I use gouache and watercolor on paper to create mysterious, open-ended narrative paintings. In these images, natural and man-made worlds are intricately intertwined, and characters interact with strange, unexpected phenomena. Frogs, fish and peas rain down on figures from a melting, starry sky. A hiker wanders through a forest where tree-size beanstalks grow up out of a field of giant, finely wrought birdcages.
Stories, pictures and memories inspire my work. I find my subject matter everywhere, from fairy tales and field guides to epic poems and outdoor equipment catalogues. Bits and pieces of personal history appear in my paintings in images derived from vacation snapshots, family albums and memories that I reenact in staged photographs. Into the Wood
I use materials and paint in a style reminiscent of children’s illustration, a language in which narratives have limitless magical, absurd and nostalgic potential. There is an aspect of the mad scientist in my process, combining months of careful research, planning and detail, with wild, impulsive experimentation. It is important to me that when I begin a painting I have no idea how it will turn out. I use a number of tricks to combat predictability, investing tremendous amounts of time and energy in unresolved, potentially irresolvable compositions, and choosing subjects that stretch the limits of my representational skills. In every painting I reach a point where failure seems imminent. The process of rescuing the image, of turning the disaster around, yields the most exciting and surprising parts of my work.”
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – 4/29/2006: Bakhtnazira (center) works and chats with the seamstresses in her workroom. Her business employs many women, some of whom are widows, who otherwise would have no means to support themselves or their families. (Photo by Paula Lerner/Aurora)
In the 23 years I have been a working photographer, women’s issues have been a recurring theme in my projects. My magazine stories have been populated with women from all walks of life: from survivors of domestic abuse to business leaders and celebrated performing artists. I have produced a body of work on a welfare mom and a book about breast cancer walks. But when I had the opportunity to document the lives of women in Afghanistan, my interest was especially piqued. Knowing Afghan women have faced some of the harshest circumstances of women anywhere in the world, I knew their stories would be some of the most compelling I could cover.
In February of 2005 I took the first of multiple trips to Afghanistan as a volunteer with the Business Council for Peace (www.bpeace.org). Bpeace is a non-profit organization that works to help women in post-conflict countries establish and grow self-sustaining businesses. The women whose stories I documented for Bpeace profoundly moved me: here were women who had survived unimaginable hardships and decades of war, and yet they had the optimism and bravery to help rebuild their country by building their own fledgling businesses. Last year I began gathering audio in addition to taking still images, and recording the women telling their stories in their own voices. This work, “The Women of Kabul,” was published as a multimedia feature on the Washington Post web site in November of 2006. Many news outlets cover Afghanistan’s ongoing insurgency and the misery of war, but few are interested in telling how people are rebuilding their lives in war’s aftermath. I give the washingtonpost.com a great deal of credit for having the courage to be one of a handful of venues in the latter category.
Through my work with Bpeace I came to know Rangina Hamidi, an Afghan-American woman who lives and works in Kandahar, the former Taliban capital city that is still a Taliban stronghold. Her program empowers women by giving them paid employment producing unique Kandahari embroidery, something they can do at home and without breaking cultural norms. Through her work she has come to know well and be trusted by these women. She and I have embarked on a long-term project to tell these women’s stories via a book, print pieces and multimedia features, which are now in progress. By collaborating with Rangina I am in the fortunate position of having access to women who are largely invisible in their own culture, and have the privilege of bringing their stories to the West where they are all but unknown.
The photographs in this exhibition are selected from the above projects, and show the daily life behind the headlines in Afghanistan. As a photojournalist and storyteller I try to convey these stories with integrity and honesty, and in the process I also hope to make art. The images in this collection are those that I feel have come the closest to succeeding at this.
My work is based on a perpetual passion for giving life through composition. As a former landscape designer, I have always been fascinated with colors and shapes and how they interact.
Printmaking has become my primary means of artistic expression. I like the infinity of all the layers that can be achieved, the richness of the color and the sophistication of the lines that can be rendered through this complex medium.
My inspiration comes from found objects and other elements, and deals with personal observations and experiences acquired from visiting and living in different countries.
In my prints, I juxtapose materials, images, shapes, and colors through a combination of different techniques. The elements blend, almost threatening each other, creating a prototype that is rich, edgy and commanding all at once.
