Museum of Art: 2016 UNH Alumni Photography Exhibition

from Museum of Art: 2016 UNH Alumni Photography Exhibition

ALUMNI PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION

Welcome!

The Alumni Photography Exhibition is held in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of the founding of the University. The exhibition celebrates the here and now by displaying the artistry of UNH alumni photographers. Open to all alumni, the show presents the work of those who studied photography formally and those who discovered the medium on their own.

Of the one-hundred and sixty-seven submissions, fifty-five photographs by twenty-two photographers made the final cut. An extraordinary range of photographic work is on display; images captured through the lens of a camera onto film, those made through digital technologies, and the hybrid creations of both processes. Through these means, photographers experiment with the formal elements of light, composition, texture, and color, the materiality, and the subject to produce a wide variety of imaginative and personalized aesthetics from snap shots to studio images.

In planning for the show last year, the possible breadth of submissions seemed formidable. The range of photographic styles and subjects is expansive with new technology rapidly advancing the medium. I immediately thought of approaching Kristen Gresh, ‘97, Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Assistant Curator of Photographs, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston to assist with the difficult selection process. After we discussed the exhibition, she graciously accepted my offer to jury the show, excited to reconnect with the UNH community. Her expertise with both historic and contemporary photography and her acute judgment and unique sensibilities give shape to this exhibition. I appreciate her curatorial guidance.

To our exhibiting Friends of the Museum and to alumni returning to campus for the first time in years, thank you for sharing your photographic talents with us. We are delighted to highlight your creative endeavors—whether self-taught or professionally trained—your work takes us from the studio to far-flung places and introduces us to your world inspiring a sense of discovery in each of us. Your participation made this wonderful exhibition and its programs possible.

Many thanks are owed to the Museum of Art staff for their invaluable assistance. Appreciation goes to Exhibition and Collections Manager Laura Calhoun, who oversaw the call for entries and ran a well-organized submission and installation process, Administrative Assistant Cindy Farrell whose support kept Museum functions running smoothly, and Education and Communications Manager Sara Zela who produced the print and publicity materials and planned informative and inspiring public programs. For details on the Museum’s upcoming programs related to this exhibition, visit our website at www.unh.edu/moa.

Join us as we Celebrate 150!

Kristina L. Durocher, Director

David Batchelder ‘64

Bachelor of Arts, Isle of Palms, SC

After graduating from the University of Iowa with MA and MFA degrees, Batchelder taught photography at Smith College, Amherst College, Boston University and Plymouth State College. His work was exhibited and collected widely in the 1970’s with an exhibition at the Addison Gallery of American Art and at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Private Realities: Recent American Photography. Batchelder stopped making photographs in 1984 recommencing with the tideland images taken on a barrier island off Charleston, South Carolina. Tideland, Schilt Publishing, containing 129 photographs and an essay by David Campany was released in October, 2015.

We come to the photograph with an expectation that it will present something quotidian—something we know and can identify. When the photograph does not do this, it becomes much more interesting. It is the use of the camera to discover and picture the unexpected, unknown, and ambiguous that is most compelling.

Thomas Bilodeau ‘67

Bachelor of Arts, Philosophy, Durham, NH

When my parents died I moved from Ohio to stay with my father’s family in New Hampshire. After graduating from the University, I attended the Ohio State University graduating in 1977 with an MA in philosophy. Subsequently, I worked for the Franklin County Board of Developmental Disabilities where beginning in 1983 I directed the computer department for the agency until 2010. Upon retirement my wife and I returned to New Hampshire.

I have always admired great landscape photographers like Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Elliot Porter. But I realized that I could never make the kind of images that they did. Over the years I developed my own style. I choose a scene, focus on some detail, and replace the background to highlight and dramatize the object, its shapes, its colors, its textures. There is no need to go far afield to find these images, they are all around us.

Brenna Colt ‘76

Bachelor of Arts, Social Work, Hartford, VT

I am still on the dance floor. That’s about it.

**Scott Davis ‘76, The News, 2013, Archival digital pigment print, 14.25” x 9.5”**

Scott Davis ‘76 (Davis & Davis)

Bachelor of Arts, Los Angeles, CA

Davis & Davis (Scott and Denise) have collaborated on a variety of photography, video, sculpture, and installation projects combining their interests in cinema, psychology, pop culture, and fringe sciences. Davis & Davis have exhibited widely in California and nationally. Their work is owned by independent and academic museums as well as many private collections. both artists received MFA degrees in art/photography and media from the California institute of the Arts.

