The museum will be closed May 29th – 31st to install our upcoming exhibitions, featuring the work of  Rolls & Tubes Collective, Fern Nesson and Photosynthesis opening to the public Thursday June 1st!  Join us in celebrating these artists at our Reception Friday June 2nd from 6 to 8pm

Griffin Museum of Photography

Online events

Digits: A Parallel Universe – Virtual Artist Reception

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Celebrating the work of nine creative artists, Digits: A Parallel Universe is on the walls of our satellite gallery at Lafayette City Center opening 9 March and continuing thru 9 June, 2021.

Join us on _ for a celebration of the nine artists featured in this exhibition. Debe Arlook, Diana Cheren Nygren, Cathy Cone, Miren Etcheverry, Dennis Geller, Bill Gore, Marcy Juran, Lisa Ryan and Gordon Saperia.

We are thrilled to host eleven creative artists in the Griffin Zoom Room onApril 25th at 4pmEastern celebrating the work of Digits: A Parallel Universe.

This virtual offering will stream live from our Griffin Zoom Room for registrants to enjoy at home. Registrants will receive links to view this program via email within 24 hours of the event start time.

opens in a new windowDigits: A Parallel Universe is intended as a conjectured and separate plane of reality, that co-exists with the photographer’s own here and now. Each photographer has invented her or his own fiction. There is digital intervention in every photograph in the exhibition yet the methods vary as to how the altered results are manufactured. The viewer is reminded of what it might feel like to be in a changing state, time or dimension.

There are eleven photographers inDigits: A Parallel Universe. The photographers are: Debe Arlook, Diana Cheren Nygren, Najee Dorsey, Cathy Cone, Miren Etcheverry, Dennis Geller, Bill Gore, Marcy Juran, Deborah Kaplan, Lisa Ryan and Gordon Saperia.

Debe Arlook photographs landscapes of the American West. She hoped that through her images inForseeable Cacheshe could communicate the experience of how the resultant energy of meditation feels and looks. She has spent a lifetime pursuing spiritual growth.

Diana Cheren Nygren’s photographs inWhen the Trees are Gone, come straight from her imagination as a cautionary tale. Each of the six photographs depict city living in crisis. Told through the veil of humor and prophesy, we see high hopes that art can be an impetus for change.

Hand Painted Photographs by Cathy Coneis a blending of two worlds. First, the final imagery is pulled from the past to rise transformed in the present. The tintypes change from standalone antique portraits to objects infused by a modern breath and brush. Rather than relying just on the photographic image or just a painted artifact, Cone’s amalgam of mediums shapes her unique narrative.

Najee Dorsey digitally collages narratives of Black life in history and present day that must be retold and remembered. Two of his artworks inDigits: A Parallel Universefeature prominent African American artists; Kara Walker and Basquiat. Walker is famous for her cut paper silhouetted narratives haunted by the atrocities of slavery. Basquiat’s work has been attributed to elevating graffiti artists to the art scene. In 1982, the sale of Basquiat’s art set a record for the highest price ever paid at auction for an American artist’s work.

Miren Etcheverry uses family photographs and digital assemblage to create portrait tributes to the female family members and friends who have influenced her life. She calls these digital creations her “goddesses”. The title of her compilation of all this work is calledOh My Goddess!Most of Etcheverry’s family live across the Atlantic in France but in her studio they all are a “desktop” away.

Dennis Geller’s path began in exploring representational subjects in his photographs.  He honed his perception in the studio and then the forest. Deeper dives into the language of photography brought him to explore the presence of light in the everyday as well as articulating the physicality of emotions in the abstract, the science of vision and the dimensions of time and change.

Bill Gore– The Land bears constant witness and reveals itself as an endless stream of images. But the conscious mind is selective, and memory illusive. ‘My Life Could Be a Dream’ series works in the realm of perception and illusion and explores our mental processes of combining new and remembered visual inputs while we create our own realities…

Marcy Juran blends digital processes and family photographs inFamily History | Family Mystery,her altered reality where generations of her family can gather in one place.

