Jamie Runnells

Jamie Runnells is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Mississippi State University. Her artists books have been shown in National and International juried exhibitions. Her freelance design work has been honored with numerous ADDY awards and most recently been seen in PRINT magazine’s Regional Design Annual.

Artist's Statement:
On a recent trip to Italy, I was struck by the unexpected--graffiti on ancient and sacred sites. I was interested in capturing this side of Italy that isn't seen in tourism guides. This particular photograph is in Padua at the Giardini dell'Arena.

Jamie Runnells
Mississippi State University Department of Art

http://www.caad.msstate.edu/jrunnells
http://boopies.wordpress.com

John Math

Statement:
While photographing common things with movement of the camera, I create Abstracts and Impressions. Some objects become smooth and distorted, while other subjects become hard, edgy and not of this World. In either case, they come alive with movement and color. The photographs are unusual and take on a painted like quality, without being altered in post production.

I photograph everyday places and things in a different manner than most photographers. I photograph these places and things from an alternate “point of view” and I am inspired and in awe of what is created.

These photographs have not been manipulated with any type of digital software or by any digital filter system or technique. These photographs represent a new way of looking at something in a different manner than we usually do.

Biography:
John is self taught and was introduced to photography and film through his Grandmother, with whom he lived. He has had a life-long love of photography and at one point studied to become a photographer. While serving as a “photographers helper” to various commercial photographers in New York City and Fort Lauderdale, he realized that commercial photography as a profession was very restrictive and that the “client’s” ideas would always win.

John then embarked on a successful career in the real estate business. He now devotes most of his time to photography, taking the kinds of images that he feels inspired to take. At this point in his life, he has finally found in photography what he wanted to find so many years ago - that being the freedom to express his art in any way that inspires him and not to just the wishes of some “client”.

His full, rich, awe-inspiring portfolio can be found on www.johnrmath.com

Dean K. Terasaki

Artist’s Statement
It is presumptuous to think that a singular photographic image can describe something as complex as another culture. A single subject, seen out of context, and revealed at some relatively arbitrary point in time, leads to a kind of exoticism, or at least to a preconceived notion about the distant thing being represented. In addition, the filters of my own culture, language and perceptual biases conspire to reveal as much about me (the observer) as about the wonder of what is observed.

I have always been interested in the sense of space one can convey in a photograph. Representing the fore-, middle- and background spaces opens up the possibility of creating relationships. Those relationships speak to the layers of understanding and meaning - personal, cultural and social.

Space and time are intimately related in ways that are immediate and personal. Memory (the past) always informs experience (in the present space/time). My montage works are a formal way of representing the half-seen images and chance juxtapositions that characterize memory.

For over twenty years, I have sustained an interest in combining pictures into one matrix as a photomontage. In cinematic terms, montage developed as a way of combining different aspects of a scene, to give the viewer a more holistic sense of what is transpiring. For example, an actor, first seen in one situation and later in another that has a very different emotional charge, is seen to be conveying a poignant transformation, even if her expression and manner are unchanged.

And so it is with a photograph, where meaning or narrative can seem so simple in the singular image. When that same photo is juxtaposed with another image, however, the two now reflect off each other and impressions expand in new more complex ways.

In 2006, I found myself riding on a nearly empty passenger train, pulled by a steam engine, heading southbound toward Denver. I have a lifelong interest in trains, which includes hopping freights across the Rockies in the 70’s and paying homage to my maternal grandfather’s labors for the Union Pacific that led him from California to the switching yards near North Platte, Nebraska.

My grandfathers were both immigrants to the United States. With the immigration issue presenting hundreds of thousands of people in the street, I have also been photographing the protests as I march in solidarity.

In both cases, the individual photographs I make have a strong sense of space and intended to be parts of my montage works. These images are then synthesized, combining these ephemeral instances of light and insight into a montage. My photomontages are fleeting moments in which machines have not failed in their promise to liberate. For an instant (ingeniously saved to disk) there is a new vision of life and landscape.

Artist Bio
I am sansei, which in Japanese American culture, means that my grandparents all immigrated to the United States from Japan. One of the great discoveries of my childhood was a box filled with photographs and medals from my father’s time, during the Second World War. He served in the U. S. Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which was the much decorated, all-Japanese American combat unit. Although I did not realize it at the time, that box was the seed of my interest in the relationship between photography and memory.

In 1978, I earned a bachelor of fine art degree from the University of Colorado and, in 1985, a MFA degree in photography from Arizona State University. After a brief move to New York City, I returned to the Valley of the Sun where I have taught photography and digital imaging as full-time faculty in the art department at Glendale Community College since 1986.

I am an original member of a downtown Phoenix arts collective called “the kitchenette” where, every thirteen months or so, I have a one-person show. My third solo exhibit in this space is scheduled for October 2007. Other one-person exhibitions include shows at Arizona State University’s Northlight Gallery, the Print Center in Philadelphia, a downtown Phoenix alternative space called Modified Arts and Phoenix College’s art department gallery among others. Among the group shows I have exhibited in are the Mesa Arts Center, the Society of Contemporary Photography in Kansas City and at Old Dominion University. A major review of my work appeared in Artspace magazine.

I live in Phoenix with my wife, Teri, two kids, a dog and two cats.

Mark Surloff

It’s early in the morning and the sun is out, a fine day to take a long walk. The walk will be about “seeing”. I’ll look for strangely beautiful, expressive shapes and textures of nature or half completed works of man; maybe it’s their relationship to one another along with the shadows created. When such discoveries are made, they will be savored, but only after a photo has been made.