The Brown Suit Chronicles depict the intra-office antics of a fictional, brown-clad, Wall Street tycoon, circa 1929. Using antique dolls and period sets, we chronicle our character’s bumbling, psychopathic behavior in twenty-nine color photographs. This series was inspired by and is dedicated to Scott’s late father, Russ Davis, who railed at Wall Street greed in letters and poems. Scott’s maternal grandfather, a stockbroker in 1929, advised Russ never to invest in the stock market because he said, “The game is rigged.”

Michael DeLuco ‘14

Bachelor of Arts, History, Manchester, NH

I work in black and white because it makes a piece seem timeless. My love of exploration drives my photography. I want to remember all the places I have visited and photography is the perfect medium for that. As well as sharing photos that highlight my travels, I also try to capture common, everyday scenes that people might not notice as they walk by.

Eve Edelstein Williams ‘80

Bachelor of Arts, Barrington, NH

Eve Edelstein Williams is a native of New Hampshire who graduated from UNH in 1980. She considers it her great fortune to have been mentored by Richard Merritt, long time photography professor at UNH. She continued her studies at Maine Photographic Workshops, New England School of Photography, and the Art Institute in Manchester. Shortly after graduation, Eve opened Portsmouth Photography Studio. Her work has been shown at Ogunquit Museum of American Art and the international Center of Photography, NYC.

The days and nights in the darkroom at Hewitt Hall are some of my fondest memories. After working as a studio photographer for many years with film and paper, I am now working with digital. But I am still attracted to the same sorts of images. Portraiture and evocative landscapes. the mystery that eludes us. I have always been deeply moved by the beauty and mystery of the visual world. Thee process of creating images through photography became an early passion, a way of seeing and sensing the ineffable.

**Marie Gagnon '98, My Studio #1, 2008, Digital print, 4"x5.33"**

Marie Gagnon ‘96

Bachelor of Fine Arts, Providence, RI

Born to a painter and a physician, Marie Gagnon’s mom was her first painting teacher. There were many stops and starts in Marie’s journey to paint, but her passion was strong and at age 36 she completed her BFA in painting. Marie moved cross country where she lived and exhibited in Seattle, Washington. In 2012, Marie returned east, longing for the New England coast, settled in Providence, Rhode Island and now paints in her west side studio.

As an observer, I attempt to capture what teases my eye and touches my heart. I am moved not only by the way light plays with objects, but also with what is seen as mundane. As a creator, I explore relationships, reworking the same view differently, ever curious as to how it can be transformed. As a painter, I love my studio and keep my camera nearby to capture the magic held within.

Julie Hamel ‘10

Bachelor of Fine Arts, Loudon, NH

Julie Hamel was born in Concord and now works from Loudon, New Hampshire. Recently taking part in the Vermont Studio Center residency program in Johnson, Vermont, she has continued to seek out her vision and connection with nature. Julie has won numerous awards and recognitions for her work, and has shown across the US and internationally.

Using what is found around me in nature, I am able to capture the calming but intermittent discomfort within a person. This is something that we, as a whole, can all relate to. By producing a beautiful image that is not the idealized definition of beauty, I am able to step beyond social constructs of popular imagery. The constant search for these environments reflects the identity that develops within them. Producing lasting impressions on the relationships between nature and how humans relate to being stripped down into comprehensive beings.

Harry Lichtman ‘87

Bachelor of Science, Environmental Conservation, Newmarket, NH

Harry Lichtman is a self-taught landscape photographer. His images have appeared in calendars, travel brochures, and conservation efforts for the Society for the Protection of NH Forests, as murals installed at the Manchester-Boston Airport and Jordan’s Furniture in Nashua, NH, and worldwide as fine art prints. Harry contributes regularly to Outdoor Photographer and Backpacker magazines. As recipient of the 2015 Smithsonian Windland Smith Rice International Award in the Landscape Category, Harry’s winning image is on exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. through fall 2016.

Photography allows me to translate my experiences and emotions during my travels. The final photograph is the culmination of planning, observation, and often persistence. I try to bring a little of the “wow” I get from traveling into my photography to inspire appreciation for our environment, plant the seed for a viewer to travel to a place they might not consider, or simply show some - thing very ordinary in an extraordinary way.

