation works with critical concerns regarding performance, sexuality, autobiography, identity and digital media.

Calvi received her MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths 2019 and her BFA from the University of Hartford in 2012 after studying at Pratt Institute. Her work has been featured in numerous publications including Der Greif, Juxtapoz, Aint-Bad and Fader. Her photography has been exhibited internationally and is in several public & private collections. She has a limited- edition book in the permanent collection at Antenna in New Orleans as part of The Blue Library Vol 2

To see more work from Liz Calvi log onto her website. Find her here on Instagram.

Corona | Kevin Hoth

Posted on June 8, 2020

Holding a mirror up to our surroundings isn’t just an idea for Kevin Hoth. In his series Everywhere and All at Once, shown at the Griffin in 2018, Hoth uses a mirror to give us that fuller view. Reflection is important, especially now, in so many ways. In seeing the landscape as a fully sensory lived and shared experience, Kevin has given us a way to experience light and life in a new way. His image highlighted in our Corona exhibition, Overdub, is a perfect example of light and the ideas of Corona.

How does light play in your work?

Mohawk © Kevin Hoth

It’s funny, I almost never think about it but that is because I am so intimately involved with it on a daily basis. Light is always the raw material in my work, of course, though I don’t generally make work about it unless it relates to a particular project I am working on. During this time of coronavirus I have indeed been tracking the shadows in my home as a way to trace time. There is an arrangement of oblique light that falls on my daughter’s piano that I jokingly call “cubist piano time.” I’ve thought about making an image every time it falls like this and then create a tiled image of all of these fractured pianos. Some plant shadows have featured in some of my work but it usually is just for play or observational practice with an instant film camera. We are also creatures borne of light. All the sustenance that we require comes from sunlight.

We are featuring your image Overdub, from your series Everywhere and All at Once. Your creation of a visual landscape that incorporates multiple directions showcases a unique way of seeing. How did you find your vision? What was the first image in the series that pushed you forward to work that way?

Overdub, © Kevin Hoth

I have always enjoyed noticing other spaces in reflections. About ten years ago I made some images looking into windows and I thought about how there were three spaces represented: the surface of the glass (a flat space but still a space to be rendered), what was inside the building, and what was behind me. So I think the consciousness of multiple spaces within one frame, from one vantage point was a growing seed inside me. The Everywhere And All At Once project really came from a mix of play and accident which is where all great discoveries come from. I was experimenting with mirrors back in 2012 for about a year and then set it aside as I didn’t know where it was going. Later a friend asked about the series so I picked up the mirror again and took it with me on hikes and road trips. I made an image of a mountain side connecting to a cloud, then one horizon line connecting into another and that is where my “ah-ha moment” occurred. As a photographic observer I often feel like I can see everything at once at one time. It’s almost a physical sensation. This project is a way for me to evoke that sensation. I also feel most alive in open, natural spaces and the expansiveness is something I am trying to show albeit from my singular vantage point.

Does the use of the mirror also hold a metaphorical gaze for you? In how we look at landscapes? What would you like viewers of your work to walk away with after seeing your photographs?

Cloud and Rock © Kevin Hoth

I suppose I’d like people to see what I see or at least feel some sensation of how I observe. I want the gaze here to be almost a disembodied or maybe a universal one. Although I am conscious that not all people have the same comfort level or privilege of being alone in a landscape. Some have noted a visual fragmentation in these images which one could liken to a Cubist viewpoint. Again, the idea here is merging several angles of view into one image even though I am combining them in one instant. I have made more of a conceptual connection to the way people often view landscapes through a phone screen. I’ve made a fair amount of this work in National Parks and when you stop at a prescribed viewpoint you see the phenomenon of the quick phone grab. We often are too busy looking through our phones to frame the right shot. Of course, I am also “guilty” as I am meditating my view through a camera.

In this time of Corona, how do you find light in your day?

I appreciate small things maybe in the same way a child would. Light falling on the floor from my skylight, shadows from a tree shifting on my window shades in the afternoon. A red-orange poppy coming up in my yard is a celebration for me. Color fills me up in extremely energizing ways. My current work is around flowers and I am endlessly fascinated by them. My daughter is also a constant source of joy and light for me. I’m not sure how I would be doing without long hugs with her.