The resulting images portray a characteristic and contemporary style that invites individual responses and interpretation. Regardless of the approach, art makes me feel happy and alive.
“Art does not reproduce the visible, it renders visible” — Klee
My art revolves around an abstract figure and the waves of energy that compose, affect, and complete it as a unique being. The figure’s interactions with itself and others elicit images that fascinate me. I like using layers of colors and shapes in my art to promote a sense of mystery and intrigue. Abstracting these images is a challenge. It keeps my art moving in a never-ending spiral, a symbol I use frequently to emulate a sense of adventure. I love exploring new lines, shapes and colors and how they relate to my imagery. They enable me to challenge the boundaries of tradition and to think outside of the box in my creative process.”
After receiving a BFA with a major in painting from the Massachusetts College of Art, Lawrence spent the next 10 years of her summer vacations from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in pursuit of graduate studies in different parts of the world. During one summer, Tom Carr, a professor at the Escola d’Arts Plastique I Disseny in Barcelona, Spain (Barcelona Oldest Art Academy) advised Lawrence, “I can see in your paintings that you like quiet and stillness.” Says Lawrence, “His statement continues to give me pause to reflect. As one of eight children from a family whose parents were born in Italy, I remember the many times I retreated to the room I shared with two sisters to draw in solitude. In fact, this past year during open studios, the wife of a fellow studio artist came up to me and commented, ‘Your art is so peaceful.'” Paintings by Josie Lawrence are held in the JFK Presidential Library and Museum as well as in private and corporate collections throughout the US, Europe and Asia. Her work has been shown in exhibitions in the US, China and Italy with awards annually from juried shows. Pennsylvania Landscape
“The Veil: Modesty, Fashion, Religious Devotion or Political Statement?” a discussion of the show by Rania Matar…
Rene Matar
The veil has many meanings and symbols in the Middle East. While often perceived in the West as a symbol of female oppression and submission to male authority, it takes on a very different meaning in the Arab world. In this photo essay, I will focus on the spread of the veil amongst women in Lebanon and the different interpretations the veil takes on.
Lebanon is a small Middle Eastern country wedged between the West and the Muslim world, where Christians and Muslims have lived together for centuries, where one would witness a blend of the West and the Arab world, of Christianity and Islam, in addition to ostentatious display of wealth and extreme poverty. After fifteen years of a brutal civil war that ended with no clear winner and no real solution, life in Lebanon goes on in a surreal way with a mosaic of co-existing religions.
A Passage from the KoranThe Muslim population is growing larger due to a higher birth rate. It is highly politicized and seething with anger at the news coming from Iraq and Israel/Palestine. In addition, since September 11, it feels threatened in a world looking at any Islamic piety with suspicion, with a resulting retreat into more religious consciousness. While many Muslims, especially the upper class, look westward in their dress and lifestyle, and are not antagonistic to the Christian presence, many feel the need of belonging to the larger Muslim community. The female veil which was almost non-existent a decade ago in Lebanon is making a comeback, even among the younger generation, and is taking on different symbols ranging from religious devotion, to self-assertion vis-à-vis the West, to a new item of fashion, all leading to the increased social pressure of wearing it among Muslim women of all ages.
Broken MirrorWhile wearing the veil among Muslim women is becoming more common in Lebanon, the different ways of wearing it is often misunderstood by the West. Women who are wearing the veil are mostly doing it by choice, even though their motives and the extent to which they are covered vary. Older traditional Muslim women wear the headscarf because of religious devotion and modesty. They only take it off inside the home and only in the presence of other women or close male relatives. Upper class Muslim women who often dress in a western style now wear the headscarf as an instrument of fashion and an added accessory, whereby the scarf has to match the clothes, the sunglasses and the handbag. Some women wear it as a political statement of resistance to the West and a symbol of solidarity with Muslim countries at odds with the West. Pubescent girls are now succumbing to social expectations and are wearing the veil by choice as a symbol of growing up. Some would spend hours fixing their headscarf in front of the mirror. They wear it layered, braided or plain but always color coordinated with their clothes.