Of course, not all resulting images are successful, but that moment of discovery and the joy it brings, is why I photograph.

These images were taken in South Fla. They reflect how see the world with my camera...objects, relationships, and of course...light and shadow. It’s a fascinating visual world we live in and I try to show through photography, my fascination.

www.marksurloff.com

Jennifer Fairfax

Bio

Jennifer Fairfax was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1980. She received a BS in 2002 and a MS in 2003 in accounting at Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. She is mostly self-taught in photography taking classes in high school and college. In 2006, she started in the Master in Fine Arts program at George Mason University, with a concentration in photography, where she is currently a student. Her work was recently been exhibited at The Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, CO, and the Joyce Gordon Gallery in Oakland, CA. Her work has also been published in the student art magazine Creative Quarterly.

Jeffrey Abt

Artist’s Statement and Biographical Sketch

“Double Portrait” is part of an ongoing series investigating the poetics of display. It includes a close examination of conventional objects, like framed pictures, but treats the subjects as though unfamiliar, much like an archaeological study of a previously unknown object. This series is part of a larger project exploring museum culture with particular interest in exhibitions, especially the presentation of permanent collections, and the activities circulating around them including lecture tours, sketch classes, and less structured encounters. All in all, the resulting images constitute a visual anthropology of museums. This particular image is from the back of a pair of metal picture frames hinged together so they can stand, like an open book, rather than be hung. The original frames are designed to present portrait photographs. Though “Double Portrait” appears at first glance to represent an interest in a kind of post-Minimalist formalism, the series of which it is a part was intended instead to document the presence of absence—the proximity of images we believe to be on the other sides of the frames—as well as the heightened sense of expectation, curiosity, and mystery that surrounds this experience.

Jeffrey Abt is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Wayne State University in Detroit. He received his BFA degree from Drake University, studied at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem, and later completed an MFA degree at Drake. He then went into curatorial and exhibitions work, first at the Wichita Art Museum, then in the Special Collections Research Center of the University of Chicago, and finally at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art, before coming to Wayne State. Throughout this period he has remained an active artist and exhibited his work widely throughout the United States. His works are in the permanent collections of several museums including the Des Moines Art Center, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, as well as several corporate collections including Dow Automotive and Polk Technologies, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (Detroit branch). Abt is also a writer and he has published two exhibition catalogues and nearly two dozen articles, most recently focusing on museum history and criticism. His book, A Museum on the Verge: A Socioeconomic History of the Detroit Institute of Arts, 1882-2000, received the 2002 Award of Merit from the Historical Society of Michigan. Abt’s research has been supported with grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Logan Foundation, and the Kaufman Memorial Trust. His most recent essay, “The Origins of the Public Museum,” just appeared in the Companion to Museum Studies, published by Blackwell in the United Kingdom. Abt’s next book, tentatively titled: Entrepreneurial Egyptologist: James Henry Breasted and His Oriental Institute is to be published by the University of Chicago Press with a projected due date of 2008.

Visit his website and learn more about his work at http://www.jeffreyabt.net/

Janae Corrado

Janae Corrado became interested in drawing and painting as a child. Running around with sidewalk chalk and drawing on every surface she could find, she grew to love art. Eventually, she was drawn to spend time working in more portable media (her sketchbooks). By the time she was a teenager, she realized it was the correct career choice and lifestyle for her.

Corrado’s current imagery attempts to capture the mood and drama of the subject in a unique and surreal photo-realistic style. She depicts her subjects in a variety of mediums but in recent years, she has embraced computer graphic tools more and more. Today, digital photo manipulation is a near constant in her work: a process that has become for Corrado a direct means of seeing the subject that supersedes the tradition of live observation of figure and ground.

Corrado graduated from the University of Central Florida with BFA in Studio Art. She is currently pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts degree at UCF and also teaches undergraduate core design classes.
www.JanaeCorrado.com

Richard Desmarais

Before starting my career as a commercial photographer,I managed a chain of record stores for a number of years and then I saw the light and started a new career. Thirty years behind the lens as a commercial photographer has exposed me to a larger piece of the world than your average person, but there are still lots of places left on my must-see list.

My day-to-day work has me shooting for clients spanning the entire spectrum of High tech, Lo-tech and no tech. From using a paint stripper to melt cheese or polishing a beer bottle with Turtle Wax, there is no end to the bizarre situations I find myself in. I could be shooting a high-end perfume bottles for one client, F-18 fighter jets for another, and digital telephone switching gear for yet another.

Lately most of my time has been spent photographing food and lifestyle for McCain foods, Moosehead beer, the Nova Scotia Liquor Commission or traveling our country for DND and NAV Canada. From one day to the next it’s hard to say what I’ll be shooting. My jobs are not always just traditional commercial work. One connection he made sent me on assignment to Kurgyzstan in northeastern central Asia. For this project, I was sent by an international aid organization to photograph the distribution of medical supplies in remote villages. Ask me about the comforts of sleeping in a Russian cargo plane between cargo palettes and the uninsulated fuselage!

Being a self-taught photographer and computer geek as been quite a challenge. I’ve made, I think, every possible photo mistake one can make. However, like a lot of my colleagues, I’ve been a survivor and I’ve produced a few good images that hopefully will last. I enjoy being in the “back rooms” of the world.