What is next for you creatively? What are you working on?

I have been experimenting with instant film for quite some time and am currently working on a series called Immortal Chromatic. I photograph flowers that keep their color even after dying and then I create large instant film mosaics from these source images. I cut and burn the instant film “tiles” as they develop. The theme of creation and destruction has been part of this work with flowers across multiple projects. I am also integrating paint and thread into these physical pieces as well. They are photographs but they are also sculptural objects.

about Kevin Hoth –

Kevin Hoth is an artist working with photography, video and performance. His current work deals with perception and the manner in which multiple spaces can be formed into a singular frame. Kevin also works heavily with deconstructed instant film to explore themes of creation/destruction, truth as it is represented in photography, as well as beauty and transience.

Kevin Hoth in his studio

Kevin has shown work in over one hundred exhibitions nationally and internationally, including recent exhibitions at The Dairy Center for the Arts, The Rhode Island Center for Photography, The Houston Center for Photography, and The Center For Fine Art Photography. His work will be part of the Qualities of LIGHT symposium at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson in January of 2020. Recent awards include Top 200 Critical Mass, Center For Fine Art Photography Portfolio Showcase 12 and top ten finalist in the New Orleans Photo Alliance 2018 Clarence John Laughlin Award. Kevin recently completed an artist residency in January of 2019 in Brazil and explored how varied perceptions of time can be represented.

Kevin has taught college courses in photography, graphic design, and multimedia art at numerous universities and currently teaches at the University of Colorado Boulder where he has taught since 2011. He lives with his daughter in mountainous Boulder, CO and gets regularly woken up by coyote cries, owl hoots, and horse whinnies.

Fun facts: He did a stint as a full-time graphic designer for an Amazon.com company, made an interactive garment with force sensors that played odd bodily noises back in 2006, collaborated extensively with a modern dance company as a VJ, and played bass in a Seattle band that once played live on KEXP-Seattle.

To see more of Kevin Hoth‘s work, log onto his website. Look here follow him on Instagram.

Corona | Meg Birnbaum

Posted on May 30, 2020

Oil Slick, © Meg Birnbaum

Meg Birnbaum, featured in our online Corona exhibition, is a master of playing with light and life. The Griffin featured Meg’s series The Sisters of the Commonwealth in 2014. Her images seek out to highlight the quiet moments in the day, and remind us to stop, take a deep breath and wonder about the world we inhabit. Her image, Lights in the Sky, exemplifies this vision. We asked Meg about this image, and about how she finds light in her day.

How does light play in your work?

I love natural light and prefer the golden hours. This photograph is a window reflection but I thought they could be fairy lights or daytime fireflies.

images above – Fence & Opal Currant © Meg Birnbaum

Lights in the Sky is one of my favorite images in the show. How did you create such a great photograph?

Lights in Sky, © Meg Birnbaum

It was a lucky moment. I was finishing lunch in a restaurant and when I stood up to leave I saw that the retro lighting reflected magically in the window.

In this time of Corona, how do you find light in your day?

Mostly I find light in helping things grow, students or garden flowers. Also friends and family and dogs as role models – they always wake up optimistic.

What is next for you creatively? What are you working on?

Moon and Sleep © Meg Birnbaum

I’m playing with loosely recreating the allegorical paintings by Simeon Solomon, an almost forgotten painter from 1850 or so. His career was destroyed by the scandal of being arrested twice for soliciting sex in a men’s public bathroom. He died alone, an alcoholic in a house for the desitute. I love his work and it is easy to see through it to what he was really wishing for had it been another time in history.

About Meg Birnbaum –

Meg Birnbaum lives and works in the Boston area. She is a photographer, graphic designer, and educator.

Her most recent solo exhibition was at The Stonewall Museum and Archives, Fort Lauderdale in 2019. She has been featured with solo exhibitions at Gallery Tanto Tempo in Kobe, Japan, Corden Potts Gallery, San Francisco, The Lishui International Photography Festival, China, the Museum of Art Pompeo Boggio, Buenos Aires during the biennial Encuentros Abiertos-Festival de la Luz, the Griffin Museum of Photography, Massachusetts, Flash Forward Festival, Boston, Davis/Orton Gallery, NY, and Panopticon Gallery, Boston.