Deborah Kaplan creates her own language from photographs she’s made in nature inSyllabary for a Natural World. These natural symbols are true digits. As Kaplan mentions in her statement, she “aims to recreate a language that never was, but which ought to be”.

Lisa Ryan’s family was constantly on the move. As a result she says she was always trying to orient herself in new environments. She uses infrared photography to show her anomalous perspective as a “stranger in a strange land”. *  Infrared light lies beyond the visible light spectrum and can’t be seen by the human eye.

Gordon Saperia looks for the grand landscapes as he travels the world. He is not shy in using digital manipulation to augment the original photograph to represent his emotional response to a scene. Sometimes it is minor color shifts or contrast moves. Other times he combines elements to shape a “brave new world.”

August Photo Chat Chat | Member’s Exhibition Edition

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We are so excited to showcase more of our talented artists from our 26th Annual Members Exhibition, curated by Alexa Dilworth.

Join us this Thursday August 13th we see presentations from four photographers followed by a q&a about their work. Dennis Geller, Rachel Jessen, Sandra Klein and Jerry Takigawa. These are the stories we will be seeing and hearing about. 

To get tickets to the Photo Chat Chat head to our Events Page. 

Introducing our featured artists – 

Dennis Geller

night scene with figure

© Dennis Geller, “Mists of Time”

Close your eyes, when open them and look at the first object you see. In that first instant, when you think you are seeing an object, your eye is seeing a smear of colors and brightness. It jumps at least three times, and in each jump only a small bit of the image on the retina is in focus. Light impinging on the retina causes chemical changes, which causes neurons to carry signals to the brain. Each change take time to dissipate, but the eye does not stop moving during that time, so that every spot on the retina is affected by light coming from different parts of the object, causing a cascade of overlapping chemical changes. The images here,  motivated by processes of  vision, ask the question: What has changed in a scene as we look at it? As we look around us, we don’t actually see the changes, just their effects, but we are aware of them. Calling them out, as these images do, offers a different way to experience the ordinary.

Rachel Jessen

love letter

© Rachel Jessen, (Henry County) Notes for Michael at a gas station, New London.

This campaign season, I went back to Iowa, my home state and the first state in the nation to hold caucuses for the presidential primary. Not to cover the candidates, no. I turned my camera away from the politics—the faces and speeches of presidential hopefuls, the conventions and rallies, the moments votes are cast—and toward the people and places of Iowa. I’m making my way through a feat known as the “Full Grassley,” an endeavor named for the long-time Iowa Republican senator wherein candidates make a point to visit each of the Hawkeye State’s 99 counties vying for that coveted caucus victory. I wasn’t looking for support at a local town hall or fish fry—instead, I searched for the stories in the individuals and communities that make Iowa the unique, contradictory, and complicated place it is. From Adair to Jasper to Wright,  I’m documenting everything from corn shucking to TrekFest to ghost towns to grandparents, and that which lies between, beyond the campaign trail. My hope is that my photographic Full Grassley results in a distinct perspective of Iowa, one that, while alluding to its political significance within the caucus system, demonstrates the limits of such a lens, and reveals it to be much more than the first state to assert its electoral opinion. It’s a portrait of a place—my home—which continues to exist even after all the TV cameras and politicians have gone.

Sandra Klein

“In the dark times Will there be singing? Yes, there will be singing. About dark times.”   Bertolt Brecht     

vessel

© Sandra Klein, “Eternal Dragonfly”

Is it possible to portray a grief so deep that it is difficult to endure?  For a number of years, I have visited Japan in winter, but this past January, less than a year after the tragic death of my oldest son, I longed to visit this surreal, almost otherworldly land with the anticipation that I could grieve here in a way I couldn’t at home. The stunning snow-covered landscapes I captured for this series, with their muffled silence, hiding almost all color, all vestiges of humanity and the modern world, almost seemed to weep for me. Japan’s unfamiliar religious rituals and ancient objects, with their histories and iconography, affected me deeply.   The images in this project straddle the real and surreal. The re-contexualizing of photographs and ephemera, where images are composited to include historical art and objects, reflects my altered state of reality. The materiality of these collages satisfies a need to define my personal despair with a more physical, unique object, as I cut and sew into the photographs as an act of memorializing not only my son, but my own journey into a new reality.       Grieving in Japan is a meditation on a life that feels unhinged and unbearable. I experience periods of isolation from all that is familiar as I am pulled far away into the unknown world of loss.  And yet, I am reminded, at moments, of the small joys this world reveals, inviting me to experience flashes of utter pleasure, even as I mourn.