My clients include: Astra Zenica, Americares, Alpine & Moosehead Breweries, Belair Networks, Canadian Broadcast Corporation , Canada Post Corporation, Canadian Bank Note Company, Cognos, McCain Foods, Fusion Beauty, KFC, National Defence Canada, NAV Canada, People Magazine, VISA Canada.

Karen Joslin

ARTIST’S STATEMENT
My fine art photography often centers on nature, animals, and cemeteries. I find it vital to get out of man-made environments and to reconnect with the natural world; there I see beauty and divinity all around. I’m especially drawn to plants and other objects which reveal something unexpected. Interesting textures, dynamic forms, and brilliant colors are other things I look for. I’ve always loved animals, and my interactions with them have convinced me that animals are quite a bit like people. When photographing animals, my main goal is to capture their personalities and emotions. Much of my cemetery work focuses on statues, although some cemeteries also make for interesting landscapes. I’m also fascinated by the things people leave behind for their departed loved ones.

Stylistically, I experiment to find a style which enhances each individual image’s mood and subject matter. I’ve recently gravitated toward black and white images, particularly with selected areas of color, as in “The Greenman’s Mouth.” While some photographs look amazing in color, color can also distract from an image’s overall impact or draw attention away from its most important elements. Adding color selectively to a black and white photograph helps emphasize what I want and create a more compelling image. One of the most exciting aspects of digital photography is that it allows the artist an incredibly wide range of ways to manipulate images.

In the future, I plan to experiment more with photo montages. I also hope to incorporate other interests, such as my theater and film background, into my work.

BIOGRAPHY
Karen Joslin earned a B.A. in Theater at Northwestern University in 1990. After working in the entertainment industry, in 2001 she decided it was time for a career change. Having pursued photography as a hobby since childhood, she went back to school and studied photography at Santa Monica College in Santa Monica, California. While in school, she worked as a freelance photographer’s assistant and for Bob Knight Photo. She also joined PPLAC (Professional Photographers of Los Angeles County), where her fine art print “Time Marches On” won a merit award. It was also published in Best of Photography Annual 2004 (Serbin Communications).

Currently, she owns and operates Karen Joslin Photography, specializing in fine art, as well as portraiture of pets and people. She is an active member of PPA (Professional Photographers of America) and TPPG (Tallahassee Professional Photographers Guild). In 2006, she served on TPPG's board and edited its monthly newsletter, The Contact Sheet. To stay updated on industry trends and techniques, she regularly attends photography seminars, workshops, and conventions. Garcia Galleries in Tallahassee showed a collection of her fine art prints as part of a group show in February and March, 2006. Karen has volunteered her photography services to WeMoon Spirit Center, a non-profit offering classes and events to women and the community at large. In addition to her photography business, she also writes content for travel websites at Interactive Internet Websites, Inc.

Find out more about Karen Joslin Photography at www.karenjoslin.net .

Beate Sass

Artist Statement

Over the past year I have focused on producing still life images, often with botanicals. I have always been drawn to the outdoors, so it seemed natural for me to photograph the natural beauty in my immediate surroundings. Although this subject matter was satisfying to photograph, I felt my images lacked meaning.

In the summer of 2007 I participated in a workshop “Exploring the Personal Narrative” with Cig Harvey at the Santa Fe Workshops. The purpose of this workshop was to discover ways to tell stories though photography. The story I decided to tell was directly linked to where I was residing during my week long stay in Santa Fe. My Aunt Edith and Uncle Ernest, who currently live in Texas, had purchased a small home in Santa Fe four years ago. Their dream was to live in New Mexico during the summers. My Aunt and Uncle realized their dream for two summers and then my Aunt suffered a series of strokes which rendered her non-verbal and confined to a wheelchair. They have not been able to return to Santa Fe and their home there has remained vacant.

During my weeks stay at my Aunt’s home, memories of my Aunt came flooding back to me. Her house was such a strong reminder of the generous, vibrant, and energetic individual she was. Living in her space also evoked sadness. I was acutely aware that my Aunt’s health had declined to the point where her life was now a mere shadow of what it once was. I decided to explore my emotions about my Aunt as well as tell her story though the images I captured. I photographed throughout her home and I also used objects she treasured and stored in her home as props in photographing in other locations. My Aunt’s thread and scissors from her sewing kit were used to create the image “Hanging On…” The thread and scissors are a metaphor for the suspended state of fragility of my Aunt’s health, and the fact that the threads to this precious life can potentially be severed at any time.

My image was captured digitally with a Canon Rebel XT. Lightroom and Photoshop CS3 used for digital editing.

Artist Biography
Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1960, Beate Sass spent her early years in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and then moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1971. She earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Southern California and later a Bachelor of Science degree and a Certificate in Physical Therapy from the University of California in San Francisco. Beate moved to Tallahassee, Florida with her husband in 1990 where she has worked as a physical therapist at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital during the last 11 years.
Beate's interests have been strongly shaped by the rich experiences she had as a child. Since her father was a musician, Beate was exposed to classical music from birth and studied both piano and cello. Her mother always dabbled in art, so art projects abounded in the household. Beate's family traveled extensively though Europe, Mexico, Central and South America. It was during these travels that Beate was exposed to the great talents in the fine art world but also to the beauty of the outdoors. Beate collected flowers, seeds, leaves, and rocks from all the places she visited, which is something she still does today.