Meg teaches portfolio building classes at the Griffin Museum of Photography. She a member of the Griffin exhibition committee and designs their catalogs, signage and website. Her work is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, the Lishui Museum of Photography in China, the Meditech Corporation, and private collections.

To see more of Meg Birnbaum‘s work log onto her website. Follow her creativity on Instagram

Corona | Julia Borissova

Posted on May 29, 2020

From Running to the Edge, © Julia Borissova

First seen in 2014 at the Griffin, Running to the Edge by Julia Borissova is a beautiful series mixing image and object. Finding vintage photographs and adding organic materials, Borissova creates a sensory experience creating images as unique objects. As a featured artist in our online Corona exhibition we asked Julia about her work, and how light fills her days.

How does light play in your work?

A man in formal diplomat dress has a curve of orange flowers covering his left chest as if a shield.

Light is an important part of photographic art and is paramount to the artist. I will not go into details of the light-sensitivity of the silver halides as a key to the photographic process. But when I see old photographs, when I hold images of people from the past in my hands, I think about those rays of light that reflected from their real bodies and reached me, me here, now. As Susan Sontag says about photography: “A photograph of a missing creature will touch me like a retarded star’s rays.” And this is what excites me the most in my work.

Your work takes vintage photos, layered with organic blooms and reconstructs narratives into new tales. In bringing light to these anonymous people, how do you know when you have found the right combination of organic textures and new memories.

Three women stand in a line with hats on and dressed in suits showing from the chest up. Daisy like flowers cover the top of their heads.

When I was working on the Running to the Edge project, I explored means of creating content in the photos through their physical presence as objects and connecting them with natural element. I was thinking about how our memory functions. When we recall something from the past, every time we create a different image, replacing some parts with new ones. I decided to try the same with photographs – adding flowers to the old photograph, I wanted to give them a new meaning, a new life. I specifically did not create any compositions, this happens intuitively.

Anonymity is important to you in your images. Do you find that these unidentified faces lift our general assumptions based on looks that allow the light to shine?

Woman in coat and hat with pink flowers for eyes.

My way is a different one. Found images can be always a source of my inspiration. I bought all the photos that I used while working on “Running to the Edge” project at a flea market or antique shop. These photos are connected with the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the first wave of emigration after it. Combining old photos and flowers petals, sometimes covering people’s faces and making them completely anonymous, I created an atmosphere of general and indefinite mourning for unknown to me people through the medium of photography, the medium that is traditionally valued for its claim to authenticity.

In this time of Corona, how do you find light in your day?

At this time, however, as always, creativity give me a sense of light, freedom and vitality.

What is next for you creatively? What are you working on?

A woman in a long dress is standing in front of a column and a purple flower covers her head and chest.

I am working on several projects, one of which is still in the research process. Also, I continue to develop my project DOM (Document Object Model). “DOM” means a house, home or building in Russian language. I explore how our concept of home is changing over time and the notion of home is transforming in connection with the place in which we live. We are all used to moving from place to place, but today we are forced to stay at home. My question is: How have current circumstances influenced or changed our concept of “home”? I would like to collect the opinions of different people and make a small book to remember this time.

Review of Running to the Edge by Igor Lebedev –

Memory rolls in like waves causing a sudden and acute experience which doesn’t refer to a life of a specific person. This memory is connected to a cultural stratum. Everything is mixed here, the present and the past, some old photo portraits telling the stories of life which were erased by flow of time, dried flowers that represent markers of what was important but was forgotten, the memories of what happened, but couldn’t be remembered. So we can see it all in the pictures of the new series “Running to the Edge” by Julia Borissova.

The imperfection of memory provokes an artist to restore it, so in her work she turns to archives again and again, systematically reinterpreting them at the new levels of personal awareness of not ancestral memory but the memory of the nation. Through its reconstruction it’s easier to recover what has been lost and what has continued as consequences of birth traumas which took place in Russian history so often.
An archive is an anonymous evidence of elapsed time. The anonymity is inherent in a multi-level cultural de-identification of the past. However, despite the apparent constancy of its anonymity, it is surprisingly ready to manipulation according to the needs of everybody who faces it.

Two Russian soldiers with purple flowers.

