When the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts opened about seven years ago, co-founder and director Denise Froehlich, who is also a photographer, saw the museum as a way to give Maine photography a presence in the American conversation about art. The current exhibit of work by Meggan Gould, on view through September 30th, is a good example, she says. “The work is about the process and tools used in making photographs,” Froehlich says. “It is modernist in style and really, very smart.”

That’s true of so much of the work on display at MMPA. We emailed Froehlich to find out more about her hopes for the museum—its mission, exhibits, and her thoughts on the future (and present) of photography. Here’s what she had to say.

Denise Froehlich

What was it that inspired you to start MMPA? And why did you choose to open it in Maine?

DF: In 2010, when we launched MMPA, there were only a smattering of idiosyncratic photography collections throughout the state and photographic exhibitions were scant and mostly historically based. People were coming from all over the world to study photography at the ME Photo Workshops and our colleges and were making images here, but contemporary works weren’t being exhibited or collected by local museums. We likened this to plein air/landscape painting in Maine in the 1800s. MMPA decided that we would exhibit and collect contemporary photographic works by Maine artists. Because photography is linked to science and technology, it’s ever shifting in creation and representation. We want to bring the most avant-garde work being made in the state to the public and collectors. Also, the medium is shifting and no longer just flat and two-dimensional. Photographers are reaching forward to contemporary art that bridges the gap between drawing, sculpture, installations, film and projections, and painting. They’re also looking back and creating works with antique processes like daguerreotypes, cyanotypes, etc., by concocting their own emulsions or making camera-less imagery. This is important and needs to be collected.

The MMPA mission notes that the museum seeks to “inspire, engage and educate.” What would you say is the role of photography—as an art and as a tool of documentation—in 2017, when nobody seems to believe anything they see, read, or hear anymore?

DF: Ah, documentation is one way to use the medium. Our government is doing this well; the average person is photographed 75 times a day, and now we are installing facial recognition software into airports. Surveillance is real. Photography, film, and video are only tools like a typewriter or keyboard. It’s up to the artist to make art or communicate an idea to an audience. Form + Content + Context = Art.

How has the art of photography changed since the introduction of the iPhone 10 years ago? Where do you see it heading?

DF: I like to think about the iPhone or camera phone’s popularity and compare it to the Brownie camera that became available in 1900. The Brownie was a cheap, easy-to-use box that would bring the idea of a snapshot to the masses. Because it was inexpensive and readily available, thousands of people used them. Did they make “art” with them? Some did.

What do you think is misunderstood about photography?

DF: Because photography is so linked with in-the-moment technology, people think that anyone can create great art with it. Like painting or sculpture, it requires time, craft and skill, and, most of all, a unique voice and point of view. Look carefully, slowly, and ask yourself, ‘What does this image mean?’ If the intent and content is there and the formal qualities are worked out, and the audience is clear, chances are you’re looking at art.

What would you like to accomplish with MMPA in the next year?

DF: As director, I would like to collaborate with other institutions and bring Maine art to focus in the U.S. We are growing our small collection, and I would love to have exhibitions traveling. Of course, because we are small and recent—we’re in our seventh year—growing our operating budget is also a very real goal, too. Maine photographic artists are creating amazing things that need to be shared with the public. My hope is that we can expand our nonprofit and accomplish more. So far, every year we gain in reach, popularity, and depth of exhibitions.

Denise Froehlich–director, co-founder
Maine Museum of Photographic Arts
Portland, Maine
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Top image: Meggan Gould, Bob’s, November 19, 2012, pigment print, 24 x 30 inches, photo courtesy of Maine Museum of Photographic Arts

The post Keeping Maine in the Game appeared first on Take Magazine.

Years ago, when Mary Beth Meehan heard about violence being committed against Mayan Guatemalans in New Bedford, Massachusetts, she wanted to tell their story the best way she knew: through photographs. Initially her ideas were met with resistance—”people were afraid of me, they were undocumented and didn’t want to be identified”—but that project, part of which was published in the Boston Globe, further strengthened the acclaimed Providence-based photographer’s focus on portraiture as a means of telling a story.

The Brockton, Massachusetts, native then decided to train her lens on her adopted city of Providence, and the resulting series of portraits became part of a project called Seen Unseen. A few select photographs from that series, capturing Providence in its diversity, was part of a public installation in the city through July 2016.