After the birth of Beate's second child in 1999, a busy home and work life prevailed and little time was found for creative activities. A turning point in her life came in 2004 when her point-and-shoot camera stopped functioning. The decision was made to move into the digital age and she bought a compact digital camera. Beate was astonished by the level of control this small but powerful camera afforded her and it wasn't long before she became the designated family photographer. In 2006, she had become serious enough to invest in a DSLR camera. In the summer of 2006, Beate enrolled in a digital photography class at a local college, an experience that fueled her desire to hone her skills as a photographer. By the end of the summer, Beate knew that photography was not just a hobby but a necessity. "It feeds my soul."

Beate has exhibited in several local juried art shows. Currently, she has a solo exhibit in the President’s office at Tallahassee Community College. Awards include being a finalist in the 2007 “Photographer’s Forum” magazine Annual Spring Photography Contest, second place in the 2006 Tallahassee Photofest, and second place in the 2005 Maclay Gardens Spring Photography Contest. Beate’s photographs have been published in the 2007 “Eyrie” the Tallahassee Community College Art/Literary Magazine, in the Santa Fe Workshops April 2007 e-Newsletter, and in the MyParkPhotos 2005-06 calendar. In addition, one of her images was selected by the Santa Fe Workshops for the Student Gallery in the summer of 2007.
Beate has been inspired by Georgia O'Keefe, many of the classic photographers of the Group f/64 including Imogen Cunningham, Ansel Adams, and Edward Weston, and by the sky and landscape of New Mexico.

When not working or photographing, Beate enjoys practicing Tai Chi, cooking, gardening, and spending time in the outdoors with her family.
Web site: http://home.comcast.net/~beatesass

Anna Norton

Artist Biography
Anna Norton received her M.F.A. in photography from Tyler School of Art and her B.A. in anthropology from Tulane University. After beginning her career in archaeology, she attended the Maine Photographic Workshops six-month Resident Program to focus on her interest in photography. Currently she teaches as part-time professor at Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, where she works as black and white, color and digital lab technician as well. She also is the Assistant Visual Resources Curator at Tyler School of Art. She exhibits in group and solo exhibitions both regionally and nationally. These include About Love at Nailya Alexander Gallery in New York and a solo exhibition at Off-White Walls at Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. A selection of Norton’s work will be published in Elements of Photography by Angela L. Faris-Belt in 2008. While continuing her still photography, she is additionally working on a series of videos called Living Space to be installed this coming spring at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia.

Artist Statement
As a child I used to explore the wooded area around our house. Usually I could find something of note, something that I had never come across before, or something that had changed since my last excursion. Often I was drawn to the creek, but one particular day I remember.

It must have been hot, probably summer, likely midday. These are things that I don’t remember, and can only reason. What I do remember is the ground immediately surrounding the place I stood, the water running across it following the path of the water that went before, and continuing. The water must have felt cool on my feet. I can imagine that feeling, especially today in the heat and still air of my house. I can reason the heat of the air, so then the coolness of the water, but I can still see that water. On another day, I might not be so apt to imagine the liquid relief and its soothing brush against me, and I might not care whether it was a summer day or perhaps early in autumn. Every time that memory comes back to me, though, I see the water. I see the light reflected back from surface breaks of shallow pebbles. Rocks, sand, water and light all came together in layers of texture where I happened to stand and notice, but that’s not really important. What is important is that I happened to stand there, not in that place, but in any place, and notice.

The creek that ran through my childhood backyard isn’t on a map, nor does it even have a local name. These days it hardly ever even appears; it has almost entirely dried up. After a substantial rain it will occasionally spring to life again, as if retracing its steps. For many years when I would return home to visit, I would wander down to the creek again, retracing my own steps, hoping to find something that would catch my eye, pretending that it would be by chance. Now, the line of the creek bed that once brought new water only marks the boundary of the back yard, and life moves more quickly, so I do not wander down there anymore.

Still, not too far from my home now is a creek.
http://www.annagnorton.com/

Bea Geller

Artist Statement
Domestic Hearts 2 represents a small facet of my photographic work. The piece is from an exhibit entitled Color and Form. What I enjoy as an artist is the integrative aspect of the arts where work is not in a separate category of a particular discipline.I have become interested in actual shapes to convey photographic content. I find I am moving away from the convention of singular photographic image, and the rectangular frame. This image is representative of my intial experiments in the integration of photographc, sculptural and painterly forms.Content is explored in both symbolic juxtaposition of imagery within the forms as well as in the more traditional narrative.

Steven Rubin

Artist Statement
The modern zoo, on first glance, appears as a harmonious locale of mutual benefit for animals and humans alike. Zoo animals are clearly provided for – their natural predators no longer a concern, their daily imperative to find food always satisfied, their species’ survival protected in new naturalistic displays that replace the egregiously cruel cages of yesteryear. Humans get enormous benefit as well – families are entertained, children see the prototypes for their stuffed animals, researchers advance their knowledge and hosting cities get to boost their civic pride and revenue. Seems like a win-win until you recall just who designed the place and who holds the keys. As much as zoos are about admiring and preserving the animal kingdom they are also less overtly about keeping it under human dominion.

This body of work examines the zoo as a complex meeting ground where animal needs and the human desire for spectacle and control meet, mingle and conflict. Through a series of photographs of human and animal interaction at the San Diego Zoo, this visual essay (from which this single image is selected) playfully explores larger issues and conflicting attitudes toward nature and its man-made destruction and simultaneous reconstruction in the zoo. In essence, the work constitutes a visual form of anthrozoology – the study of human and animal relations – in a meeting place where conflict runs wild.