Cynthia Katz ‘83

Bachelor of Fine Arts, Concord, MA

Cynthia Katz is among many things, a photographer and educator. Her work has been exhibited nationally and recently published in the third Manifest International Photography Annual. Katz grew up the daughter of a commercial photographer in New York City. It was in a Photography 1 course at UNH that she approached photography as a serious practice. Her work has explored many subjects, currently she is making color diptychs on rice paper and cyanotypes that hold the tactility that she embraces in her work.

These photographs are from an ongoing series Occupied. Slowing down to a pedestrian pace cultivates a heightened awareness of the world around me. I search out details and the unexpected in ordinary human-scaled environments in an attempt to expose new meaning about the landscape. I am drawn to repetition constructed by human hands, (obsessions, habits), found text, and juxtapositions that reveal new understandings about our relationship to the environment.

Karrah Kwasnik ‘10

Bachelor of Science, Marketing and Art Newmarket, NH

In 2010, Karrah Kwasnik graduated with a dual major focused on marketing and photography. Post-graduation, she completed a photo-documentary project, The Organic Year, that has been exhibited across the Northeast and was later featured in New Hampshire Magazine. Her community involvement has also led her to contribute photography for the Portsmouth Museum of Art’s exhibit catalog, Street Aka Museum, and event photography for the New Hampshire Film Festival. Karrah Kwasnik resides in Newmarket, New Hampshire.

In photographing what was once alive, a new type of life is given. This project utilizes painted animal skulls, boldly colored backdrops, and takes the concept of a still life, perhaps, too seriously. Through composition and coloring, the objects are abstracted from their original state and become more playful to the eye. The goal of this series is to “sell” the viewer on objects not commonly desired through a more approachable picture.

Karen Mawikere ‘15, G’16

Bachelor of Fine Arts, Somersworth, NH

Karen Mawikere spent seven years of her life in Iindonesia before moving to the United States. She grew up in towns nearby Durham then attended The University of New Hampshire to be close to home. After receiving her BFA she continued her studies at the University earning her Master of Education in 2016.

This photograph is from a series documenting the artist’s visits to her grandfather’s house in Manado, Indonesia after being away for fifteen years.

Phoenix Mayet G’03

Master of Arts, English, Dover, NH

Phoenix Mayet lives and works as a fine art photographer in the New Hampshire seacoast region. She studied to be a poet, but ultimately chose to focus her energies on visual art. Now, she makes photographs that seek to invoke visual meaning and lyricism. Many of the themes she explored in her poetry have made their way into her fine art — the idea of the self; issues regarding gender, sexuality, and identity; and our relationship with/to the natural world.

The images included in Altars to My Meds are part of a larger body of work, The Medicine Show, that explores my relationship to the psycho-pharmaceuticals I take daily to treat my mental illness. I was diagnosed with a bi-polar disorder during my undergraduate studies and have been learning about the disease and how to manage its symptoms since. For me, learning to love the medications that keep me sane has been a long process.

James Mullen ‘85

Bachelor of Fine Arts, Portland, ME

James Mullen completed his MFA degree in painting at Indiana University in 1991. He has received numerous awards and scholarships and has had twenty-five one-artist exhibitions at venues across the United States. In 2013 he was awarded a Fellowship Award Exhibition by the Phoenix Gallery in New York City. He has recently exhibited in New Hampshire at the New England College Art Gallery and the McIninch Art Gallery.

As a painter I have spent much of the last two decades using photography as a visual aid in the creation of my paintings. Recently I began investigating photography as its own expressive medium by photographing reflections on aluminum experimenting with reflected lights and colors on the surface of the sheets. The unexpected alignments and interactions of the light and color seem to invoke digital manipulation software, but these are all “straight” digital captures without any manipulation, and reveal some of the infinite complexity of the surrounding world.

Peter Otis G’73

Jillian Ryan ‘16, Family Portraits, 2016, Archival inkjet print, 20” x 16”

Master of Education, Counseling, Guilford, CT

We are a UNH Family—My father, uncle, my wife Bobbe and I, our three kids and cousins and their kids are all Wildcats. Bobbe ‘69 G’73 and I grew up in Concord, we raised our kids in Plymouth, NH. before enrolling at UNH, Bobbe and Ii spent a two-year “honeymoon” in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone. I bought my first SLR camera on vacation in the Canary Islands and since then have been capturing images that fall under this mantra of mine— Places… Plants… People… Plus Other Gems… .