Jerry Takigawa

people behind bars

“Jerry Takigawa, “EO 9066”

Balancing Cultures is a personal history project that reveals the racism and xenophobia that permeate American culture. The discovery of old family photographs compelled me to express the impact on my family resulting from being incarcerated in WWII American concentration camps. The emotions expressed in this project bring humanity to the historical record. I seek to give voice to experiences my family kept hidden for shame and fear. If silence sanctions, communication is resistance. The process of researching and creating these images greatly informed my understanding of what happened in the past—and what is important going forward. These images are a reminder that hysteria, racism, and economic exploitation became a force during WWII in our country. Xenophobia can live just under the surface of civility and emerge in a permissive environment. Cathy Park Hong wrote in a New York Times article: “After President Trump called the Covid-19 the “Chinese Virus,” in March (2020), the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council said more than 650 incidents of discrimination against Asian-Americans were reported to a website it helps maintain in one week alone.” Decades have passed since Executive Order 9066 was enacted. Many Americans are only now learning of this transgression. There is no scientific basis for race; race and racism are social constructs. Balancing Cultures recalls a dark chapter in American history—censored in part by the Japanese precept of “gaman” (enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity) and the fear that if my family spoke too loudly, it might happen again. I raise my voice today because it is happening again.

Lauren Ceike | Sequin Fix

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In our Griffin Gallery in Winchester is the whimsical, thoughtful work of Lauren Ceike. Her series Sequin Fix looks at how we hold onto objects, crafting narratives, telling ourselves and others new stories.  

sequins in a bag

© Lauren Ceike, Silver Sequins

Tonight at 7pm Eastern, we talk with Lauren in more detail about her path as an artist and learn more about her exhibition. We hope you will join us. In the meantime, we asked Lauren a few questions about her work. 

 

How do your collections of objects manifest themselves? Like shiny objects you find and collect? Do you look for specific things? Are they all connected to family and a larger community of friends? Or is it subconscious, as if you didn’t know you had collected for example, 25 pink beads? 

bag o beads

© Lauren Ceike, Pink Iridescent Beads

I have always been overly attached to objects and possessions. I just love things. My parents have told me I challenged them when I was a kid because I didn’t want to let go of certain items that they considered trash. I remember a broken umbrella that they had to secretly take out to the curb; somehow I found out and I can still feel the sensation of crying when the garbage truck stopped at our house. The pattern of the umbrella is also clear in my mind. I have a hard time separating myself from some objects, they often elicit feelings of inspiration, excitement, happiness, and make me feel like I can’t live without them. Many of the items featured in this project are things I have kept since childhood; after so many years they still conjure up those feelings I had as a kid and I just can’t bear to part with them. I maintain a childlike sensibility and I still love things that are cute and glittery. This is why I say I may be subconsciously holding onto an innocence that was fleeting.

In a more practical sense, I like to keep a library of items for crafting and creating. My artistic vision is never predictable so I like to have a wide variety of materials to work with. Sometimes an idea is sparked simply based on the object.

When was the moment you collected your first dime bag? What went in it? Was it the bag from the pool for “nuts and bolts”?

nails in a bag

© Lauren Ceike, Paneling Nails

I started collecting the bags around 2015. Up until that time, the bags I saw had no special significance to me, they were purely functional. Once I realized what they were I continued to just notice them before ever picking them up. The concept for this project wasn’t in my mind when I first started collecting the bags, but I knew the idea would come to me. One of my first brainstorms involved robin’s eggs, which I also collect. I love noticing the subtle differences in the beautiful blue shades. I thought there could be some connection to drug abuse and the fragility of the eggshells, but it was an over-intellectualized idea. When I simplified my mind and came back to a childlike sense of curiosity, the concept came to me.