Bio
Steven Rubin has photographed on assignment in Iraq, Rwanda, Kosovo, Pakistan, Turkey, Chile and Cuba, and throughout the United States. His images have been published in The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, Mother Jones and The Village Voice, and internationally in The London Independent Magazine, Stern, GEO, Focus and L’Express, among numerous other venues. His pictures have also appeared in the publications of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, The Ford Foundation, the Soros Foundation and the Southern Poverty Law Center. He is the recipient of the Leica Medal of Excellence, a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellowship, a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard and an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship. He was a Media Fellow with the Open Society Institute – New York, and a Community Fellow with the Open Society Institute – Baltimore, where he founded and directed the innovative program Healing Images, which provides digital cameras, instruction and therapy to survivors of torture.

A graduate of Reed College, he is presently finishing his MFA at the University of California, San Diego. He will be an Assistant Professor of Photography at Penn State University beginning in January 2008.

Timothy Bryan Ghiloni

Subway Sleepers
Subway Sleepers began as other groups of images have in the past; with simple observation. I would ride the train to and from wherever it was I had to go, and I watched the others that did so as well. I became fascinated with those who allowed themselves to fall asleep in the subway system. The act of sleeping itself is an intimately peaceful act being committed against an insecure and turbulent backdrop. It is an act of comfort, an act of surrender, and an act of trust. It is an act most commonly practiced behind locked doors. I began to take a visual note of their similarities and their difference. I found that a person’s expression or posture could tell me the story of their day and perhaps even their life. Some of the photographs are highly intimate portraits citing expression and vibration, others are contextual in nature and give the viewer details of the venue. I fell into a love affair with the Subway Sleepers and photographed them extensively over the next two years. Indeed, I was fixated on this act, preformed for all to see on the subway’s stage and soon I had an ensemble of images that covered a greater cross section of the quiescently commuting New Yorker. Overall concepts began to formulate such as unity and equality. The act of sleep symbolizing a common thread we all share, linking us all as one body of people. Yet, I knew that there was a greater personal meaning to this exploration. I took a step back from the shooting process to study the images and seek out feedback. In time I came to realize that by photographing the somnolent, I am essentially comparing the myself to the sleeper and ultimately coming to identify and relate to my recessed subjects. The images become less about who they are, and more about who we are. We tour here and there, day to day and pay check to pay check, in order to maintain some meager level of existence in this city that ironically never sleeps. We are all New Yorkers in our sleep. We are all Americans in our sleep. We are all people, in our sleep. We toil and travel, taking what refuge we can during our commute through life. The activity of sleeping on the subway becomes synonymous with struggle. The working poor, making use of an unfit environment to gain a moments rest. Through these images, I am dealing with my own issues of financial security, how society defines success, and the role that money plays in that definition. I am coming to terms with my economic status and place in life. Suffice to say that I am afraid of never reaching that monetized comfort zone, afraid of never waking up from this pecuniary repose, afraid of never getting off of the subway.


Timothy Bryan Ghiloni was born and raised in Newark, Ohio, just outside of Columbus. He graduated from Lakewood High School in 1994, showing great artistic promise and ambition. After high school, Bryan began college at Columbus State where he studied Graphic Communications for a year and a half. Discouraged by the lack of creativity involved in this field of study, he transferred schools. In 1998 he began attending the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, where he found his calling as a photographer. Bryan graduated in 2002 with dual B.F.A.s in Photography and Graphic Design, achieving honors in each. After graduation he moved to New York City where he freelanced out of his own studio and worked with some of the most influential photographers in the medium such as Joyce Tenneson and Arnold Newman.

Over the course of Bryan's young career as an artist, he has shown in over 30 exhibitions including 6 solo shows and 3 New York City exhibitions. Timothy Bryan Ghiloni is also heavily involved with his artist collective, the Stillmoreroots Group. Recently the group has relocated to Swainsboro, Georgia where they are working with numerous community and arts organizations in order to build community and economy through art-related programming. The most recent derivative of this initiative is Gallery RFD, a non-profit art gallery that Bryan codirects with fellow Stillmoreroots member Anthony Faris. Bryan and Anthony will also be exhibiting together in a joint show in October at Augusta State University

Lindsey Wollard

BIO
Lindsey Wollard has been interested in art all her life. As a child, she sacrificed Saturday morning cartoons for art lessons at the local Art League. She excelled in art classes all through her school years and when it came to choosing a major in college, the decision was not a hard one. After completing her first year of college at Florida State University, she moved back to her hometown of Ft. Myers, FL and attended the nearby Florida Gulf Coast University where she graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelors Degree in Art in 2005. FGCU was also host to many of her first exhibitions, including her first solo exhibition. She has also exhibited at Space 39 and the Arts for ACT Gallery both located in Ft. Myers, FL, and the Art League of Bonita Springs in Bonita Springs, FL where she was awarded 3rd Place. Wollard also earned the Art House Foundation Award in 2004 and a credited photo of her work was featured in Southwest Florida Happenings Magazine in July of 2007. She currently lives in Ft. Myers, FL, where she works at the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery.

ARTIST STATEMENT
I think some of the most interesting photographs are of fleeting moments, like this one. They can not be staged or even recreated. These kinds of occurrences happen all the time, but it is only when a camera is present that there is ever any documentation of the event. It’s all about the lucky circumstance of being at the right place at the right time, camera in hand.