Hanging LaundryWhat makes this project interesting to me is that it provides a microcosm of what is going on in the world today in terms of the growing differences but at the same time the existing inter-dependencies between the West and the Arab world, or Christianity and Islam. Lebanon is a westernized country, home to a growing Muslim society but also to a very western Christian population, hence providing different interpretations of female fashion, and a juxtaposition of the veil with a very western dress code and life style. The veil as a result takes on different meanings and can be seen worn in very different ways ranging from a chador to a fashionable headscarf. It is not uncommon in Beirut to see veiled women walking next to women in mini skirts or tank tops, or under posters of beautiful supermodels, eating at McDonalds or having coffee at Starbucks.”
Abstractions of a mental state. The logic of factory-grey & desolation — a girl & her printing press, isolation. The mechanized clicking of thinking — these are objects & landscapes that exist, but no one has seen them. My logic — logic in general — crumbles & twists, formulates itself in black etching ink. My etchings are the outcome of my perception of existence — bleak & strange.
The prints are Abstractions of imagined landscapes, sometimes objects or cities, conveying some sort of resonance, or connection. They are usually bleak & lonely, yet heroic. I don’t consider my work to fall under one style. The look of the prints from 2002 to the present is very much a product of, & ongoing dialogue with, the techniques that I use. These arose from the technical limitations of creating a studio with non-traditional & non toxic methods. I am constantly experimenting & discovering new ways to put ink on paper.”
Cargo. Weighty, anonymous, masses of consumable goods. A voluminous presence that fails to fill the absence in which it is placed.
Shipping lanes. Highways. Storage yards. Gateways through which material goods in their anonymous phase leave or enter our lives; portals through space and time for Things. Solidity. Gravity. “Needs”. Painting by Dawn Revett
I see in these portals stillborn opportunities. I see what was here, before the cargo and the promises. I see a mirage of material goods preening with seductive poise. I see what cargo cannot replace. I see the potential for change.
These sites speak to me of how anonymous consumption fragments our society within itself and divides us from the environment. Stained wood reveals an absence of nature that this ingestion of goods creates. To me it is an absence that screams. Yet these goods pass as unbranded cargo through quiet ports, sleepy highways, and placid storage fields. These places stand as silent memorials to what we have sacrificed in order to achieve the cargo we so fanatically pursue. For me these are peaceful places. Like cemeteries, or morgues. Tranquil, beautiful, and tragic.
I paint the images because for me paint best conveys the beauty that I feel in the anxious desolation of these locations. With paint I can better recreate the subtle fusion of fascination and pain that I experience when standing there. I can freeze the highway’s silent roar, and touch the solitude.”
The work that I am showing here is the product of the 40 year period 1966-2006. I have always been a photographer in black and white, and I have primarily used a view camera with which I expose 4 by 5 inch sheet film. I have printed the more recent images digitally, after scanning the negatives into my computer, while photographs that precede 2004 I have printed in my darkroom.
My favorite places to work are mill towns, the edges of cities, railroad yards, and occasionally the downtown portions of cities early in the morning when the streets are clear. I sometimes photograph pieces of machinery, and I feel that many of my photographs reflect interests I have in mathematics and engineering.”
Ransohoff, an artist and educator for over 30 years, founded and co-directed Turtle Studios and The Quilt Project, conducted art-making workshops and consulted to corporate and non-profit organizations. Quilt is a work in direct response to world cultural problems and conflicts. It is made in sections, called books, which are sewn together. It can be viewed both in hanging panels or folded into books and read. Each page of Quilt expresses spiritual, historical, community or individual meaning as quilts have across time and place.”
Priscilla Hayes–Painted Prayers
Hayes is an artist of international reputation whose work is held in collections around the world. Painted Prayers are large-scale abstracts. “I paint in abstraction because there is not a specific face or people which reflects the world’s condition. These paintings offer prayers for preserving human dignity and rights in the face of historical hatreds. I see hope, love and beauty in the human spirit. It would please me greatly if a little of this shines out from my paintings.” More images of Hayes work can be found at www.priscillahayes.com.
Special Artist Conversation, October 12:
Ransohoff and Hayes have been friends for over 20 years. As friends, artists and educators working together they found a common bond in their underlying approach to art. On Thursday, October 12, noon – 1:30, they will hold a brown bag luncheon at the Gallery on the topic of “20 years of friendship and work.”
