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January 25, 2013 by profk

The NEW / OLD Group

Photographs by Elaine Fisher, Eric Myrvaagnes, A. David Wunsch

Opening Reception: Friday, January 25, 6-8 p.m.

Elaine Fisher, Returning, digital photography
Elaine Fisher, Returning, digital photography

Photographers Elaine Fisher, Eric Myrvaagnes and A. David Wunsch share a special bond that that goes back nearly 50 years when they first met as young photography students in a workshop conducted by noted American photographer and MIT professor Minor White. They have been meeting ever since to praise, criticize and evaluate each others work, forming an enduring association–celebrated in their exhibit The New / Old Group.

Eric Myrvaagnes, Tar Figures, digital photography
Eric Myrvaagnes, Tar Figures, digital photography

Minor White, a contemporary of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, embraced the creative idea that even mudane subject matter could be elevated to art by the quality of light in which it was photographed. He had a strong influence on his young students, says Fisher, and encouraged them to “find our way by quietly observing our individual truth,” she says. While sharing this common foundation to making art, the three friends’ photographic styles and approaches are varied: Wunsch has continued working in black and white documenting place with a 4×5 view camera; Fisher has worked in digital color photography for years, seeking emotional metaphor through her images; and Myrvaagnes, also working digitally, searches for how shape, form or quality of light evoke emotion.

Elaine Fisher
    Elaine Fisher, Alone, digital photography
Elaine Fisher, Alone, digital photography

I have always wanted to photograph the invisible. Obviously, that’s difficult for a photographer–unless metaphor is used.

My work often depicts human isolation within harsh, unyielding environments where sharp edges, extreme contrast, searing light and spatial ambiguity combine to create a metaphor for aloneness and searching. Since these emotions are so basic to human experience, my hope is to reach that place in others. I also try to bring an unusual point of view to ordinary places; a striking juxtaposition, an uncomfortable insight, something ajar, these are the visual dynamics that attract my eye and spirit.

My primary artistic influence has not been to emulate other artists, but to concentrate on emotional experience within my own life, and to imagine visually equivalent metaphors in response.”

Elaine, a Chancellor Professor Emerita of UMass Darmouth where she taught photography for 35 years, received a BFA from Carnegie Mellon and a Master of Design Studies from Harvard. She has shown her work in over 150 exhibitions across the country, and has been honored with a National Endowment for the Arts, a First Prize in the Boston Center for the Arts “New England Photovision” exhibition which included 2700 participants, and a One Artist show at NY’s Light Gallery.

Eric Myrvaagnes

In my photography I am more interested in evoking emotions than in depicting reality.”

Eric Myrvaanes, Railroad Car Graffiti, digital photography
Eric Myrvaanes, Railroad Car Graffiti, digital photography

In recent years I have concentrated more on abstract images, sand patterns on a beach at low tide, squiggles of tar intended to repair cracks in pavement, or weathered graffiti on an abandoned railroad car. For me these images function as “Equivalents,” as that term was used by Alfred Stieglitz and by Minor White.”

Visit Eric’s website.

A. David Wunsch
A. David Wunsch, Self Portrait
A. David Wunsch, Self Portrait

David’s career in electrical engineering has spanned more than four decades. Paralleling his professional career he has pursued his love of photography continuously since participating in Minor White’s Workshop East in 1966. Always finding new studies and challenges in black and white film, David is drawn to working with light and shadow and strong architectural compositions. As evidenced by his intriguing self portraits, he is equally comfortable in front of his camera as well as behind it.

View a portfolio of David’s images.

A. David Wunsch, New Haven Underpass 1
A. David Wunsch, New Haven Underpass 1
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Filed Under: Show Archives Tagged With: A. David Wunsch, Elaine Fisher, Eric Myrvaagnes

January 1, 2007 by profk

New Work: Loutrell, Revett, Wunsch

Lara Loutrell, Dawn Revett, A. David Wunsch

Lara Loutrel
Etching by Lara Loutrel
Etching by Lara Loutrel

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.”

More information on this artist can be found at www.laraloutrel.com.

Dawn Revett

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
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.”

More information on this artist can be found at www.dawnrevett.com.

David Wunsch
Photograph by A. David Wunsch
Photograph by A. David Wunsch

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.”

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Filed Under: Show Archives Tagged With: A. David Wunsch, Dawn Revett, Lara Loutrell, painting, photography, printmaking

Location

Town Hall Complex
Homer Municipal Building
19 Moore St., 3rd floor
Belmont Center, MA 02478

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