December 1st - December 30th, 2023: Frank Armstrong, Rebecca Doughty, Conley Harris

When most people travel today, whether it be by air, rail, or road, they want to arrive at their destination as quickly as possible.  However, it is the back roads -- what William Least Heat Moon wrote about in his book "Blue Highway" -- that call to me.  I seek the human relationship to place where symbols and signs, past and present, the whimsical, the iconic and the ironic are often blended by the passage of time.  My subjects are the obscure and the transitory.  They are not hidden, but they are seldom noticed by the passer-by.   For me, these symbols of man combine with the ever-present and ever-changing symbols of nature to reveal an enigmatic picture of life. My natural landscapes serve as a foil for the social landscapes.

 It is this landscape that interest me most.  These images represent my individual response to things -- as I see them -- in my travels.  They are documentary only in the sense that they present highly detailed visual record of sometimes isolated areas and things. More importantly, these photographs give form to my visual impressions.  The heartland is marked by decay and a slow evolution towards a more contemporary time as evidenced through personal expression of rugged individualism. 

I photograph to validate an existence, and for the sheer ecstasy of pleasure I feel at that moment when the dialogue between myself and the subject reveals what Vincent van Gogh called "...a feeling for the things in themselves."  It is a passage from things seen to things known.

Rebecca Doughty | Smile

The characters I paint or draw or sculpt in my studio are my companions, confidants, clowns, heroes. Together we navigate life’s comedies and tragedies. My work most often features a cast of animal characters in a range of human predicaments, but for this exhibition I’ve combined two bodies of work that take a slightly different turn: the Smile paintings may be smiles of the past or future, or of the departed, moments of happiness salvaged, ghosts of happiness haunting a fragmenting world. The Sticks, friendly in spite of their anatomical challenges, honor a long tradition of folk and visionary artists who transform these readily available natural materials into worlds of their own. I’m interested in the notions of “high” and “low” art, and perhaps my work exists in some odd territory— very much rooted in traditions of painting and drawing, and at the same time poking fun at these traditions. 

“All the untidy activity continues, awful but cheerful.” —Elizabeth Bishop 

Conley Harris | Along the Path

Conley Harris is fearless and forthright—and lyric—in his approach to the landscape. Through the paintings in this luminous show, Harris invites us to join him on a walk on a path activated by his passionate brush. He is an intimate of this place—the perfect guide.

Harris sees the forest and the trees—and roots, grasses, rivers, and ponds, and other elements of the verdant New England woodlands. “It’s the forest silence,” he writes, “the damp bark, stillness of the air, the layers of old leaves between the trees.” You can sense those facets of nature in his immersive bravura paintings.

Expressive, marked by semi-abstract passages, these paintings are alive with rich, often earthy pigments. Layers of paint and imagery enhance the sensation of depth of observation—as if Harris could see through the foliage to the essence of the land. 

That layering effect derives in part from Harris’s remarkable process. An enlarged photograph of a 16-by-20-inch plein-air oil sketch printed on a canvas serves as matrix for each painting. “This transformation,” the artist notes, “is about seeing the landscape as new experience, looking at its parts and pieces, reconsidering my memories of sitting and painting the original smaller picture.” 

This act of reinvention connects Harris to the history of landscape painting, from the likes of Lorraine, Caspar David Friedrich, and Ruisdael to such Maine masters of the last century as Rockwell Kent, Marsden Hartley, and John Marin. As a mentor to generations of painters through his teaching, he is the model artist, acknowledging the past while embracing the present. 

“I have never hesitated to talk to trees,” Harris states, to consider them his “partners”—like arboreal companions. Traversing a high ridge overlooking the Charles River outside Boston, he encountered a special tree-bound world. Lucky for us, he felt compelled to paint his impressions and bear them back to us. His is a walk to remember.

--Carl Little, author and critic

October 20th - November 25th, 2023: Josué Bessiake, May Sun, Joe Quinn

Josué Bessiake | H301

Josue Bessiake is an African American painter working in Beverly, Massachusetts whose work is heavily influenced by his environment. Born to immigrant parents from Côté d'Ivoire, Bessiake grew up primarily in the Midwest. His family moved frequently, allowing him to observe a multitude of settings and environments that have subsequently shaped how he looks at the world. Due in part to his itinerant upbringing, Bessiake is constantly asking how the things he observes can be transformed, or perhaps should they be transformed.