James Wendell

James Wendell was born and raised in Huntington, West Virginia. He became interested in photography at the age of 12 after finding his dad’s Polaroid Landcamera stuffed in the back of a closet. He graduated the New England School of Photography at 20 in 1998 and won 1^st place in an A.S.M.P. competition in 1999. He has shown work in Massachusetts, Florida and New York City. His work was recently published in JPG Magazine. He enjoys his own brand of wit and wisdom and is working on finding the 13^th use of dragons blood. He currently works at Magnum Photos and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
www.jameswendell.com

David Teng Olsen

Artist Statement
My name is David Teng Olsen and I am currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Wellesley College. I am originally from Seattle, WA. I received my Bachelors of Fine Arts at the University of Washington and my MFA from University of Wisconsin – Madison. Before I entered graduate school I had the fortunate experience of studying in Rome and Taipei. As an undergraduate I spent over 5 years studying Bioengineering, which has a large influence on my artwork. During my time as a Bioengineer I illustrated and designed a Bioengineering text book that is now the required text for Bioengineering classes at Stanford, Berkley and UC Davis to include a few.

The world of science intrigued me very much but I was disenchanted by the compartmentalization of the field and how little there was in the way of freedom to choose the ideas that I wanted to explore. Instead, most of the research went toward developments dictated by modern culture such as obesity, and sexual prowess; subjects I was not necessarily excited to research. I came to the conclusion that Art would be a better venue to thoroughly explore the science that intrigued me and bring it into a different light. As a scientific illustrator I was fascinated with the idea that the concepts I was illustrating had never been described before as visual objects. Rather, they only existed conceptually as mathematical formulas and theory. Because of the unique position I was in, the ability to understand the concepts being conveyed and interpreting them as visual objects, I found a vast fountain of inspiration and knowledge from which I could create both paintings and sculptures. From simple two and three dimensional forms, using a contemporary vernacular, I had the ability to describe these complex theories, believed by many to be the mechanisms of life, into easily to distinguished characters and forms that create environments which anyone can explore and see clearly; a diagram that describes many functions of the internal microscopic world that exist in every complex living creature.

My goal is to continue to explore these relationships between science and art. I imagine creating many more of these visual environments that investigate and evolve from scientific and visual research. From these installations, I want a dialogue to occur between the fields of Science and Art, where today there is little to none. Both fields could only benefit from one another.

Visit David’s website www.siamesebirds.com

Peter Chamberlain

Statement
My initial experiments with analog and digital imaging explored the possibilities of using unlikely combines of capture and modulation devices. I considered any prints that evolved as little more than documentation of the processes employed. It wasn’t until I tried to prove to a friend and colleague who was a traditional printmaker that digital prints could also have the rich textural quality of intaglio or litho that I began to take the “print” seriously.

On the other hand, the piece shown here is admittedly plain old fun. I have a younger girlfriend and a friend with a younger wife told me I should shave my ear hairs because “younger woman don’t like that”. My reaction was to let the hairs grow and photograph and scan my ears in ways way that accentuated the hairs as well as the grey hairs on my head. Currently I am doing a series on my bald spot. Aging…fashion…taboos…and satire.

Bio
Peter Chamberlain received an MFA in metals from SUNY New Paltz, an MA in sound-sculpture from SUNY Albany, and a Post Graduate Certificate in installation and performance from the Vancouver College of Art (now ECIAD) in Vancouver, BC, Canada. He has been teaching some form of electronic arts full time since 1977. He taught sculpture, electronic arts, and contemporary art history/criticism at Elmira College in NY for 15 years. In 1991 he moved to Oahu to design and implement Electronic Arts courses at the University of Hawaii at Manoa where he continues that quest.

He has exhibited or performed intermedia work throughout the continental US, in Vancouver, BC, Canada, in Mexico City, in Essen and Munich, W.Germany, Melbourne, AUS, and in Hawai'i. He has lectured on this work in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, continental US, and Hawai'i.

Since 2001, while continuing his sculptural experiments, he has shifted his focus to working with Mokaki, a group of “rapidly aging activist poets, artists, and musicians” who record weekly and perform at special interest activist venues on Oahu. He maintains multiple roles as keyboardist, technical director for performances, recording engineer and keeper of the studio, and also designs and constructs sculptural instruments and amplification devices that serve as functional stage props for performances.

Recently he has also been exploring various modes of digital image manipulation and printing and participating in online exhibitions.

Site: peterchamberlain.net

Elizabeth Williams

I feel regrets nearly every night I close my eyes and before I feel doubts and all of the little circles the viewer sees stands for different depths of agnotism i tend to go through. I needed a way to convey this to my audience.With luck I hope I have.

I first picked up photography and digital imaging in 2002 and I'm still learning things I have never imagined possible.I am a woman of few words so the use of art is my medium of expression . Please feel free to view my journey as it goes along @ http://elizabeth.mosaicglobe.com/. I am starting up a new project which includes making prints of my work as well as working as a freelance artist. 25% of all proceeds will be donated to the Alzheimer's Foundation of America along with Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Colleen Ellis

Time | Place Series
In this ongoing series of photo grids, the intent is to visually explore temporal moments in time, place and space. Some grids depict an hour in time and space, others represent a day, while some occur over many days. They are about moving—traveling—it is the seeing for the first time that awakens the sense of being. By focusing on distant images in nature, one may begin to clarify, process, or reflect on what is close. They are, in ways, inspired by the work of photographer Atta Kim, the writings of philosopher’s Joseph Campbell and Martin Heidegger.