The material included in the archive has great variability of its stories, as a rule, on a superficial level, which can be read from the perspective of nostalgic feelings of the past time in the context of personal experience. But the work with an archive is not only a subconscious desire for nostalgic revival of the past or an affect of overcoming losses in a chain of generations, although it means also some sensual experiences. It is rather an intuitive feeling of the boundaries rigidly dissecting an established world order, an attempt to understand the reasons for the “explosion” that changes the lives of many generations. And, in the end, created statement based on fetishes (old photographs in this case), the objects of so-called personal museum according to Sigmund Freud is an expression of protest arising at the point where the traumatic overcoming of a loss merges with the desire to counteract the possibility of its recurrence in the future.

It seems that such attempt of expression protest is characteristic for Julia Borissova who in her works refers to events from Russian history connected with the revolution and after that the first wave of emigration. In the old pictures the author adds the multi-layer effect through the using collage technique. The pictures themselves already have the images of a distant, “frozen” by photography past while the fragments of flowers imposed on them marked the present undefined in the flow of time. The occurring in the gap of the past and the present becomes for the author the field of exploring her relationship with the historical predestination.

A man and woman in Russian formal dress with red flowers over eyes.

The people in the photographs can’t realize their future, but for the author it’s ajar from the other side, as the future-in-the past. This is the future as the opposite shore of rapid flow of history, which destroyed the whole world, erased the relations of collective memory, forced to experience the pain of the absence of something that wasn’t experienced. And the most important, provoked a conversation about the “deformed, broken world” made in our minds by the old Soviet and the new post-Soviet society in turns, whose features have collage nature.

Igor Lebedev,
curator, photographer, historian of photography

About Julia Borissova –

Julia Borissova is an Estonia-born, St Petersburg-based artist who works with photography, collage, installation and book making, to explore how history and memory are perceived through images. The book is her natural medium to contemplate real stories and blends documentary elements with imaginary things, trying to capture ephemeral, fragmentary and elusive memories.

A women's hips and partial legs cropped at the waist in a dress with pink flowers covering her from waist up.

Her artists’ books include: Looking for Dimitry (2019), Nomad (2019), Nautilus (2018), Let Me Fall Again (2018), White Blonde (2018), Red Giselle (2017), Libretto (2016), Dimitry (2016), J.B. about men floating in the air (2015), Address (2015), DOM (Document Object Model) (2014), Running to the Edge (2014), The Farther Shore (2013).

Borissova’s books can be found in the collections of many major institutions,including Tate Modern (London), Art Museum of Estonia Library (Tallinn), Victoria and Albert Museum (London), National Library of Spain (Madrid), Bibliographic Collection of The Municipal Archives of Lisbon, Centre for Fine Print Research. UWE (Bristol), Reminders Photography Stronghold (Tokyo), Indie Photobook Library (USA), the Library of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Phoenix Art Museum (USA).

Borissova has frequently exhibited her photography and books around the world in group and solo shows.

Education:
Academy of Photographic skills in 2009-2010.
Foundation of information and cultural projects “FotoDepartament”, program “Photography as a research”, 2011-2013.
Master class: Jan Grarup (Denmark, agency NOOR) class, 2011; Morten Andersen (Norway) class, 2011, 2012; Luuk Wilmering (Dutch) class, 2012; Anouk Kruithof (Dutch) class, 2013; Jaap Scheeren (Dutch) class, 2014; Workshop of the international photography magazine FOAM.

Awards:
2019 – FOTO WIEN Photo Book Award – shortlist;
2019 – Riga Photomonth – shortlist;
2018 – Encontros da Imagem, Portugal – finalist;
2018 – Kassel Dummy Award, Germany – shortlist;
2017 – Riga Photomonth – shortlist;
2016 – “Encontros da Imagem”, Portugal – finalist;
2015 – “Unveil’d Photobook Award – winner;
2015 – FotoFilmic, Canada – winner;
2015 – Belfast Photo Festival – winner;
2014 – San Francisco International Photography Competition;
2013 – 1st place “International Fine Art Photography Competition” (France);
2013 – The Baltic Photo Biennale – winner

Recent Solo Exhibitions –

2019 – Lullaby for a Bride, The first Factory of Avant-garde, Ivanovo, Russia

Recent Exhibitions –
2018 – Maybe an Island, Vitland, Kaliningrad;
2017 – Julia Borissova, Artists’ Books Exhibition, Centre for Fine Print Research, Bristol, UK;
2017 – Running to the Edge, Metenkov’s House Museum, Yekaterinburg;
2016 – Beyond the Seen, The Yard Gallery, Exeter, UK

To see more of Julia Borissova‘s work visit her website.