Bessiake is influenced by histories of art as a means to explore his sense of place in the world as an artist. Working primarily from life, he seeks to take up the same space as his subjects. This helps Bessiake to see more deeply and gain a sense of empathy for the people and places he paints. Bessiake’s work ranges from abstract to representational, often depicting his immediate environment, such as his peers, his studio, hallways, and everyday objects that surround him. Bessiake’s palette seeks to capture the ways in which light transforms his subjects and surroundings.

Josue Bessiake is a senior at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA. He recently completed an artist residency in the Bahamas where he studied painting with Michael P. Edwards. Bessiake also presented an artist talk at the National Gallery, Bahamas as part of his residency. Recent exhibitions include Fresh Faces at Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston, Shallow Waters at Bare Gallery, Beverly, and the upcoming show, A Familiar Form, at Massachusetts College of Art.

May Sun | Embracing Transcendence

Life is full of unpredictable opportunities for change to overcome suffering, unfairness, and disappointment. Free will means choosing to embrace and transcend life challenges. This exhibition reflects choosing to rise up through personal responsibility and positively impact others.

Through years of self discovery, I transitioned my main focus to philosophical artistic pursuits. Embracing and overcoming doubts and discomfort freed my artistic spirit to grow. Inspiration and intuition guide my art making.

Seeking dialogue with my painting, I use faster drying material like acrylic paint for spontaneity and responsiveness. Waiting, boundaries and restrictions fade away. Style is a by-product of my creative process, not the cheese in the mousetrap. Collage offers symbolic and historical references. Tools from hardware stores, cooking gadgets and even toy cars create certain textures and images. The resulting art reflects life: imperfect, rustic, multi-layered, full of stories, philosophy and love.

This exhibition includes miniseries reflecting this process. Chinese classic and folk dance performances, ballroom dance competitions, and simple free dances inspire lines, shapes, and color. As a fan of Gongfu legends since childhood I sense its depiction of strength and skill. After visiting the Gene Culture exhibition at MIT Museum, I combined Science, GongFu and pandemic social events to reflect on human perseverance and hope for the future. Buddhist and calligraphy images transcend the ordinary and embrace the mystical. Finally, the. deep sky, air of spring, beautiful lakes, fragrance from trees and flowers reflect on our wonderful planet and universe.

I hope viewers feel inspired and embrace their own transcendence.

Joe Quinn | American Hypnagogia

American: of or relating to the United States of America or its inhabitants. A citizen of the United States of America. Common cultural artifacts include the flag of the United States, apple pie, baseball, rock and roll, blue jeans, Coca-Cola, assault weapons, and small towns. Americanism tends to support monoculturalism and cultural assimilation, believing them to be integral to a unified American cultural identity. This Includes, but is not limited to unquestioned patriotism as defined by whoever you happen to be speaking to at the time, the procurement and wide spread use of firearms, fear of the Other, Them, You, and Me, as well as an unquestioned adherence to the rules as laid down by an all seeing, all knowing, all powerful invisible man to the exclusion of all other invisible men.

Hypnagogia: the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep, also defined as the waning state of consciousness during the onset of sleep. Experiences can include hallucinatory sounds, visions, beliefs, and actions. Those suffering from these effects may uncontrollably wave flags and banners, consume unhealthy levels of propogandist media and feel compelled to threaten, atack, and even kill those who are defending freedom. The most common side effect observed is the repetitive voting against one’s own interest and wellbeing.

American Hypnagogia is an exhibition of works that confront the astounding absurdity that has taken hold of American political and social discourse. Abstracted figurative characters are immersed in abstracted worlds populated with symbolism, iconography, historical tropes, and hidden text. Executed in vibrant color, bold linework, and a unique visual language American Hypnagogia is part carnival sideshow and part twenty-four-hour news cycle. It is a treatise on social interaction and even the language we use, as influenced by a cacophony of corporate, social, and political voices.

This exhibition also introduces a collection of paintings from an ongoing body of work entitled Straphangers which explores the concepts of identity and anonymity, particularly within the confines of an urban metropolis.

September 8th, 2023 - October 14th, 2023: Camilla Jerome, Laura Chasman, Collection Selections IV

Camilla Jerome | Bodies of Water

A warm summer rainstorm with no thunder or lightning, just rain and wind. The lake is a misty green, the sand churned up by crashing waves– and like so many times before, we run and dive. We bob and dunk and float. The push becomes the pull. The rise and the fall. The coming and now the going.