2016 is the Centennial of the National Park Service. What a wonderful opportunity to share my favorite images from our national parks, monuments and historic sites! Bobbe and I have visited many (though really only a small number) of the sites that make up “America’s Best Idea.” Narrowing down thousands of images has been a wonderful challenge. Enjoy this picture and our national treasures!

Brian Powers ‘13

Bachelor of Arts, International Business and Economics, Atkinson, NH

Brian Powers graduated from the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics with a bachelor’s degree in international business and economics. He took up photography as a hobby in 2012 during his semester abroad in New Zealand. Since then, he’s used pictures to tell the story of his travels to more than a dozen countries around the world.

I use photography as a means of exploring the allure and grandeur of earth’s landscapes. Through the camera’s lens, I’m able to capture a moment that has the power to significantly affect another individual’s emotions. With this instrument, I am able to conduct the story and how it is told to the audience. I enjoy photography as a hobby because it challenges me to keep exploring, and those brief moments I capture remind me that much of the world still awaits discovery.

Jillian Ryan ‘16

Bachelor of Fine Arts, Nashua, NH

Jillian Ryan is a visual artist from Nashua, New Hampshire. In 2015 Jillian was awarded the Visual Resource Center Fellowship by the Department of Art and Art History. Her work was recently exhibited in Undergraduate Photography Now: Part IV as part of Flash Forward Festival in Boston, Massachusetts.

My work explores the connection between experience, memory, and culture. I am curious about the concept of memory and how our minds classify different experiences. Drawing inspiration from my own history, I am constantly exploring what it means for something to be familiar.

Adam Tracksler ‘96

Bachelor of Fine Arts, Kittery Point, ME

Born in New Jersey, Educated in New Hampshire, resident of Maine.

I get lost behind the lens in the small world of the viewfinder or ground glass. I find these moments intriguing, I love the way that things look and the visual textures contained in the images.

Charter Weeks ‘65

Bachelor of Arts, Barrington, NH

After leaving UNH I attended film school in London, UK, returned to the US, and worked as a commercial photographer and film maker with the BBC in New York City. I subsequently spent 18 months in Japan and then returned to New Hampshire where I have lived and worked ever since. My work has been shown in numerous galleries and is held by private collections. My archives are being collected at Keene State College.

For the past fifty years I have worked primarily as a documentary photographer. The images submitted cover the period of time from three years after my graduation to the present.

Harry Wolfson Slepian ‘16

Bachelor of Fine Arts, Durham, NH

These photographs are a recollection of growing up in a small town in New England as I find myself about to leave for the first time. In this work, I am trying to reconcile feelings of dissatisfaction with where I am and with my attachment to that same place.

Lara Woolfson ‘05

Bachelor of Arts, Communication, Boston, MA

Lara Woolfson received her MFA in visual art from Lesley University College of Art and Design in 2010. She has owned and operated a successful wedding and portrait studio in the Boston area since 2007. Her photographs have been exhibited in numerous Boston galleries and published in Condé Nast, Huffington Post, the Boston Globe and Boston Magazine to name a few.

New shoes, shiny mirrors, beaded handbags, desire, sweaters, latex, nipple clamps, pain: Fetish is the ecstasy of things. These photographs resulted from personal ads requesting, “Fetishes needed for Fine Art Portraits.” They convey simultaneously the banal and mysterious cravings at the heart of fetish illustrating the intimate lives of others: their secret longings, daily routines, and the objects that divert and arrest their attention. Whether the subjects are into domination, covering themselves in heavy wool, or playing out a fantasy, they willingly exposed their private lives. I find the underlying commonalities to be the truly shocking content.

Wei Zhao ‘16

Bachelor of Sciences, Business Administration Durham, NH

Photography is freedom.

This catalogue was published on the occasion of this following exhibition at the Museum of Art of the University of New Hampshire, August 31–October 16, 2016.

Museum of Art University of New Hampshire Paul Creative Arts Center 30 Academic Way Durham, NH 03824-2617 (603) 862-3712 www.unh.edu/moa

Visit www.unh.edu/moa For a guided tour contact (603) 862-3713 or museum.of.art@unh.edu TTY users: 7-1-1 or (800) 735-2964 (Relay NH) All exhibitions are supported in part by the Friends of the Museum and by a grant from the NH State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

MISSION

The Museum of Art of the University of New Hampshire collects, preserves, and interprets works of art, serving as a visual arts resource and an educational catalyst for the University and Seacoast communities. The Museum of Art inspires lifelong learning by offering experiences to engage with art through exhibitions, hands-on study, educational programs, and the creative process.