Corona | Barbara Ford Doyle

Posted on May 22, 2020

In our desire to reframe the conversation about Corona, taking the narrative of a dark virus and exposing it to light, cleansing our souls, our online Corona exhibition speaks to a new way of seeing. The unique view of Barbara Ford Doyle’s Artichoke is a playful look at light and dark, texture, color and our assumption of a corona of light. In science terms, a “corona” is a usually colored circle often seen around and close to a luminous body (such as the sun or moon) caused by diffraction produced by suspended droplets or occasionally particles of dust. Doyle’s Artichoke comes from a series called Peaches and Penumbras. We loved the idea of the play between the moon with the sun for the natural balance between light and dark, moon glow and sun rays.

How does light play in your work?

Pepper © Barbara Ford Doyle

My analog background has been an advantage in understanding camera functions (think Pentax K 1000), metering light, mixing chemicals, dodging with a cotton ball on a stick, etc. When I first converted to digital, I used a DSLR camera for “serious” photographs and my iPhone for “other stuff.” No longer. The unfussiness of using an iPhone camera (and the fact that it is always with me) enables me to capture countless images to store in my digital library. To name a few files: Dale Chihuly, antique papers, dumpster textures, lint, oxidized aluminum, clouds, Sonoma tiles, tissue paper, reflected light. My interest is to create a dialogue between my “start” photograph, a computer composite, and a final printed image using an alternative hands-on process. I want my work to have a strong luminous and tactile quality.

Playing on the ideas of Corona, your piece Artichoke comes from a series called Peaches and Penumbras, with the play between the sun and moon illuminating our imagination. Working with organic objects, like artichokes, how did this vision of penumbra come about?

Artichoke, © Barbara Ford Doyle

I started this series when I was making relish to save a crop of red peppers from freezing. Cutting the peppers in half, I was fascinated by their mysterious internal worlds. The seeds in some looked like teeth, other concavities were more sexual. At the same time, I was reading Howl and Other Poems by Alan Ginsberg. An on-line analysis explains Ginsberg’s intent this way: The penumbras, a word meaning “shroud” or “partial illumination,” are meant to designate the secrets that such displays of nature and domesticity hide. I started cutting lots of fruits and vegetables in half.

Here are the first few lines from A Supermarket in California:

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for
I walked down the side streets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?

You create one of a kind objects with your photo transfer process. This process can often lose sharpness and vibrancy in the transfer. How do you keep your images so filled with light and life?

Peach © Barbara Ford Doyle

I use the Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw Filter to correct color and adjust texture and sharpness. The file size is large with a high resolution. The background glow for this series is from a photo of sunlight on a Sonoma floor tile. All my images are photo transfers on to DASS™ film using an Epson printer. I use bright white Yupo paper as the substrate. Each transfer has peculiar characteristics, just as each of my subjects is unique in nature.

In this time of COVID-19, how do you find light in your day?
I live on Cape Cod where the light is ever changing. And I have a dog. We begin each day with an early morning run on the beach.

What is next for you creatively? What are you working on?

Hood Milk © Barbara Ford Doyle

I am working on a series of emulsion lift “quilts” for an exhibition titled: Altered Realities.
By shooting multiple exposures, I use the camera to explore and make sense of the world around me.
From different points of view, layers of space-related information superimpose as one print. Choosing to print in black and white further distances the subject from reality by making urban landscapes timeless and the shapes and textures more compelling. Each composite “quilt” is made up of nine emulsion lift “skins.”

About Barbara Ford Doyle –

Leon Electric © Barbara Ford Doyle

Doyle was born and raised on a small farm in Connecticut. She attended UMass Amherst and Southern Connecticut University majoring in art education. Moving to Cape Cod, she taught art/photography in public schools and published a line of stationery products.