I crave the sweet relief from pain that only water offers. Whether it is my salty tears, a hot bath, a swim in a lake in summer, or braving the sea’s freezing temperatures, water is where the pain subsides—remission in intensity—a temporary alleviation.

My body does not exist in a fixed state but a fluid one. Like the ocean changes with the wind – from blue to green to yellow and white – my disability is perpetually unpredictable, affecting my mobility and embodied knowledge of the world. Every day differs from the last, and I cannot expect the same tomorrow.

We moved to Nahant, Massachusetts, at the height of my illness, and the ocean has become my muse. It is where I heal, breathe, float, and find relief from pain. I collect water from where I swim and bathe and use the samples as a part of my performative painting and cameraless photographic process. The water mixes with cyanotype and is exposed to UV light as I paint and layer the light-sensitive emulsion, salt, sand, soap, and seaweed to create varying tones and textures that emulate water and its ability to disrupt expectations.

Bodies of Water is the visualization and meditation on disability as a fluid state. The process creates space for moments of pure presence and reacting to nature’s elements, similar to the day-to-day management of disability and chronic illness. Through these works, I generate a new frame for representing the experience of disability. Each light painting is an edition of one relating to the unique understanding of each person with impairments to rethink the metrics by which disability has been historically defined.

Laura Chasman | A Shrewdness of Apes

The first time I put my hands in clay I was in Oaxaca, taking an introductory pottery workshop. The experience was not unlike the feeling of sinking my fingers in the soil while gardening, or manipulating soft dough while making a piecrust. The physicality, the texture, how responsive the clay was to touch and the simplicity of working with one medium were all so appealing. Artists need to love their materials, and I found a new material to love. Without hesitation, the earthiness of the clay brought to mind the image of an ape, an animal that I have felt an attachment to since 1980. It started with a dream: I was going to my family reunion dressed in a gorilla suit, the head of the gorilla tucked under my arm. I woke up amused, went in to my studio and made a small gouache self-portrait of this dream image. (I have included it in this show). My gorilla portrait inspired an entire series of biographical gouache collages.Although my primates did not appear formally in my art after that, they remained a part of my aesthetic vocabulary. Now I had an opportunity to return to my apes, this time using clay, a medium that resonated so well with this subject matter. 

I began looking closely at chimpanzees, that species of ape that are our closest living relatives, sharing 98% of our DNA. But my clay chimps are not about scientific interest, but my empathic response to them. Their bodies are a lot like ours, and their range of emotions so relatable - I can see myself in them. There are times I am expressing my own emotions, as much as theirs. I imagine what it would be like to live in the natural world, and when I think about that, I cannot help but reflect on all of the perils that threaten their existence. 

 As a painter my work has always been about my desire to capture a likeness and the feeling of my subjects, always working to achieve a freer, more expressive approach.  With the same intent, I have turned to clay creating unembellished, emotive portraits of these sentient beings.

Collection Selections IV

June 16th, 2023 - August 5th, 2023

Andrew Mroczek & Juan Barbozo-Gubo | Momias de los Cóndores

Ubicado en los Andes del norte de Perú, a una altitud de 2.335 metros, se encuentra el pueblo de Chachapoyas. La altitud, junto con su clima subtropical, ofrece una combinación única para la región, donde densas nubes y ráfagas de niebla se adentran en bosques densos, la plaza principal del pueblo, las calles y callejones. Fueron los incas, quienes conquistarían a los Chachapoya en el siglo XV, los que llamaron a los habitantes originales "gente de las nubes" en su lengua nativa, el quechua.

Poco se sabe sobre la vida diaria de los Chachapoya, ya que no dejaron registro de un lenguaje escrito. Solo a través de descubrimientos arqueológicos, algunos tan recientes como 2008, los investigadores han comenzado a desentrañar más detalles sobre su cultura. Quizás el descubrimiento más significativo ocurrió en 1997, cuando los arqueólogos descubrieron mausoleos y sarcófagos construidos en los acantilados de la Laguna de los Cóndores, a solo 80 kilómetros al sur de Chachapoyas. Allí, los investigadores encontraron más de 200 cuerpos momificados, muchos de los cuales estaban envueltos en textiles bordados con patrones y rasgos faciales simplificados.