 

We have 4 boxes with bagged objects in the museum. How did you decide which objects fit with others? Was it a visual connection? Is it a timeline of collection?

four frames

© Lauren Ceike

I have a “magic box” of items that I have saved from childhood. It’s a beat up old roller skates box that has moved to every apartment over the years. I’m even attached to the actual box, it’s a funny scene of three girls skating with classic 1980’s graphic design. Every so often I would open the box and hope to find some jewelry that was now back on trend, but would end up a little disappointed and close the box for another time. After amassing a collection of bags, I was excited to finally have a good use for all the special things I had saved for so long. I was thankful for their service throughout the years and glad that I could now sacrifice them for a greater cause.

Some bags and their coordinating objects have visual connections, but it’s very subtle and the viewers may not notice. For example, bag number 174 contains squirrel teeth which mimic the shape of the devil horns depicted on the bag. The pink beads in bag number 4 is another deliberate pairing: the dainty, girly items juxtapose the burned bag in a way that summarizes the whole project.

 

Many people collect things trying to hold onto their past, or craft new narratives of what their lives could have, should have been. You say you collect to create nostalgia. Yet you also say your childhood was robbed from you. Is this a way to create a new bank of childhood memories? Or is it a visual interpretation of what your childhood should have been?

close up of bag contents

© Lauren Ceike, detail 15-33

I want it to be well known that I cherish my family and my childhood memories. While some things were difficult and lifelong challenges, I deeply love all members of my family and work hard to maintain good relationships and connections. I believe my need to collect is a coping mechanism, a way to surround myself with things that bring me comfort and joy. It created a sense of control over an environment which was often out of my control.

 

We have 2 sets of school photos of a family member. The real bagged contents of the photos and the documented copy. What importance does this particular object / image hold for you?

2 pictures in a bag

© Lauren Ceike, School Portraits

The actions of an addict have longterm effects on the whole family, not just themselves. My life will be forever dictated by the experiences I had growing up with an addict. Even in recovery there are specific accommodations to be aware of, and current circumstances often seem tenuous. It’s crushing to see the school photos of that sweet boy who no longer exists. They carry so much more weight than any of the other bags of objects, therefore they deserve to be displayed on their own. The boy is contained by the bag, and his life is continuously limited by it.

 

What do you want us as viewers to walk away with after seeing your work? 

 While this project is acutely personal to me, consisting of mementos special to only me and my experiences, it has a universality that people can identify with. I believe this work of art to be more about innocence and memory than it is about drug abuse. As I’ve gotten older, I have come to the conclusion that every family is damaged in their own unique way and the best anyone can do is try to be happy and manage their feelings in a healthy and constructive way.

Another notable aspect of this project is it came out exactly as I envisioned and expressed exactly what I needed to say. As an artist, I can claim that this isn’t always how things turn out. I often have a lot of self criticism for the things I create, but I’m happy to have this body of work exist just as it is.

Is the project still ongoing? Are you still a collector? 

small dolls

© Lauren Ceike, Tiny “Ladies of the Night”

I continue to collect bags when I see them, but I don’t hunt for them as I did for a period of time. Fortunately, I no longer see as many bags as I used to; sometimes I would find up to 15 bags in one walk. I hope this is an indication that drug abuse has diminished, but I doubt that’s the case. I have close to 100 empty bags so I envision adding more frames to the collection. At some point, I would be glad to stop collecting the bags, it doesn’t really feel good to creep around gutters and bring trash home, but for now I will keep collecting the ones I find. I have developed a keen eye for spotting treasures on the ground; I am in no way a religious person, but finding a miniature figurine of Mary nearly brought me to tears and she has become a trinket I carry around everywhere. 

In an era of mindfulness and trendy tidying, I feel judged for placing importance on material possessions, yet I simultaneously feel burdened by these items. If the tidying experts suggest to keep only things that “spark joy”, I feel conflicted when I am compelled to keep things that spark sadness. While I am better at not bringing new things into my collection, I struggle with letting go of items from the past. I aspire to someday free myself from these bygone objects that restrict my future.

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