As an artist interested in both modernist and postmodernist discourse, these photo grids provide a sense of order to an otherwise chaotic, information-dominant culture. Having spent many years creating graphic visual identity for marketers, an acute sense of awareness to the affects of these visual messages has emerged. These photo grids provide an alternative time and place to the vastness and omnipotence of these visual messages, providing a vehicle to transcend what Fredric Jameson calls the “simulacra.”

Further the digital camera is used as an appendage to the body, illustrating a vantage point disconnected to the eye, shifting the viewer’s perspective. As I move through time and space the camera is pointed outward, away from the body, toward a particular landscape or skyscape, cap- turing its particular image of time and space. By disconnecting the camera from my eye, I am free to focus on the moment, on what I am seeing and experiencing. When working on the Time | Place Series, I am brought to a place of reflection, contemplation, and transcendence of the here and now.

To see more, visit Colleen’s website: colleenellis.us

James McClean

The entity known as James McClean was incarnated upon this Earth in August of 1966, first son of a printer in North Jersey, USA. At an early age of development were his artistic glands stimulated, most impressively by the paintings of Salvador Dali as seen in books of his father’s library. After an unusually dark period of teenage angst the young artist took to the highway by thumb after high school to see what the world has to offer. The road system ends in Alaska, and there James camped the summer of ’85 along a stretch of beach, writing poems and selling watercolours and candles to tourists. The long strange trip later took James to New Mexico where he halted for ten years, enraptured by the high desert light and completing undergraduate studies in History of Photography and European Archaeology at the University of New Mexico. During this period James realised a dream of creating holograms and exhibited one of his works in a juried exhibition at the Holos Gallery in San Francisco in 1990, as well as showing photographs at several other juried shows at his university art gallery. James joined the U.S. Navy Reserve in 1988 to enable wider travels and had the great blessing to spend several summers in Europe wandering the landscape with his cameras between 1987 and 1997.

Studies of aerial photography and computer cartography led to a fascination with the discovery of archaeological sites by remote sensing methods. This fascination become a career move, bringing James to Tallahassee to complete a Masters degree in Underwater Archaeology at Florida State University. Aside from a year long contract as photographer for the National Park Service’s Southeast Archeological Center to document museum collections, this was a long pause from photography. During this time James studied environmental archaeology in 1999 at Umeå University in Sweden and passed 2001 in Germany excavating Stone Age sites in the Baltic Sea. Subsequent employment as remote sensing data analyst for the Florida Geological Survey from 2002 to 2005 gave James a thorough grounding in digital imaging technology, and in late 2004 James acquired his first professional digital camera and the seeds of inspiration were once again sewn in his Mind. It was sometime during this period that James actualised the True Nature of Reality, ie that all Being is Light and his Soul was detached from his corporeal form and held in stasis in a piece of Nikkor glass, where it resides to this day, the better to interpret the world of real things around him in accordance with the Real World of Ideas within.

A year at Lively Technical Institute studying Commercial Photography provided James with the elements of an education which filled in the gaping holes left from his art school education, namely how to pay the bills. In February 2006 James was awarded several Addy Awards for excellence in Advertising Photography, taking Silver, Gold and Best in Show prizes in the student category at the local level, and a Gold award for the Southeast region allowing him to represent Tallahassee’s Lively Tech at the national level. It was also in early 2006 that James received the blessing of studio space in Tallahassee’s Rail Road Square artist community, where upon he commenced touring the world in search of stimulation for his artistic glands. A long anticipated two month sojourn to Egypt to photograph the Total Eclipse of the Sun was then followed by a long overdue return to Alaska, commencing with a good several months long wander followed by a magical winter spent photographing the Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights. You can follow James’ travels at his web site, http://www.McCleanImageStudio.com where he sells his fine art prints. James’ travel and advertising stock photography is also represented at http://www.Alamy.com, search word “McClean”. Look forward to a wide selection of images from Egypt and Alaska this holiday shopping season. James plans to keep the Tallahassee studio open for portraiture during the winter holiday and late spring seasons (ie. November through New Year’s and May – late June) with the remainder of the year appeasing his hunger for travel photography. The next Total Solar Eclipse will be August 1^st, 2008 when James is planning a photo safari to Gansu Province China to witness this Cosmic Spectacle, e-mail for information to join this expedition: jamesmcclean@yahoo.com.

James’ work can best be described as a visual exploration of Humankind’s awkward Love/Hate relationship with Mother Nature. While some look to the beauty of the natural landscape James prefers a wider lens to bring into focus the telephone wires and parked cars that now define our modern landscape. Wilderness is scarcer and scarcer to find, urban blight grows like a cancer across the land and fresh air and clean water will soon no longer be just a luxury for the rich, but may not be available at any price with our current rates of conspicuous consumption. Photographs are for James mirrors reflecting inner light toward other beings, magic mirrors which hold Thoughts and Memories fast for future generations to understand the world of Ideas and Images that shaped this current generation in which we live.

Lynette Miller

Artist Statement:
My approach art making is an ongoing method of inquiry; its intent is to draw attention to ideas, situations and process. I cite Dadaist collage, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy and the Bauhaus tradition of experimentation as major influences.

This image is from body of work concerning an exploration of knowledge systems, combining iconic representations of religious art with anatomical studies, scientific schematics, geometrical constructions, astronomy and mathematical diagrams. It reflects my interest in current arguments between faith and technology, and the historical conflicts between science and religion.