Los arqueólogos creen que los incas retiraron los cuerpos de los Chachapoya preincaicos de estos mausoleos y los reemplazaron con miembros de su élite comunitaria. También se atribuye a los incas el haber reemplazado las prácticas funerarias de los Chachapoya con sus avanzados métodos de momificación. Los altos funcionarios incas eran momificados para seguir siendo parte del mundo de los vivos. Se cree que para los incas estas momias poseían propiedades, participaban en reuniones y ayudaban a tomar decisiones. Los investigadores creen que los cuerpos fueron momificados en posiciones compactas para facilitar el transporte de las momias hacia y desde sus tumbas.

En 2015, los artistas Juan José Barboza-Gubo y Andrew Mroczek (Barboza-Gubo & Mroczek) llegaron a Chachapoyas para fotografiar el lugar donde, en 2013, Joel Molero, un joven gay de 19 años, fue torturado, asesinado y quemado junto a la carretera. La fotografía se convertiría en la imagen de portada de su serie Padre Patria, que registra los sitios de crímenes de odio contra personas LGBTQ en Perú. Fue entonces cuando se enteraron de las momias de la Laguna.

A lo largo del año siguiente, Barboza-Gubo & Mroczek obtuvieron permiso para fotografiar las momias. Regresaron en 2016. Rodeados de más de 200 momias de la Laguna de los Cóndores, Barboza-Gubo & Mroczek las manipularon y posicionaron. Las fotografiaron utilizando solo su cámara, un paño negro y una única fuente de luz. Trabajaron en silencio casi absoluto.

English Translation

Situated in the Andes of northern Peru, at an elevation of 2,335 meters, lies the town of Chachapoyas. The elevation, along with its subtropical climate, provides a unique combination for the region, where thick cloud-cover and bursts of fog nestle into dense forests, and the town’s main square, streets, and alleyways. It was the Inca – who would conquer the Chachapoya in the 15th century – who named the original settlers the “cloud people” in their native Quechua.

Little is known about the daily lives of the Chachapoya, who left no record of a written language. It is only through archeological discoveries – as recent as 2008 – that researchers have begun to uncover more details about their culture. Perhaps the most significant discovery happened in 1997, when archeologists uncovered mausoleums and sarcophagi built into the cliffs of the Laguna de los Cóndores just 80 kilometers south of Chachapoyas. There, researchers found over 200 mummified bodies, many of which were shrouded in textiles embroidered with patterns and simplified facial features. 

Archeologists believe that the Inca removed the pre-Inca, Chachapoya bodies from these mausoleums and replaced them with their elite community members. The Inca were also credited for replacing the funerary practices of the Chachapoya with their advanced methods of mummification. High-ranking Inca officials were mummified in order to remain a part of the world of the living. It is believed that for the Inca these mummies held property, participated in meetings, and helped make decisions. Researchers believe that the bodies were mummified in such compact positions as to aid in the ease of transporting the mummies to and from their graves.

In 2015, artists Juan Jose Barboza-Gubo and Andrew Mroczek (Barboza-Gubo & Mroczek) arrived in Chachapoyas to photograph the site where, in 2013, Joel Molero, a 19-year-old gay man was tortured, murdered, and burned along the roadside. The photograph would become the cover image of their Fatherland series, which records the sites of hate crimes against LGBTQ Peruvians. It was then that they were made aware of the mummies of the Laguna.

Over the course of the following year, Barboza-Gubo & Mroczek were granted permission to photograph the mummies. They returned in 2016. Surrounded by over 200 mummies of the Laguna de los Cóndores, Barboza-Gubo & Mroczek handled and positioned them. They photographed them using only their camera, a black cloth, and a single light source. They worked in near silence.

Daphne Confar | Matriarchy

In Matriarchy I acknowledge the power of women. Through my paintings, I strive to capture the subtle emotions and hidden nuances that make each subject relatable, lovable, and deserving of recognition.

Although often overlooked or marginalized in society, every woman carries a unique and valuable story. Portraying women on vintage book covers felt symbolic of that.

In addition to highlighting the individual, my work in this show also delves into the power of home and the landscapes that evoke a sense of the familiar.

By intertwining the themes of matriarchy, sentiments of home, and the evocative force of nostalgia, I aspire to create a body of work that inspires introspection, connection, humor, empathy, and admiration for the resilience and power of women.

Judy Haberl | Hidden Agendas Boutique

A purse is a repository of “necessary stuff”. The opaque skin creates a private sanctuary and assigns a certain intimacy to the contents. It is an uncanny marriage of fashion and function. Do we ever really know what they contain?