She maintains a website of Alternative Photo Imaging at www.bfdoyle.com and is a founding member of the digital artists group ArtSynergies www.artsynergies.com.

Corona | Ellen Jantzen

Posted on May 19, 2020

Part of our Corona Exhibition, Ellen Jantzen’s image After Hours leads us into the light, reframing the daily narrative of a virus that has consumed our lives. The Griffin showcased Ellen’s work, Disturbing the Spirits in the spring of 2017. Here we are three years later, looking again to Jantzen’s work to lift us into the light. We followed up with her to talk about how light affects her work, and how she gets through this unique time in our lives.

How does light play in your work?

After Hours © Ellen Jantzen

I grew up in the Midwest but moved to California in 1990 where I live for most of my adult life. When I returned to Missouri to help aging parents my attachment to the healing powers of the natural environment grew as I became familiarized, once again, with the seasons. Light is quite an indicator of seasonal changes and bringing light into my work heightened this. “After Hours” was created in the early autumn. I was struck by how the low angle of the sun shown through the trees. After my parents passed and I moved back west, (this time alighting in New Mexico) once again light took over my sensibilities but this time as a reflection of the vast sky and sun drenched landscape of New Mexico.

There is so much movement in your work. Not only are you working with shapes and texture, but adding motion through time and space. Light seems to be the pathway through all your work. How did this way of seeing come about?

Into the Unknown © Ellen Jantzen

I believe that the way I work influences my “seeing” in a direct way. I capture my images using a digital camera but the pieces don’t actually form and come to life until I upload my images to my computer and begin the creative process. As the computer screen is lit from behind, I take advantage of this in my work.

I believe the movement in my work started during the 5 years I was back in the Mid West. It started with my mother-in-law who was slipping into Alzheimer’s. I was documenting the feeling of loss that she and my husband were experiencing. In essence I was striving to show her disappearance. Shortly after, my parents began a decline and once again I was using motion and shapes to obscure a portion of an image through a veil of sorts. I was striving to heighten the remaining reality through discovery and reflection.

Do you start with a sketch or preconceived idea? Or does the process flow organically? How do you know when you have the right combination?

I don’t start with a sketch or a preconceived idea….. the ideas form organically. I normally start with a kernel of an idea… then start shooting. I take my photos and pick the strongest that support my idea and start manipulating, combining, etc until something gels. I then have a much stronger direction and I start shooting with more intention. I know I have the right combination when I feel a rush of adrenaline as I am working.

In this time of Corona, how do you find light in your day?

Luckily I am sequestered in New Mexico with my husband, Michael. The light is self evident here and buoys my spirits.

What is next for you creatively? What are you working on?

I am continuing to work on my “Mid+West” series.
(A visual essay on adaptation and acceptance in relocation/immigration and migration)

Some say we are all immigrants but many indigenous people have lived in one location for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. In this series I am addressing the more recent acts of relocation.

The place of one’s birth greatly influences who they are but through moving, new foods, cultures, languages and landscapes await to reshape their very being.

I was born in the Midwest, but now reside in New Mexico. Even though I didn’t really encounter a great deal of differences in people there were subtle language differences, definitely food differences and some culture shifts that required adjustment on my part. The most profound change for me was the landscape.

Here I am blending photos from my years in the Midwest (mainly rural Missouri and Illinois) with current photos I’ve taken while living in New Mexico.

I feel that one’s landscape, whether rural, suburban or urban, can utterly reshape them and how through relocation they grow and flourish. They become, in essence, a blending of all former homelands with the present.

Additional thoughts…..

Photographs were once considered to be “truthful”, but we now know there has been photo tampering going on since its inception. Because photos are “believed” there is a great deal of room to play within photography’s reality to create a personal fiction (a visual poetry) that is more open to interpretation.

This is the very reason I was drawn to photography ten years ago as a creative medium.
Photography, especially digitally aided photo collage/montage, is a potent medium
through which I am able to communicate the ways I see and understand the world most effectively.

About Ellen Jantzen –

Ellen Jantzen was born and raised in St. Louis Missouri. Her early college years were spent obtaining a degree in graphic arts; later emphasizing fine art.