Wannton, SeenUnseen series,  photo by Mary Beth Meehan

Trained as a photojournalist, Meehan has moved to a slower, more interpretive form of the art over the past ten years, and now shines light on the vulnerable and overlooked, the people hidden in the shadows. Providence, she says, is interesting because it’s incredibly diverse but “you can live in your bubble and not ever really have to interact with other cultures.” She uses the continuing SeenUnseen project as a unifier, a way of shaking residents out of their comfort zones and reminding them about their common humanity through a series of striking portraits.

Rosaleen, SeenUnseen, photo by Mary Beth Meehan

Meehan is involved in the New England community, especially in Rhode Island where she teaches narrative photography at the bilingual International Charter School in Pawtucket. Meehan says teaching the children there to use the content of their own lives as subjects for their work—whether it is visiting Colombia every Christmas or accompanying a parent to the laundromat every Friday—has been a revelatory experience both for the students and her.

Meehan has come full circle back to her hometown of Brockton, which she has chronicled through a project called City of Champions. The narrative around Brockton as a drug-infested city is not the entire picture, Meehan says. “It overlooks this whole image of a rich, deep, functioning working-class community that I love,” she says. City of Champions is meant to rectify that.

Guinea-Bissau – Brockton, photo by Mary Beth Meehan

Meehan’s work has always been relevant but it feels especially so now in the middle of a politically charged landscape. “Whatever views we have that allow us to dismiss each other, to create policy around that dismissal, to attack each other and go to war with each other—if I can somehow make them more porous and maybe question those views, I can’t think of a better use of my life and work,” Meehan says, “Mine is a tiny drop in the ocean, but it’s what I have.”

Mary Beth Meehan–photojournalist
Providence, Rhode Island
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Top image Bidur, from SeenUnseen, Providence. Photos by Mary Beth Meehan

The post #TakeAction: Photo Finish appeared first on Take Magazine.

In a former lifetime in which the person inhabiting the Oval Office had an actual vision based on facts, the arts were recognized as an integral measure of our society. President John F. Kennedy, for instance, said this about the arts: “We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda. It is a form of truth.”

Truth, of course, has taken a hit since 45 took office. That whole “alternative facts” bit. But numbers, or so the saying goes, don’t lie. So with that in mind, we took a quick look at the potential math implications of 45’s federal budget.

First the overview:

• Number of programs and agencies due for elimination: 62
• Number of programs within the Environmental Protection Agency alone: 50

Other programs due for funding cuts—or outright elimination—focus on everything from literacy to low-income home energy improvements to investigating chemical accidents. The enormous breadth and scope of impact on those least able to manage without these programs is breathtaking.

But since we’re an arts and culture magazine, we’re going to focus our hyperventilation on the potential impact of these devastating cuts to art and culture in New England. The proposed budget calls for eliminating all funding for the National Endowment for the Arts ($152 million) and the National Endowment for the Humanities ($155 million).

What NEA funding means to New England:

For fiscal year 2017, New England states received $2.591 million in NEA grants overall, according to the NEA website. Here’s who got what:

• Connecticut: 15 organizations, $310,000
• Massachusetts: 62 organizations, $1,672,000
• Maine: 11 organizations, $242,000
• New Hampshire: 6 organizations, $120,000
• Rhode Island: 9 organizations, $152,500
• Vermont: 4 organizations, $95,000

But the math adds up even less when you look beyond straight grants. Ann Wicks, communications manager for the New England Foundation on the Arts (NEFA)—one of six regional arts organizations funded by the NEA and private donations—explains. Arts organizations can potentially receive NEA dollars in three ways:

• an outright allocation of a grant the organization applies for itself
• an allocation from NEFA through NEA dollars provided to NEFA
• from NEA dollars given to state arts organizations, such as the Massachusetts Cultural Council

Wicks says about 15 percent of NEFA’s annual budget comes from NEA dollars. Beyond grants, NEFA uses those dollars to support artists in other, less direct ways, Wicks says. The Creative Ground Directory, for instance, is a free resource that lists artists and other creators around New England so that it’s easier to find appropriate collaborators for projects. In FY2016, NEFA made a total of 462 grants equaling $3.4 million. New England states received $829,947 of those NEFA grants.