Meg Birnbaum has won a wide range of awards for her photographs. Works have been shown at The Somerville Museum, Willoughby & Baltic Gallery, The Newton Free Library, Holyoke Center at Harvard University and included in the fall 2005 issue of The Harvard Review. Birnbaum was the first place winner of a national juried all-media show at Fitton Center for Creative Arts, Hamilton OH. All of the photographs appearing in the Belmont Gallery show were hand printed using a traditional wet darkroom. Images of Birnbaum’s work can be found here.
This show at the Belmont Gallery incorporates two different bodies of work. Summer’s Waning is the newest series. Says Birnbaum: “In these photographs I hope to revive summer memories, the mysteries, the magic and wonder. July holds such promise and possibility but August brings the growing anxiety of summer half over, of goodbyes and endings. August is a state of mind warmly intertwined with nature’s essential elements.”
What Remains
Of the other series Botanical Regenerations, Birnbaum says “It is about the biological process – a curious beauty won by stamina, resiliency and endurance in the service of a reproductive imperative. By removing these objects from their natural environments and presenting them center stage, I hope to grant even the most humble of subjects the quiet grandure it deserves. The scale of the prints provides the viewer a larger-than life intimate view of these commonly overlooked natural objects.”
Fran studied art and sociology as an undergraduate at Brandeis University and then received an MSW, working for several years with heroin addicts. Discovering that she could indeed earn a living in the arts, she entered Boston University’s School of Fine Arts where, specializing in photography and graphic design, she received her MFA. She has held a succession of positions in the field of design: branding, print, and signage for corporate, arts, and retail establishments; CD-roms for books, museum installations, sales and training; book cover illustrations; animations, multimedia, and web designs.
Most recently, Fran was Senior Designer with AOL Time Warner, where she was designer of the pre-eminent web site devoted to African American culture. Between professional life and raising two daughters, Forman continued to create her personal art, combining her illustrative and photographic skills with a passion for surrealism, paradox, illusion, assemblage, and the dislocations of time and place.
Woman in the Window
With a background in psychology, design, and photography, I am influenced by the photographic potential of fabricated worlds and the surreal intersection of portraiture, dreams, and memory. My collaged images often begin with the humble tintype portraits of anonymous mid-19th c. Americans. Dressed in theirfinest, posed in the itinerant photographer’s makeshift studio, they sat immobilized,then waited to receive copies of their new ‘instant’ likeness. They paid a penny or less and presented their tiny metal images to loved ones, perhaps to mark a special event in their lives, or before they headed off to battle.Their desire was to be remembered.
I photograph and re-assemble these images into a fabricated environment;I incorporate objects as clues in an attempt to suggest a buried narrativ eand a connection to their past and future. Through them and the worlds in which I place them, I try to make sense of issues of time, relationships,and connections.
My inspiration derives not only from 19th c. photography but chiefly from the 20th c. artists using visual narratives and symbolism to convey ideasand interpretation of the human condition: the juxtaposed assemblages of Joseph Cornell and Max Ernst, the paintings of Rene Magritte, the poetry and photography of Duane Michals, and the ordinary but surreal imagery of Ralph Eugene Meatyard.
The sun is the primary architect of my images: plants will not bloom without sun, and in my photographs the sun reveals the forms of the flowers. Their geometric curves and planes are defined as their surfaces bear witness to the strength of the summer sun. Presenting these flowers in natural light is a testament to their origins.
So are china and glass formed by high heat, and only light coming from the extreme temperature of the sun can reveal their true colors and the reflection and sparkle that make them gorgeous to see.
These fragile artifacts – both the flowers and the antique vases – gain a reprieve from decay, being captured on film together, in their combined opulence. If flowers were not ephemeral, there would be no point to my pictures, which are a means to express admiration for their ineffable beauty, postponing inevitable loss.
Hydrangeas, peonies, roses, lilies, all carry a generative secret and this is their human aspect, rendered in experimental compositions of stability and optimism, just as all living-dying things of the earth are together under the sun.”
Ellen Solari is a member of the River Street Artists in Waltham and is an art teacher at the Our Lady Comforter of the Afflicted School in Waltham. Her work has been displayed throughout New England for more than a decade.
I look at my work as a form of meditation. What I hope is for the viewer to stop and be present in what I have made. For me, the actual creation of a painting or drawing is a meditative practice. Drawing or painting a line forces me to concentrate. For each mark that I make I ask: ‘Does it belong?’ These latest painting are about bones. I fell in love with their subtle curves, holes and shapes.”