Ellen spent two years at FIDM (the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising) in downtown Los Angeles. Here, she obtained her advanced degree in 1992. After a few years working in the industry, including several years at Mattel Toy Company as a senior project designer, she became disillusioned with the corporate world and longed for a more creative outlet. Having been trained in computer design while at Mattel, Ellen continued her training on her own using mostly Photoshop software.

As digital technology advanced and the newer cameras were producing excellent resolution, Ellen found her perfect medium. It was a true confluence of technical advancements and creative desire that culminated in her current explorations in photo inspired art using both a camera to capture staged assemblages and a computer to alter and manipulate the pieces. Ellen has been creating works that bridge the world of prints, photography and collage.

To see more of Ellen Jantzen‘s work visit her website.

Corona | Deborah Bay

Posted on May 18, 2020

Deborah Bay‘s Traveling Light series plays with vibrant saturated color, angle, shape and form to create new ways of experiencing how light and reflection plays on materials. We first saw Deborah’s work at the Griffin in 2016 in our Bullet Points exhibition. This series, Traveling Light plays with the visual scale, crafting abstract visions with sharpness and clarity. We asked her a few questions about the series, and how light plays into her day.
How does light play in your work?

Probability Theory, from series Traveling Light

Light was the point of origin for this body of work. I had been thinking about some of the Bauhaus light studies and became interested in using color to further explore how light moves across optical objects.

In your series Traveling Light color and shape are intertwined in each image. How did this series come about?

In addition to contemplating the work of Moholy-Nagy and others, I also was influenced by the abstract geometries of constructivism and the color field movement. Those ideas all came together as I began experimenting with tabletop constructions using small lenses and prisms. Most of the objects are only about 1 or 2 inches tall, so there’s a wonderful disconnect when you see them in a 40×40 print.

The color comes from gels placed in front of small lights around the shooting table. As I was photographing, I became fascinated with the way that various colors traveled over planes of the objects, separating them from the background, or created thin chromatic circles around lenses with a wash of color in the background. The images are all produced in-camera.

There are endless combinations of light and color. How do you know when you have the right combination?

It is amazing how many permutations there are of light and color, so it was a challenge to get the color blend and other factors in just the right combination. With a digital camera, though, I could shoot numerous images with slight variations since the sensor would capture the color and depth of field in sometimes surprising ways. And, of course, intuition always plays a role.

In this time of Corona, how do you find light in your day?

Mondrian Dialectic I, from series Traveling Light

During these Corona times, my routine on the best days has been to spend the afternoon in the studio, where the windows are covered and tiny lamps illuminate the tabletop setting. But in the mornings, I like to walk in the park and then review the previous day’s shoot in my home office, which has a lot of light filtering through the trees.

What is next for you creatively? What are you working on?

I’ve been exploring an idea with the working title of Traveling Light 2.0. It’s based on the same concept of using color to investigate how light moves across surfaces but with a much more textural component. Some of the images are totally abstract in a very painterly fashion, while others are more representational. The surfaces have been altered in such a way as to further disrupt the diffusion of light and color. It’s still early in the investigation, so I’ll save the details for another time.

About Deborah Bay –

Deborah Bay is an American artist who specializes in constructed studio photography. She has exhibited throughout the United States, most recently at Photoville Brooklyn and Texas Contemporary 2018. Her work is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Dorsky Museum of Art at State University of New York at New Paltz. The British Journal of Photography has featured her work on its cover, and her images also have appeared in Popular Photography, BBC Focus and the Oxford American, among others. She lives in Houston, Texas, and holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from The University of Texas at Austin.

To see more of Deborah Bay‘s work log onto her website. She is represented by FotoRelevance in Houston, Texas.

Corona | Blythe King

Posted on May 15, 2020

Today’s featured Corona artist is Blythe King. A featured artist in 2017 in our Griffin online gallery, Blythe’s creative constructions of women radiate out of our screens. Combining materials to elevate ordinary women to extraordinary beings, her work exemplifies the internal manifestation embodying light and life. We asked her a few questions about her work and how light fills her day.

A central focus of the Corona exhibition is based in light, both external and internal. Your portraits exude light and life. How does light play into your work?

My subjects are radiant beings. Transparent layers let light in and invite us to look beneath the surface. These women are liberated to reveal each individual’s complex, boundless nature.