In other words, the loss of funding to New England arts and humanities organizations could be even larger. “NEA support is very important to New England and the creative sector,” she says.

It’s a point that is echoed nationally. The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA), a national nonprofit that assists state arts agencies, offers this math about how NEA dollars improve the economy at large:

• The arts return $22.3 billion in tax revenue to federal, state, county, and municipal governments.
• Rural areas, low-income communities, and schools would feel the effects of this funding loss disproportionately from reductions. State arts agencies (using state and federal funds) award more than 25% of their grants to rural areas, 54% to low-income communities, and 45% to arts education projects.
• Every NEA dollar leverages more than $9 in matching funds, meaning that the impact of the NEA loss is just the beginning of the potential financial loss for arts organizations.

Cutting the NEA and NEH seem especially confusing given this math offered by NASAA: The NEA receives 0.004% of the total Federal budget, which is less than ½ of one hundredth of a percent.

That math also doesn’t add up when you consider the numbers presented by The Guardian. The British paper reports the following expenses incurred by taxpayers less than 50 days into 45’s residency:

• $56.6 million (or a cool $500,000 a day) to protect Trump Tower. That was through March 1. Assuming that Mrs. 45 stays until June for Mini-45 to finish school, that dollar amount could add another $46 million, bringing the total to $102 million.
• $3+million estimated cost for EACH weekend jaunt to golf work at his Mar-a-Lago Resort (a place where he doubled entry fees from $100,000 to $200,000 the day after he was elected).
• $97,380 for hotels for Secret Service to protect Eric Trump (that would be his son on those business interests 45 still hasn’t divested himself of) while he visited a condominium development in Uruguay. This is just one trip.

And finally this statistic: 45’s proposed military spending increase in his federal budget? $54 billion.

Something definitely doesn’t add up.

Does this irritate you as much as it does us? Here are a few links if you want to #TakeAction. See you on the streets.

Pen.org
artsactionfund.org
Change.org
The Official White House Petition to Save Arts Funding
Contact Your Representative
Arts Advocacy Day – Washington, DC
#SaveTheNEA

Top image courtesy Royal Talens

The post #TakeAction: Doing the NEA Defunding Math appeared first on Take Magazine.

Created on the Bay of Fundy in the tiny town of Eastport, Maine, the Tides Institute and Museum of Art (TIMA) established a wet-foot dry-foot policy early in its inception. All artists would be welcome to show their work and do residencies whether they came from the U.S., from over the border in Canada, from across the mile-wide strait from New Brunswick, or from across the Atlantic Ocean.

That was 15 years ago. Today TIMA and the town of Eastport—population 1,200—are riding high on art and innovation due to the imperative of their locale.

“We developed a Maine and New Brunswick [Canada] task force in 2010 so cultural leaders on both sides of the border could talk and meet. It’s the reason we started the institute,” says Executive Director Hugh French, who is one of TIMA’s founders. “There is too much of a tendency of stopping at the border in the U.S. and Canada while artists are crossing the border. It’s silly not to follow them.”

Interior of TIMA’s 1819 Free Will North Church Project Space with large-scale installation, “Undertow,” by artist, Anna Hepler. Project space has 23-foot high vaulted ceiling and exceptional acoustics. | Photo by Allison Osberg.

Eastport is located on Moose Island and connected to the mainland by a causeway. It sits at the entrance of Passamaquoddy Bay on the border of Canada and is at the most eastern part of the US. It’s a place you might expect to be a little sleepy, at least when it comes to the arts and innovation. But you’d be wrong.

TIMA, whose studio, museum and housing for artist residencies overlook the U.S./Canada boundary, is a beehive of artistic activity. Community renewal, an active residency program, and an aggressively diverse permanent collection are just a few of the parts that make up the institute’s game plan. That diversity is also one reason funding and artists are drawn to the space, French says.

“Early on we felt we had to operate on different interests. Architecture and history, for example,” says French. “Our collection includes painting, photography, architectural elements, a historical collection and a strong interest in contemporary work. We foster new work. That is the reason for our residency program—so contemporary work can be created here.”