Nancy Wagner
Wagner
Nancy Wagner has been the recipient of multiple Mass Arts Lottery grants. Since 1989 her work has been shown throughout the United States and in the selected collections of corporate entities including Fidelity Corporation, The Boston Company and Morgan Guaranty Trust.
I have always been interested in pattern and color — dating back to many years of sewing and working with fabric. I also formally studied weaving which was a real cornerstone in my development as an artist. However it was when I discovered the world of paint that I found a vehicle with which I could fully explore- in a fresh and immediate way- the ideas I had always been interested in. I still find myself constantly referring back to that world of textiles- grids, patterns, and textures as I work to bring together the many disparate sources of my inspiration. With each painting, I aim for a sense of purity and mystery, infused with light and depth painted layer upon layer until I reach the gem-like quality I am seeking.”
As an artist my work has ranged from realism to abstraction, from figurative marble carving to multi-media installation, from etching to animation. My focus is typically intense and in depth. I dive into a particular realm or a particular project for a period of time before emerging with a fresh body of work and a new outlook on the world. While my classical training may be discerned, my propensity to explore new territory is clearly evident. Often my work results from a cross-disciplinary approach to materials and processes and often it reflects my delight in investigation and innovation.
For many years, I have focused on the role of memory in the structuring of perception. Much of my work has involved the layering of images, language, and forms; the juxtaposition of organic to inorganic; and the use of multiple elements to create a cohesive whole. Drawing from personal experience, elements of the various environments in which I lived filter into my work; from the streets of Boston to mountain villages in Italy; from Western landscapes to Eastern seashores.
Illusive Ideals
While I have employed a wide range of media, for the past decade wire and fiberglass mesh have become my preferred materials. I see screen as a metaphor for the filter of memory; the mesh through which we filtrate experience and the lens through which we view the world. Drawn to this non-traditional material by the nature of its structure as well as by its beauty, flexibility, and strength, I have worked with it extensively. I began by constructing sculptural forms with woven metal, combining different metals as well as painted screen and in many cases using these forms as key components in multi-media installations. I first focused on painted screen as an end in and of itself seven years ago. Since that time I have developed numerous techniques which I employ in layered combinations to create painted images on screen. I call these images “Rete-Chromes”.
Under Water Weave
Rete-chrome is my word for both the particular series of connected processes and the resulting artwork that have been my focus for the past seven years. Pronounced rêt-ê-krôm, it is derived from rete, Latin for net; and chrome, Greek for color. My method involves applying layers of pigment, both directly (as in painting) and indirectly (as in printmaking) to attain images on an open-weave backing.
Qualities of transparency, translucency and opacity are important aspects of the “Rete-Chromes”. Due to the open weave of the screen, light flows through the image where there is less paint and is blocked to varying degrees where the paint is thicker. This in turn produces complex cast shadows and allows for a rich interplay between image and environment.
In my most recent “Rete-Chromes” there is often a collage-like juxtaposition of colors and patterns. Sharp edges of containment serve as a counterpoint to expansive organic areas. This may be seen as an effort to achieve balance and a sense of order in what may otherwise be a chaotic environment. While the work has a dynamic vibrancy on one hand, it has a quiet meditative quality on the other. For me each one is an investigation; an inner journey; a means of creating wholeness.”
In February of 2005 I took the first of multiple trips to Afghanistan as a volunteer with the Business Council for Peace (
Through my work with Bpeace I came to know Rangina Hamidi, an Afghan-American woman who lives and works in Kandahar, the former Taliban capital city that is still a Taliban stronghold. Her program empowers women by giving them paid employment producing unique Kandahari embroidery, something they can do at home and without breaking cultural norms. Through her work she has come to know well and be trusted by these women. She and I have embarked on a long-term project to tell these women’s stories via a book, print pieces and multimedia features, which are now in progress. By collaborating with Rangina I am in the fortunate position of having access to women who are largely invisible in their own culture, and have the privilege of bringing their stories to the West where they are all but unknown.
The photographs in this exhibition are selected from the above projects, and show the daily life behind the headlines in Afghanistan. As a photojournalist and storyteller I try to convey these stories with integrity and honesty, and in the process I also hope to make art. The images in this collection are those that I feel have come the closest to succeeding at this.