My work transforms photographs of models from Montgomery Ward mail order catalogs (circa 1940-80) into evocative multi-layered portraits. Because subjects are freed from the social expectations and stereotypes of their original context of commodification, they shine anew.

Gold leafing animates my work. As light changes throughout the day, it alters the appearance of my portraits — illuminating the figure, making it flicker, casting a shadow.

Can you talk about how religion, faith and spirituality are infused in the work?

My subjects begin as mere clippings from discarded, forgotten Montgomery Ward catalogs. The models were presented superficially. It’s advertising. But through collage, gold leafing, and other techniques, they re-emerge and become a source of wonder and intrigue. It’s divinization.

I notice parallels between the poses, gazes, and hand gestures of fashion models in advertising and deities in Buddhist and Hindu art. I combine religious imagery with commercial images of women to create a pantheon of sorts. The women in my work strike me as familiar — but with a difference. They stand out to me because I see something extraordinary in them. My impulse is to honor them.

I hold an MA in Buddhism and Art from the University of Colorado, with undergraduate studies in Japanese religion and art at the University of Richmond. I’m a practitioner of Zen Buddhism. My experiences lead me to question how our conditioning — be it social, cultural, environmental, genetic — places limitations on how we understand who we are. Zen is liberating. It beckons a fundamental shift in perspective.

How did you first find the idea to combine materials? What was the moment you knew you had found your process to showcase your vision. What was the first image that was a result of that combination of layers?

I like that you asked how I “found” my process. It brings to mind the question that inspired Rebecca Solnit’s book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost: “How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?”

Making art is one path. For me, it’s applying the sum of my experiences. Through artistic experimentation, I’ve discovered a way to combine and further activate my interests in popular culture, vintage imagery, Buddhist philosophy, Japanese art, old paper, and feminist philosophy.

By removing limitations imposed by our conditioning, and opening possibilities for the ways we understand who we are, I find clarity. I’ve breathed life into old mail-order catalogs for almost 8 years. “Moonbathing” was the first commercial clipping to be divinized.

And thank you for mentioning “that combination of layers” in my work. It’s all done by hand. It’s important to me that the viewer see and feel how the physical layers — skins, if you will — interact. The image transfer process is my own. I arrived at it after overcoming the restrictions in hand-cut collages. My first body of work, “How to Take a Compliment,” presents subjects at their original scale. Since then, I’ve amplified and reduced subjects through scanning. That has made pieces more intimate or larger than life.

In this time of Corona, how do you find light in your day?

Survival is a means to coronation. My subjects were mere paper but have lasted more than a half century to now stand as supernatural queens. We too can adapt and become our greatest selves through challenges.

There’s a cemetery near my home. I walk there because it’s perfect for social distancing. But I’m also taken by how beautiful the flowers and trees blossom in a place that honors death. I’m reminded of the Hindu goddess, Kali, who is at once a destructive and creative force.

Placed in this light, a pandemic is not only temporary but also a path to renewal. It’s part of the perfection, if you will.

What is next for you creatively? What are you working on?

I have a solo exhibition coming in the fall of 2021 at Eric Schindler Gallery here in Richmond (VA, USA). I’ll have a whole new collection ready for that.

I’ve dreamed of being hired by Montgomery Ward as their collage artist. They’re still in business. I have convincing to do.

About Blythe King

Blythe King is a rising talent who currently breaks new ground in photography, collage, and the ancient art of gold leafing. Born in Pittsburgh in 1977, her work is heavily influenced by two legacies — the whimsical, social commentary of hometown hero Andy Warhol forged with traditional Steel Town resolve. King studied religion and art at the University of Richmond and the University of Colorado. She practiced Zen calligraphy with Stephen Addiss (The Art of Zen).

But it was a textile startup in quaint Breaux Bridge, Louisiana that brought her journey into focus. For iSockits, King fashioned wildly-successful tablet covers from vintage women’s shirts. Her latest fine art project, “Two Sides of the Same Coin,” is exceptional for its delicate but moving revelations. She rescues clippings from a range of vintage catalogs to open a fresh discourse around women’s issues. In addition to her art, King teaches creativity to underserved communities in Richmond, VA.

You can see more of Blythe King‘s work on her website.

Corona Exhibition

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