Tides Institute and Museum of Art| Image courtesy TIMA

Last year’s TIMA’s residency program had nine artists—six from the U.S. and three from abroad. This year the program will host 10-12 artists. This summer a two-year collaboration between Portland, Maine photographer Shoshannah White and Halifax interdisciplinary artist Charley Young will have its premiere in an exhibition in the 1819 church now known as the Free Will North Church Project Space.

TIMA’s main building was the organization’s first regional revitalization effort, a strategy of cross disciplines that began 15 years ago when the organization began. “The long-term effort started with tackling a threatened crippled building in the center of downtown,” says French. “We put $1.2 million to bring the building back. Now we have six buildings.”

Tides Institute and Museum of Art New Year’s Eve sardine drop | Image courtesy TIMA

Although Eastport is physically isolated, TIMA and the community are not. The populace comes together every year for “Artsipelago,” an event that includes galleries, chefs, and ferries. To celebrate yet another year of tides, TIMA annually organizes the New Year’s Eve Maple Leaf and Sardine Drop. During that popular event, a giant red maple leaf is lowered at midnight Atlantic time (11pm EST) to commemorate the Canadian new year while a brass band plays “O Canada.” An hour later, when the New Year reaches the States, an 8-foot sardine is lowered as the band plays “Auld Lang Syne.”

Tides Institute and Museum of Art – museum
Eastport, Maine
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Top image: View from the top of TIMA’s main building with a view of Eastport’s downtown and waterfront – all of the islands in the distance are in Canada. | Image courtesy TIMA

The post Building Bridges, Crossing Borders Through Art appeared first on Take Magazine.

Ascending the stairs to the second floor of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Massachusetts, I see Tanja Hollander on her phone, head tilted in that familiar position while bathed in the glittering light from Nick Cave’s nearby installation Until. I’m accompanied by curator Denise Markonish, one of Hollander’s IRL friends. We arrive at a table in front of one of her self-portraits; Hollander is still on the phone. I’m not offended or annoyed. In fact, as a digital native who’s lived much of my social life through a cell phone for almost eight years, I feel quite content. I’ve always believed that friends should be able to silently sit together while on their personal smart devices without it being an issue.

Tanja Hollander, Detail of Grid of 16 Travel Ephemera Still Lifes, 2011-2016, Archival Pigment Print, 44×44 in. | Photo courtesy Mass MoCA

In her exhibit Are you really my friend?, which opens at Mass MoCA on February 18th, it’s not this feeling of momentary kinship that Hollander seeks to unpack so much as the idea of true friendship—and how that’s changing in our digital age. The show features formal portraits of Hollander’s Facebook friends taken in their homes, the Maine artist traveling across the United States and Europe for nearly six years to capture as many of her 626 friends as she could. Adjacent to several of the resulting 430 portraits, Hollander also shows thoughtfully arranged and curated bits of ephemera from those travels: everything from a flattened Plan B box to personal notes left for her.

“My data is relevant, and your data is relevant. . .our data is relevant,” says Hollander, gesturing at the scanned bits of ephemera cropped square and arranged in a grid-like pattern, “and this boarding pass with its beautiful TSA mark is relevant in the same way that a handwritten note from one of my friends left in the morning before I got up is relevant.”

Tanja Hollander, Detail of Four Large Portraits, 2011-2016, Archival pigment print, 42×42 in. | Photo courtesy MASS MoCA

“In the same way that a beautifully staged and composed portrait is relevant,” adds Markonish, who points to an iPhone photo of a landscape shot through curtains.“They’re all relevant and all democratized, where each thing is as important as the next. I’ve done a lot of big shows here, but I think this show involves the most amount of information.”

Markonish’s comment is not an overstatement: Are you really my friend? Features 5,701 images (edited down from over 100,000) displayed on the walls, assembled over giant curtain banners, and framed in quiet concrete corners. It’s the first time that all of Hollander’s Facebook-friend portraits are being shown in one place.

Clip from Are you really my friend? The Movie | Directed by Robin Greenspun.

Hollander’s approach to dissecting and understanding friendship, the data we compile about ourselves over time and travel, is surprising and extremely contemporary. The scanned familiar objects from her travels link to a specific time, location, and, finally, to a Facebook friend portrait shared via a data visualization platform that will be available online and at the show. While the ephemera and notes don’t literally relate to each other, they act as markers of time and place throughout Hollander’s journey. A discarded package of European cigarettes links to a post-it note left for Hollander, which links to one of the 30 large portraits installed at the beginning of the exhibition space. “Everything cross-references everything else,” she explains.