Judy Haberl has designed an exquisite high-end Hidden Agendas Boutique. Using molds from vintage purses she has collected over the years, Haberl has fabricated 20 new purses made of Lucite, revealing unusual, not your everyday contents! The History of the purse dates back thousands of years. It was first used by men and in ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics men are shown sporting purses tied around their waists. Fast forward to the 21st century and the purse, still considered a mainstay for a woman, is a desirable accessory which can itself make a statement as to one’s power and wealth.

People have always been fascinated by what a woman carries in her purse. The contents are personal, private, and hidden from view. Haberl’s purses are not for the faint of heart and reveal a wide range of personalities of ominous intent: each purse has a string of pearls, the perfect accessory, but added are small handguns, grenades, rope, dice, handcuffs, and jewelry. Not just the usual tissues, keys and makeup, the contents and Agendas are no longer meek!

Wendy Fullenwider Liszt | Inside Out

Wendy Fulenwider Liszt (born Boston, MA) makes paintings with layers of transluscent and opaque paint, silkscreens representing porous materials, stencils, construction materials, and spray paint. The porous materials allow for travel between interior and exterior spaces. This porousness also speaks to the process of extrusion and the effect of pressure pushing a malleable substance through a fixed material opening from the inside out.

As these layers of material and paint application alternate with abrasive sanding, scraping, and the sensitivity of line, body parts emerge. The visible history of this process is akin to patina, scarring and memory. The mesh of the canvas serves as a skin, both subject and object. Anthropomorphic forms bulge and recede as convex or concave, evoking the bodily experiences of damage and regeneration. This simultaneously deliberate and accidental process is akin to the experiences of the disoriented self after impact, evolving then halting, like lava oozing then solidifying. The layers of porous eroded material, alternating with bulging paint of bodily organs, overlap in their efforts of definition.

May 5th, 2023 - June 10th, 2023: Audrey Goldstein, Greg Heins, Zia Ayub

Audrey Goldstein | Intimate Toxicities

The core philosophy and basis of my work is empathy. Through visual and participatory work, I focus on acts of generosity or their negation in our fraught environment that is both personal and political, external, and internal. As a sculptor with a painting background, I use materials to create moments of exchange that either cross material boundaries or emphasize them. These transitions appear to be merging molecularly, collapsing, or maintaining material integrities. The bleeding between materials simultaneously suggests growth and leakage of toxins. 

My current series, Intimate Toxicities, looks at the results of brutish behaviors that have led to climate and health crises. In this body of work the landscape is internalized, not observed. The body is understood to be porous and a sponge for environmental poisons. The topographies in the work can be read as cell structures and land formations, bringing the environment directly into the body and collapsing our sense of proportion. While these topographies are not tied to a specific place and do not represent actual sites, the pigmentation is specific to satellite imagery of climate disaster.  For example, Intimate Toxicities, Mustard Sweater, uses imagery from Afghanistan, Angola, Brazil and California before the recent rains.

The work is organized in neighborhoods or regions so the viewer can “walk” through its surfaces, as one would transverse a landscape.  Mandala visualization practice inspired the process used in beginning the works, where one imaginatively builds the environment in expanding concentric rings.  This allowed the topographies to grow organically and respond to the specific forms in each work. The disrupted, denied, and dangling houses in the work is based on pandemic walks, where the isolation of houses transformed them from places of safety to places of loneliness.  Borders extend off the edges, in places, to become airborne and landless, referencing land erosion.

In Intimate Toxicities, Mustard Sweater, found sweaters, made to provide comfort, are used as fields of landscape, connecting the knit patterns with random papier mache’ cells. In places the unraveled yarns become rivulets cascading down the form. Hollows are used to create negative spaces, acknowledging the loss of life due to climate inequities. Houses made of cardboard, stitched together with cord, are covered in deep black, forming areas of denied structure.

House models were made as small silent buildings without entrances or exits. Houses promise a place of safety and comfort. But they become places of complacency, where wealth is protected, but not people. Floorplans are used to highlight careless development that willfully ignores climate change or can read as testimony to the lost homes from climate disaster.

In Intimate Toxicities, Red Sweater, the overall geometry pits the straight edge with the organic, pointing to the tension of the built world endangering the natural environment. Models of houses are covered in scraps of fabric, deconstructed to hang from threads. These form neighborhood clusters amid the wreckage of the topographic landscapes. Floorplans become entangled in random geometries.

