by a culture that valued exploration, interaction, creativity, and collaboration. It was as if that clock had always been asking: What are you going to do with the precious time that you have? It is as if the looming of that possibility led me here today. Without the space of contemplation that is opened by selfdirected, creative, and experiential education, the inspiring in-between places are defined by others, and the self-motivated learner is not able to explore the outer bounds of his or her potential. I was fortunate enough to experience an institution that afforded me those privileges early on.
Martha Bouchard ’98 earned her BA from Simon’s Rock College of Bard, after leaving Lawrence Academy in 1996. Martha’s career has led her on a journey of working with young people in a multitude of environments: as a first grade teacher in Ecuador; teacher and residential director for an experiential education program; youth advocate, counselor and adventure education facilitator and curriculum developer at a residential treatment center; council practitioner and curriculum developer at a contemplative education school; and more than 5 years with her current employer, Pacific Quest, in many roles including helping to develop supervisory positions, operations manuals, and currently as the Program Director. Martha earned her MS from the Audubon Expedition Institute at Lesley University in 2009 after 2 years on a course of study that allowed her to travel four different bioregions in an intentional living community, developing and implementing localized, experiential and contemplative curriculum models. After much travel, Martha finally feels as though she has found her long term home in the jungle on the eastern tip of Hawaii Island.
Nooks and Crannies Exposed by Beverly Rodrigues, Communications Publicist
“My intent with my photography is to capture a moment of altered reality,” Rebecca explains in an artist’s statement that accompanies her displays. The rebel in her readily expounds on the joys of distortion. She loves the grainy look that she gets by digitally brightening underexposed shots, intentionally adding “noise” to the picture. She plays with filters, as with her favorite photo of Emily, which often affects an image in unpredictable, and therefore exciting, ways. “I really enjoy breaking the rules of photography, I guess I’d say.” Her work has earned her both silver and gold keys from the Boston Globe Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.
A decade ago, while her elementary school friends were teasing each other with sing-song ditties and trying to figure out what rhymes with “Wnuk,” Rebecca Wnuk ’14 was already intrigued by a new hobby that has since become a true passion. “I got my first camera from my grandma on my sixth birthday,” Rebecca says. As for her classmates, they finally gave up and resorted to calling her “Rebecca Nooks and Crannies”. It’s nearing the end of the 2012 spring term, and the blue-haired sophomore, a visual statement in her own right, is delighted to be interviewed and eagerly opens up her laptop (a constant companion) to share the images on her website. She speaks with pride but also with an engaging playfulness, as photo after photo illustrates what moves her and how she tries to capture it.
Fashion photography was the realm experiencing the Wnuk treatment last spring.
In an independent study that she had just completed, her goal was to “focus more on the scenery around a picture I’m shooting, the setting—working on making the photo itself There’s a friend in the shower with her clothes Rebecca Wnuk ’14 met Annie Leibovitz at the great and having the model kind of be a prop. on spattered with some kind of paint that renowned photographer’s exhibit opening at Maybe it’s technically more like glamour and “makes it look kind of like an alien, but I love the Concord Museum in June. fashion combined. I really like my photos not that.” There’s a wall splattered with the liquid to just make something look pretty, but to have an emotion or a from hundreds of glow sticks that “reminded me of being in a concept behind it.” galaxy.” She stops at another and says, “This is the one I’m most proud of, because it is not edited at all. It is straight from the camera, straight.” You wouldn’t recognize the model as LA student Emily Gregoire ’12, since it is a blurry blue image of a girl glancing back over her shoulder—but that’s the point. In fact, this photo prompted Vogue Italia to give Rebecca portfolio space in the amateur photography section of their website.
Some of Rebecca’s models are friends, and some she contacts through networking sites for amateurs. “I take pictures of the model for my portfolio and, in exchange, the model gets pictures for hers,” she explains. As the school year came to a close, she had already arranged sessions with models in Florida and Nevada, both destinations in her family’s summer travel plans.
ACADEMY JOURNAL / FALL 2012
13