We stroll into a partially walled-off portion of the exhibit, where most of the large portraits hang. For Hollander, it was very important to go to a person, share a meal, and sometimes even stay at their house. This emotional labor and caring connection is present in the portraits, which seems a bit ironic considering so much of social media, particularly Facebook, is about voyeurism and establishing a comfortable distance from certain people. Markonish comments on one of the portraits, a family seated upright in a clean, sunny kitchen. “They’re not uncomfortable, like a stranger is capturing them,” she says. “When I look at this portrait, I don’t feel like I’m spying on them; it feels very authentic.”

Tanja Hollander, Detail of Grid of 16 Travel Ephemera Still Lifes, 2011-2016, Archival Pigment Print, 44×44 in. | Photo courtesy MASS MoCA

“All of these people welcomed you into their homes,” Markonish says to Hollander, “and for so many of them, it wasn’t just ‘come in here, take a picture of me and leave,’ it was ‘share a meal with us, have our guest room.’ It became about welcome and hospitality.” The room of portraits features a wide variety of people in equally varied circumstances. I find myself drawn to a mother and daughter, heads tipped toward each other, sitting in a lovingly disorganized, cluttered kitchen that reminds me of home. The portrait hangs across from another featuring stylish furniture in a large living room, with an abstract painter-turned-meticulous-bird-illustrator sitting perfectly upright, almost regal, her chin up, cheek turned toward the viewer.

I ask Hollander and Markonish why, of all of the 626 friends exhibited, they decided to feature these 30 larger than the rest. “It was really based on image quality,” says Hollander, “while also keeping in mind class, race, age, gay, single parent, single person as opposed to just couples and families. Just trying to get the whole range of what is here, and highlight some of them [by making them] big. Both Denise and I were pretty conscious of not exclusively featuring white, middle-class arty people.”

Detail of Grid of 16 Snapshots, 2011-2016, archival pigment print | Photo courtesy MASS MoCA

Exiting the portrait room, I’m reminded again of how hard it is to avoid peering into the Nick Cave show adjacent to Hollander’s exhibit. “I will not lie, being next to Nick is incredibly intimidating,” Hollander admits. “Maybe I’m not as far away from Nick’s work as I think: he is overwhelming with bedazzle, and I’m doing it with the mundane, the every day. I’m saying, Look, you have these things, I have these things, we are all relevant. That’s what social media does. It’s the greatest historical archive of all time, written and visualized by the people for the people—not the aristocracy, who are usually the history writers and cultural influencers.”

Cautiously trying to avoid a Full House moment, I don’t ask Markonish and Hollander what they each have learned about friendship during the process of traveling, gathering information, and curating the show. But as I leave, Hollander, in her straightforward yet highly endearing way, offers one up herself. “One of the most important things that I learned is that I have a really close, tight group of friends that are my family,” she says. “They don’t all live in Maine; they live all across the world.”

Tanja Hollander, Detail of Grid of 16 Post-it Notes, 2012-2016, Archival Pigment Print, 44×44 in.

Tanja Hollander – photographer
Auburn, Maine
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Top photo Tanja Hollander, Detail of Grid of 16 Post-it Notes, 2012-2016, Archival Pigment Print, 44×44 | Photo courtesy MASS MoCA

The post Facebook-to-Face appeared first on Take Magazine.

The joke in Vermont is that it takes two jobs to survive. Joshua Farr, director of the Vermont Center for Photography, has at least seven. Beside his work at VCP, Joshua is a web designer for Good Bear Productions, handles event photography for the Brattleboro Art Museum, repurposes old furniture, organizes Pop-Up Brattleboro, teaches photography at In-Sight Photography Project, and is also is a professional photographer whose documentary-style work is a sweet mixture of the awkwardly bucolic and the deeply held. But it’s at VCP where Josh’s largest regional impact is felt.