In Conversation Quilt, the topography tumbles onto the floor and becomes a quilt. Seats placed around the quilt invite people to sit together for conversation, sharing themselves while the comfort of the weighted blanket covers their laps. Participants are invited to write their thoughts on provided tags. These can be attached to the foot of the quilt, allowing the quilt to grow heavier and fuller with the history of its stories.

Greg Heins | More and More and Then Some

The title of the exhibition, More and More and Then Some (from a Nina Simone song), reflects the use of repetition in these photographs. Sometimes the repetition occurs within a single image, sometimes it occurs by returning to the same or similar subjects or forms.

Repetition is a means of finding order in a chaotic world. We need a certain amount of disorder but during the past few years, we have often been overwhelmed by it. For example, a recent flurry of caution tapes and boundary ribbons in a park near my home was at first unsettling, coming at a time when we were all constantly told to be careful, to “shelter in place.” Were we being kept out or was the “natural” world being kept in, or both? I responded by working with a camera to tease out the visual satisfactions in these unpromising subjects.

Most of these photographs were made nearby and all of them in ordinary settings. When we can respond to the visual relationships that surround us in what Saul Leiter called “the overlooked ordinary,” the repetition of the photographic act itself gives a joy and freedom that indicates a path forward.

Zia Ayub

I started my journey as a fine art photographer in 1991. During the years of my studies, I fell in love with Pictorial Photography with its beautiful and impressionistic method renders a soft-focus and warm painterly style. Even to this day with many decades that have passed, I still never get tired of looking at the works by Julia Margaret Cameron, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Robert Demachy and Edward Steichen. And, yet my standard practice of using toy film cameras with its characteristic soft-focus and printing silver gelatin became limited to me. Although I have formal training in alternative processes, when I was studying in school the technique was exciting, the final results fell short of my expectations. Yet, I did not want to abandon the analog darkroom.

After many years of research and trial-and-error, in 2003, I discovered a new process by altering the chemistry of the silver gelatin print. I was now making unique one-of-a-kind prints. Still, I was not totally satisfied; continuing in my research, I experimented with a combination of digital and analog to create images resembling Pictorialism. The process is done without any usage of the 19th-century photographic processes—in simple terms, the process is a combination of analog and digital.  Photogenic Drawings / Ethereal

March 24th, 2023 - April 29th, 2023: Pat Falco, Lee Wormald

Pat Falco | A Graveyard in the Sun

“A description of the city as it is today should contain all of its past. The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.”
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

A Graveyard In the Sun is a mixed media installation exploring the conflicting interests of memory, reality, and desire on the concepts of home.

Pat Falco is an artist from Boston, Massachusetts. He received his BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. His work has been shown at The Luggage Store Gallery (SF), New Image Art (LA), SPACE Gallery (Portland ME), and the Louvre (Paris, France). His interest in highlighting and critiquing the absurdities of everyday life has recently shifted into the public realm, with a focus on Boston’s housing crisis. Through a faux-luxury development company Upward Living Associates, Inc., he has produced a series of installations critiquing housing policies and development in Boston and vying for alternatives on a path to housing justice.
He is the recent recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship (Sculpture/Installation/New Genres) and an Artist-In-Residence for the City of Boston’s Housing Innovation Lab.

Lee Wormald | Time on Flores

“You return from lands equally distant and you can tell me only the thoughts that come to a man who sits on his doorstep at evening to enjoy the cool air. What is the use, then, of all your traveling?” Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities. 

I have been photographing on Flores since 2014. I have been thinking about the impression an island creates for its inhabitants. Roberto de Mesquita (1871-1923), a poet from Flores, expressed the notion of ‘Almas Cativas’ (captive souls). Almas cativas are "obscure and sorrowful things and people, prisoners of the geographical island and of the island inside every human, the same one which shapes every human.” 

Lee Wormald lives in Stoughton Massachusetts. He received a BFA in Photography from Lesley University College of Art and Design in 2016.

February 15th, 2023 - March 18th, 2023: Barbara Baum, Emily Belz, Vanessa Leroy, & Bill Franson,

Barbara Baum | Ghost Flowers

In June of 2020, I turned  my attention to the garden. 
I began my usual small watercolor studies. However, nothing felt the same. Covid was raging. The riot of color that I always loved in my garden did not resonate with what I was feeling. I cut some flowers and brought them inside. Working on ivory paper, I began drawing with various pencils, graphite and black and white watercolor. While the backgrounds and atmospheres grew ever darker and more textured, the flowers remained the ivory of the paper. Over months, the spaces lightened and color crept back in.

