Upcoming!

Admission is FREE and open to all. Please RSVP to the Griffin, 781-729-1158. Senior/Family Sunday is sponsored in part by Salter Healthcare, New Horizons, EnKa Society, and the Mount Vernon House.

Gallery Talk & Live Owl Presentation with Mark Wilson Griffin Museum at Digital Silver Imaging 9 Brighton St., Belmont, MA September 26, 7-9 PM

A snowy owl joins Mark Wilson for a gallery talk about Roger Tory Peterson, birds, birding and photography. photo: Mark Wilson

Former Boston Globe staff and noted bird photographer Mark Wilson talks about Roger Tory Peterson, bird photography, and his fascination with our avian friends. He’s assisted by his wife, Marcia Wilson, and three live owls. The Wilsons use the owls for educational purposes through their organization Eyes on Owls. Don’t forget to bring your camera.

Admission is free.

Main Gallery
September 27 – December 2

Opening Reception with the artist
September 27, 7-8:30 PM

Lynn Goldsmith explores questions of identity through self-portraits in which she assumes different guises. She begins by injecting herself into settings that originate with window dressings in New York City. “After removing objects from the windows, I create a fictional narrative, adding new elements with additional photographs to turn the store window into visionary windows,” she says. She dresses in makeup and wigs to offer different looks and also transforms herself into different characters. “Exploiting what is theatrically inherent in photographic media, I adopt persona from fairy tales, diverse cultures, and cinematic moments,” Goldsmith says. “I catapult myself into the past and future, overturning accepted distinctions between illusion and reality…My aim is to highlight the psychological relationship between what we see and what we imagine…The point is to fracture the single, solitary sense of self, to propose identity as multiple projections of invented selves.”

Prior to the public reception, at 6:15 PM, Jess T. Dugan gives a gallery talk for museum members about his exhibit Transcendence, which is featured in the Atelier Gallery.

Goldsmith presents a talk on her exhibit, The Looking Glass, September 28, 7 PM. Members, free. Non-members, $10

Opening Reception with the artist
September 27, 7-8:30 PM

In his photographic portraits, Jess T. Dugan explores the transgender and gender variant community. “In our society, it is assumed that there are only two genders, both of which come with specific expectations and roles,” he says. “I aim to challenge that assumption by portraying people whose identity falls outside of these preconceived notions.” Dugan says that through sharing individual experiences, his work “honestly and openly portrays a community that is often overlooked, fetishized, or misrepresented. It raises a dialogue about the fluidity of gender and the ways in which our current societal structure does not allow for variations outside of the mainstream…In an effort to increase understanding, these images portray issues unique to the transgender community while also highlighting the shared experience of being human.”

The exhibit is courtesy of Gallery Kayafas and sponsored by GLAD and the Richards Family Trust.

Prior to the public reception, at 6:15 p.m., Dugan gives a gallery talk for museum members about his exhibit Transcendence.
For this show, the Griffin created an exhibition catalog. It is available at the opening reception and, afterward, in the museum’s online gift shop. It is the first of many upcoming Griffin Museum of Photography publications. All books are being designed by Meg Birnbaum.

September 27 – December 2
Opening Reception with the artist September 27, 7-8:30 PM

Rita Bernstein says she began “to photograph in earnest” after she left her career as a civil rights lawyer and “had two young children to whom I was tethered.” A reluctant traveler, most of her photographs are taken close to home, either in Philadelphia or near her family’s cottage in northern Pennsylvania. “I explored the sorrows as well as the sweetness of family life and, more generally, the ambivalence that shadows intimate relationships,” Bernstein says. “I work intuitively, discovering rather than orchestrating my pictures, and I am drawn to ambiguous narratives that have an undertow of tension and mystery.” Bernstein adds that she uses processes and materials that “are sympathetic to my subject matter and that reflect the unique characteristics and flawed beauty of the people I photograph…In both my images and my prints, I am courting the imperfect, the messy, the raw, and the vulnerable.”

The exhibit is courtesy of the Catherine Couturier Gallery, Houston, TX; Gallery 339, Philadelphia, PA; Galerie BMG, Woodstock, NY; Dolby Chadwick Gallery, San Francisco; and Klompching Gallery, Brooklyn, NY.

Prior to the public reception, at 6:15 PM, Jess Dugan gives a gallery talk for museum members about his exhibit Transcendence, which is featured in the Atelier Gallery.

Photographs by Greer Muldowney
The Griffin Museum’s Atelier Gallery
at the Stoneham Theatre

395 Main St., Stoneham, MA
September 11 – November 12

Reception with the artist:
October 19, 6:30-8 PM

This exhibition is courtesy of Gallery Kayafas

For this show, the Griffin created an exhibition catalog. It is available at the opening reception and, afterward, in the museum’s online gift shop. It is the first of many upcoming Griffin Museum of Photography publications. All books are being designed by Meg Birnbaum.

Word and Image:  

Making Art in Two Languages

October 2 – November 27, 6:30-9:30 PM

10 sessions

Instructors: Karen Davis, book artist and gallerist, and Cassandra Goldwater, MFA, writer and photographer

 Do you want to incorporate text into your photographs?  Do you have an idea for a book?  Do you want to develop a graphic novel using your own artwork?  Do you dream of documenting your family’s history or making web-based art?  All of these outcomes combine words and images, which in itself is a creative process. This class will introduce you to contemporary art using word and image and guide you from experimentation and ideas through to your project plans and development, all in a dynamic and creative environment. You will explore different media and platforms including exhibition, books, assemblages, the web, and other multi- and mixed media approaches. In class exercises include experimenting and playing with a variety of materials that will fuel your imagination. Assignments completed outside of class foster expanding your creative expression and artistic approaches. The class culminates in a presentation of individual or collaborative projects.

Past projects (including the teachers’) have included: A memoir using photographs and text crafted in the form of an aviator’s flight book; a zine and narrated DVD about a single mother restarting her life in a Cambridge neighborhood; exhibition prints and web mini-movies about aging, a mother’s advice, and surgery; a quilted translation of Calvino’s Invisible Cities; an artist book and CD about caring for a husband with Alzheimer’s disease: a left-hand memoir written on a photogram; and exhibition prints incorporating original poems.

The class is limited to 15 students. Members, $400; Non-members, $460

October 3, 10, 17, and November 2
4 sessions; 7-9 PM  

Marketing your work takes time, something visual artists often overlook. In this class, you can identify your long- and short-term marketing goals and establish priorities. You can learn about the many ways to get your work before the public. Opportunities and resources are provided and website options and the use of social media are reviewed. By the conclusion of the workshop, you’ll have a critiqued “package” ready for marketing your work, including artist resume, artist statement, jpgs/CD, business card, portfolio (and website or website plans).

The class has a minimum of six students and a maximum of 12 students.

Members, $130; Non-members, $190