Cameras for sale at Vermont Center for Photography | Photo by David Nielsen

Farr is a New England native, born in Maine but now a full-time resident of Brattleboro. After getting his BFA at the New Hampshire Institute of Art in 2011, Farr responded to a Craigslist ad for a Gallery Manager position at a non-profit in Brattleboro. “I thought it was pretty far-fetched,” he says. “I was a photographer, but never held an administrative position, especially for a non-profit. I applied, drove out in my rag-tag farm clothes during Hurricane Irene, and a week later I was offered the job. Turns out the deciding factor was that I’d been an Eagle Scout as a kid. I’d hesitated to put it on my resume, but it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.”

As Director and architect of the entire 2017 calendar at VCP, Farr makes a point of focusing on New England photographers. “Brattleboro is an extreme example of an arts-rich community that really puts a focus on supporting local artists,” says Farr. “That said, I feel like artists in Brattleboro are starving for a venue. I like being able to support our local photographers while simultaneously exposing them to people they’d otherwise be unfamiliar to.”

Photo from the Curbside series, 2015 | Photo by Joshua Farr

Founded in 1998, VCP is a member-driven organization that has semiannual member shows as well as practical workshops, a public darkroom, printing services, and artist discussions. Farr thinks the member shows are the strongest representation of what VCP has to offer. “There’s certainly no lack of local talent,” he says. “Our immediate radius is an hour to an hour and a half outside of Brattleboro. Our members also submit to an Open Call for exhibitions. We usually get 50 or so proposals for solo shows that we whittle down to five or six annually. At least half of these are New England photographers, and some of them end up being members, but membership isn’t factored into the solo show selections.”

Farr’s own photographs are intensive studies, thematically culled from the commonplace items of Farr’s own life. Works like Curbed Collections, a series that documents household objects left by the side of the road, collects images of items we ourselves once collected, forming a disjointed narrative that speaks to how we value the things we own. The series Things That are Orange features quirky images of things that are orange in our everyday life, and Downstairs, perhaps the most intimate of all Farr’s work, documents the collected objects and vignettes of his father’s basement, servings as a disembodied “time capsule” of his life.

Photo from the Downstairs series, 2015 | Photo by Joshua Farr

“It interests me when you start to notice what you notice. When you decide to start looking for orange things, for example, you’ll see them everywhere.” Farr shrugs then adds, “Maybe my goal as a photographer is to convey the personal meaning behind my photographs to people who don’t know anything about me, but still somehow be true to myself as an artist.”

Joshua Farr at Vermont Center for Photography offices | Photo by David Nielsen

Joshua Farr is the Director of the Vermont Center for Photography in Brattleboro, Vermont. Follow Farr on Instagram, and follow Vermont Center of Photography on Facebook.

Top photo from the Things That are Orange series, 2016 | Photo by Joshua Farr

The post Curating the Visual appeared first on Take Magazine.

Image courtesy of Michael Winters Photography

It’s not that Michael Winters found photography but more rather, that it found him. It all began 10 years ago with a trip to Budapest and a point and shoot camera. Prior to this landmark event in an “addiction”-to-fester, Winters had never owned a camera. After much experimentation and an ever-challenging relationship with light, Winters settled on portraiture. And so would commence the birth of a creepy, ethereal, and down-right elvish assemblage of images from this Portsmouth, NH based photographer.

“As long as I can remember I have had a love affair with cinema, especially the silent era through the 1950’s. The lighting, sets and costuming have always mesmerized me. I particularly like the Films Noir of the late 30’s through the early 50’s and I’m partial to black and white versus color.” An influence of the practical effects of 20th-century film is unmistakeable in Winter’s work. Portraits of heavily costumed and made-up women from a past era that hasn’t happened yet create a distinctly cinematic vibe.  His subjects are ghostly and incredibly alive – of a different realm but also very present. Just like the people in films, his subjects are carefully placed on display in a shadowbox. Every frame seems to have an interesting and possibly sinister backstory involving a coy woman with a closet full of secrets.

Image courtesy of Michael Winters photography

Winters photography is heavily collaborative. Makeup artists, hair-dressers, and a flower crown craftsman are central to the other-worldly and refined look of many of his portraits. A trove of very creative friends makes for a portfolio of photographs that you just can’t stop exploring. One three-part project, “Flower Crown Series” is particularly rich with contributors. “That shoot was the brain child of MUAs Laurie Hoey and Erik Wochholz who is the historical horticulturist at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, NH. Erik wanted to make flower crowns using the flowers and plants that come from the various gardens he curates on the grounds of the museum. He spent a lot of time coming up with plant and flower combinations, dried them and created some really amazing works of art.” The nymphs of the three series project look as if they have risen from a particularly beautiful sect of Norse mythology mixed with an elvish culture you’d expect to find holed up deep in an Icelandic forest.