This work became my pandemic diary. Ghost Flowers.

Emily Belz | Duet & He Hid His Face Amid a Crowd of Stars

The rich history of the ponds, forests, and fields that surround my home animate my imagination as I photograph. Owned for generations by the same family, the land holds their history, and increasingly, my own. In the photographs that comprise Duet, I fuse together two long, color, vertical images of interiors and exteriors from this environment. Made between 2020 and 2022, these images reflect my own abstracted sense of time during those years, as well as the moments where boundaries of place — both internal and external—found merger or rupture.

Vanessa Leroy | as our bodies lift up slowly

The memory goes like this: we’re standing in the hallway of our childhood home. It’s evening time, and the windowless passageway renders us unable to see our own toes grazing atop the rough carpet fibers. Our blurred eyes look upwards to the kitchen that resides at the end, and the warm orange glow of the stove light begins to illuminate the path.

We walk into this orange light, looking down once more as our feet step over the metal guard ending the hallway carpet, transitioning into beige kitchen tile — that is where the memory ends. A twin memory, a re-memory; I share this with my brother. In this space where the truth is obscured ever so slightly, transcending the boundary of time, we met for a moment before we knew each other, before we knew what awaited us in this world.

There isn’t a lot of space for dreaming in an oppressive world, so I use photography as a tool to create worlds where I freely navigate the various facets of my life experience and identity as a black queer woman. In this body of work titled "as our bodies lift up slowly," I reflect upon my Haitian Catholic upbringing, the effects of generational trauma, and the relationships that have nurtured my growth. I weave between the past and present using archival family photographs, text, mixed media collage, and environmental portraits.

I draw inspiration from Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred, in which the young black protagonist Dana Franklin navigates a shifting timeline to uncover truths about her family lineage. I additionally employ text from Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, which follows a formerly enslaved woman named Sethe whose home is haunted by the spirit of her deceased daughter, creating a situation where she and her living daughter are constantly swallowed by the overwhelming grief of losing years of life to brutal slavery and the
loss of a life that never got to grow.

I create photographs that speak to and comfort my younger self, and the versions of myself that struggled to carry the weight of having poor mental health and low self-esteem. In revisiting the past and imagining the future, I have created space for myself to heal
in the present.

I experience a commingling of grief and joy in the sifting of memories. For several summers my husband and I, and our young son, spent time living on a sailboat. The changing patterns of the light and the water, as well as the slowing down of time, became my photographic muses. Late one summer my father died very unexpectedly. I learned of his passing while caught in a storm at sea. Returning to the boat in this aftermath—to the water, the wind, the light, and the fog— I found a place to explore the contradictions of loss, to internalize them, and to frame them using my camera.

Bill Franson | Landscape in Blue

Established in 1638, Appleton Farms in Ipswich, Massachusetts is one of the oldest continuously operating farms in the United States. For generations the property was cultivated and shaped into a vibrantly diverse landscape. As a young boy wandering beyond the familiar bubble of my suburban home the Appleton woods and fields offered mystery and informed my imagination. 

In January 2018 I re-visited the property with a large format film camera. I had no plan, just a desire to make good images. Truthfully, over-thinking the creation of a photograph has always been my nemesis, my best work realized through quick, intuitive responses. The 4x5 inch wood field camera I carried resists spontaneity. What began as a challenge soon became a weekly obsession. During this second encounter I was especially drawn to the arboreal landscape, it’s almost timeless pace, and by April I found myself committed to a year-long project.  

Landscape in Blue is printed in cyanotype. Invented in 1842, the cyanotype process--based on the light sensitivity of iron salts--is the third oldest photographic print process. The intimacy of each small contact print in Prussian blue, real but not quite, dreamlike, mirrored my response to the landscape. Wandering this land in solitude again, listening, gazing, my sense of time would shift, expand. Memories would surface, like rivulets of water from an unknown source.

While working on this project I re-discovered the Ipswich-born artist Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922). It is known that he too “…loved the blue monochrome of cyanotype prints, delighting in their capacity to give reality a strange or otherworldly cast.” I do not know if Dow made any images on the Appleton estate. I do feel I share with him though a deep personal attachment to places one has known since childhood.