“Flower Crown #1” | Image courtesy of Michael Winters Photography

“Flower Crown #2” | Image courtesy of Michael Winters Photography

“Flower Crown #3” Image courtesy of Michael Winters Photography

As for his next project… “I have a dozen 36 inch round white balloons waiting to be filled with helium. That’s all I’ll say about that!” Picturing it, I’m intrigued.

Michael Winters’ photography book “Friends and Muses” is available on his website.

Image courtesy of Michael Winters photography

The post Winters is on an Otherwordly Wavelength appeared first on Take Magazine.

Tempest, Light, The Gentleman Farmer – these are just a few of New-Milford-based abstract photographer Rick Giles’ exhibitions. His style is atmospheric and textural, creating a visceral reaction upon looking at this work. Giles’ images include people, landscapes, or objects, but it is how he captures light, in its pure form, that delights. It relies upon a melding of humans and nature to create an effect. In his own words, Giles states that “It is this very pull of nature that has proved the influencing factor in Giles’ own move from the city to the countryside. A change that provoked an adjustment in approach to the subject matter and allowed more of a personal exploration of the environment in which he lives.”

In his show entitled 23.5°, which is Earth’s axial tilt as it orbits the sun, he reveals what he intended to capture, “This photographic series was shot across one year, on 7 acres of land, and sets out to interpret the seasons through the changing hues within the landscape.” The abstract images, seen in series, remove the usual indicators of time and place; here we rely on the colors and feelings the images evoke to determine when we are in each season. Time moves quickly here.

Image from 23.5° | Courtesy of Rick Giles

Giles has also documented his relationship with the farmland that he inhabits in New Milford, in his series called Unearthed. This exhibition “encapsulates the relationship between man and nature. It documents [his] engagement to the place [he] has chosen to live and [his] progressive domestication of the land.” Giles explains since moving here, he has been excavating and digging out objects ranging from “obvious” such as farming implements, to “absurd,” like gigantic toy dinosaurs. The objects belonged to the generations of families who lived on the land before Giles. Found items are photographed behind dingy glass on a black colored background and give the impression that he’s somehow photographed them in situ.

Image from Unearthed | Courtesy of Rick Giles

Rick Giles was born in England in 1969 and now lives and works in New Milford, CT. He represented by Eleven Gallery, London, and his works are also available at The Cat Street Gallery in Hong Kong and has been shown in museums such as London’s National Portrait Gallery and Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris.

Top image from 23.5° | Courtesy of Rick Giles

The post Gaze Through Rick Giles’ Lens appeared first on Take Magazine.

Do you notice how much we mention aspects of weaving in everyday conversation? How much we talk about the ‘common threads’ through our lives, the very ‘fabric of our beings’, moments that pull at our ‘heart-strings’?

We are all Woven in some way and Gail Skudera‘s show of the same name at the Maine Museum of Photographic Art, communicates this philosophy in a visually stunning way. This upcoming exhibition, curated by MMPA director Denise Froehlich, is a mixed-media feast. Skudera has a long and impressive resume of shows across the states and the world starting in the 80’s; textiles, photography, collage, assemblage, painting – all these techniques and materials have passed through her work. Director Froehlich is enthusiastic and rightfully so, “Talk about expanding the photographic medium, the truly spectacular thing about Skudera’s work is that her process is photographic in nature, and she realizes the imagery employing weaving and construction.  There isn’t another artist using this methodology in the State!”

The Changling, 2011 | woven mixed media, 41 x 40 inches

Opening October 3rd, and running until December 30th, visitors to the exhibition will be presented with assemblages, collages, and wall hangings featuring human subjects, known and unknown to the artist. Skudera notes, “Some are personal and some have become personal after working with them for so long.  For years I have worked with family photographs and photographs of known subjects. When I began to introduce found photographs that I was in some way ‘taken’ by, it opened up new freedom for me in approaching what was once familiar.”

Aperture, 2014 | woven mixed media, 30 x 12 inches

We were Taken with it too – Skudera presents us with one the most inventive examples of contemporary collage. The manipulation and interpretation of photography is being stretched out of its old familiar format now that digital has become the top dog. Film and printing continue to be used, but in wilder, more abstract, innovative ways than they were initially made for. Her use of photographs as raw material for weaving a base for her work marries the equally analog world of fiber arts, culminating in objects that are as appealing texturally as visually. There is space for the work to breathe, open fretwork here and there, button reference points, you can look at the surface and then sink in deeper. There’s a conceptual element as well, the artist as needleworker, darner, knitter that gives the works a homey familiarity and the color palette evokes a nebulous but nostalgic place in time.

Block Portrait, 2010 | mixed media on blocks

Gail Skudera’s WOVEN
Maine Museum of Photographic Arts
5th floor, USM Glickman Library
Portland ME
Exhibition Dates: October 3 – December 30, 2016
Opening Reception: Thursday October 27, 6-8pm
Artist Talk: Thursday December 1, 6-8pm

All of the works shown at MMPA are for sale (unless noted).  70% of the proceeds go directly to the artist and 30% to MMPA to cover operating expenses.

Top image: Aperture, 2014, woven mixed media, detail

The post Gail Skudera: W O V E N appeared first on Take Magazine.

Clover Burke was around five years old when her father began taking her on road trips. A Rhode Island photographer known for both commercial and fine art work, Jesse Burke cleverly positions his daughter in natural environments that are both awe-inspiring and vaguely menacing.

Flesh and Blood, 2012 photo by Jesse Burke

Burke released the images over a span of years and was amazed by the lack of criticism he encountered.  “You don’t see a lot of fathers and daughters together,” Burke says about the series, which he’s named Wild and Precious. “And there’s something timely in these pictures since people are hyper-aware of the environment right now.”

Burke humbly calls himself “nature dad photographer guy” and refers to all of his work as pictures (not photos or photographs), almost as though this were an amateur hobby and these photos aren’t being snapped up by museum curators. The RISD Museum acquired a number of the photos, which are on display through September 22nd, 2016, and follow-up exhibitions are on deck at Southern New Hampshire University’s McIninch Art Gallery and Gallery Kayafas in Boston.

The project is by all accounts a hit, one of few art projects to ever receive praise from both Vice and People. Photos from the series have entered museum collections, and the accompanying Wild and Precious book from Daylight Books made a slew of year-end Best Of lists at the end of 2015. Oh, and Time Magazine selected Burke’s Instagram feed as Rhode Island’s best in their coast-to-coast roundup of the nation’s best accounts worth following.

Face of Despair, 2015 photo by Jesse Burke

Clover is alone in each photo, even if her dad is nearby with a camera and hopefully a first aid kit, just in case. In many instances, she’s secondary to the natural wonders surrounding her. And there’s always an element of risk. In the remote Pacific Northwest, Jesse and Clover heard (but thankfully didn’t see) a nearby mountain lion. On another trip, they narrowly missed an encounter with a black bear.

The photos work on a number of levels. A cute kid being cute – that’s the entry level. Raising environmental consciousness for a younger generation – that’s another one. But then there are the deeper meanings. Popular culture has insisted that young girls are always threatened by shadowy outside forces. It’s a story as old as Little Red Riding Hood, but we’ve never seen it quite in this way before.

Clover is Burke’s oldest child, but now her younger sisters Poppy and Honey accompany the family on road trips. Would Jesse consider duplicating the project with his younger girls?

Best Friend, 2013 photo by Jesse Burke

Probably not, he says, but only because the family now travels as a unit. “It seems obvious, but one unintended consequence is that the project made us into an adventure family.” (The younger girls make regular appearances on Burke’s Instagram feed.) Favorite day trips range from Bristol CT, Rhode Island’s Audobon Society to the town of Dorset, Vermont.

In A Young Girl’s Mind, 2013 photo by Jesse Burke

The road trips have slowed down while Burke promotes the series and plans his next body of work. “I’m not exactly sure how that’ll pan out. I can’t imagine the next series being as successful as this one,” he says. “But maybe it can.”

Top photo Blistered, 2011 by Jesse Burke

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