The questions my images might elicit are of more concern to me than the answers. Questions may result in conversation; a conversation is communication, which may increase awareness or understanding - the ultimate encouragement to continue making art.

Bio:
Lynette Miller has an M.F.A. in Photography (minor in Printmaking) from SUNY Buffalo. While in Buffalo she taught photography at Niagara University and served on the CEPA (Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Art) Gallery’s board of directors. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, and has won numerous awards. This past spring she curated Smart Art: Images from the Digital Universe, at the Upstairs Gallery in Tryon, NC, which showcased the many ways in which digital applications are being used by contemporary artists.

Lynette currently teaches Digital Photography at A-B Technical Community College while maintaining her studio near Asheville, NC. You can see more of her work on LCMillerStudios.com

Donna Callighan

Donna Callighan, considering herself a member of the Cultural Creatives, seeks to express through the universal language of sight, the global environmental issues at hand, and to honor nature with all of it’s perfection. She has even adopted the brand name, donna-terra, to signify her commitment to the natural world.

Through her work she seeks to explore Man’s Hand on Nature as an underlying theme. The image in this exhibition, Up!, is one of a thirty-two piece series titled, S.O.S. a visual / commentary on our continual path towards committing ecocide, for which she is currently seeking funding to produce the exhibition. The fact that this exhibiton is titled, Hands Off! is pure coincidence.

She was inspired to create this style of imagery during a walk down a side street in Paris while on a commercial assignment in 2002, where she spotted a back lit potted palm frond pressing up against a piece of special architectural glass. Upon her return she procured a piece of this glass, and began to explore personification of nature with flowers and the beauty of shadows. Further investigations with this technique have lead to discovering interesting and energetic abstractions and expressiveness by using human elements.

Thanks to the powerful tool Adobe Photoshop, she is able to creatively enhance the color of these digitally captured images to suit the mood of each piece, without the use of pre-set software filters. The painterly ‘look’ is created by the glass’s structure. Thus the images begin to visually cross the border between photography and other fine art techniques. Then by printing them on canvas and fine art papers, that line is even more blurred, a fact that has become apparent when viewers ask, “Is this a painting or watercolor?”

Now, after years of searching, Donna has found her own unique style. She has several exhibition ideas that she passionately wishes to explore. Additional bodies of work include, Foggy Florals, Seeds, Trees and Weeds, and Mirror Montages. She is currently working on producing, The Language of Trees.

Donna has been a successful professional photographer for over twenty years. She is currently reassessing how to contribute to our world in a manner that allows her spirit to rest, and more importantly, contributes to environmental awareness and the betterment of others.

Visit Donna's website at www.donna-terra.com

Pauline Thomas

I am an axis approved professional artist living in Ferryside near Carmarthen, west Wales. Axis is the listing for professional artists who live and work in the UK, funded by the Arts Council's of England Scotland and Wales.

My inspiration is drawn from my life in west Wales, my work in the agricultural sector and working within the changing landscape, weather and rhythm of the rural way of life. Other works have been inspired by the folklore and history of the surrounding communities tempered by my personal experiences and emotions. I am totally self-taught through 20 years of self-expression in the mediums of paint, pencil, clay and flora. This has allowed my work to develop outside the confines of convention and produce works of true originality.

My work is currently displayed at www.eccowales.com, a government established portal for showing The Best Arts and Crafts in Wales, in the fine art section and www.wallscapes.biz

Thomas Wolf

Artist Statement:
Like all artists I want to share my vision of life, beauty, love, pain, reality. . .But through my eyes, the vision is a bit skewed because of a retinal disease. My picture of the world gets smaller and smaller everyday but my minds eye grows with vision and passion for life, beauty, love, pain, and reality. . .

Because of my vision the medium I have chosen is my prosthetic. Technology has finally caught up to my long loved medium: Mixed Media/Digital Photography. Pulling in my skills from life drawing, acrylic, oil, sculpture, photography and mixing them for a composition in a digital controlled environment settles that burning inside of me. Microchips, lasers, and electricity allows my emotional outpour to be released. Skeptics scoff at Digital Art, and I am sure that photographers were scoffed at from the masters. My work as a whole has developed as my life has, and as life does, so will my work.

This series and my current work consist of a mourning period of love and opportunities missed and lost. Each of the pieces herein consist of imagery: water, eyes, doors, and blurriness. All are connected. Eyes opening the door to the soul, letting in, they see you more clearly, leaving you exposed, unable to shut it again.

Stephanie Fysh

Stephanie Fysh comes to photography with a childhood aversion to cameras and a PhD-induced penchant for aesthetic theory: her photography training—at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario, and in a variety of workshop settings—came after years immersed in eighteenth-century literary culture and its material conditions.

She has exhibited as part of the Gladstone Hotel’s “Urban Optics” in the 2006 CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival , and in the Gladstone’s juried show “PHOTO Fiction” in CONTACT 2007. Her work is held in private collections across North America. She has been published in Scroope (the journal of the Cambridge University graduate school of architecture), in JPG Magazine, and on fine-art-quality local postcards by Toronto’s Ballenford Books on Architecture. Interviews with Stephanie appear on the photography website Utata and at poet Sina Queyras's Lemon Hound: Contemporary Arts & Letters, Interviews & Features.

She currently lives in downtown Toronto, where she works in the book publishing industry as a freelance editor/proofreader, publishing educator, and director of the Book and Periodical Council.

Statement

My photography—architectural vistas and details, cinematic and erotic portraiture, and beyond— continues an exploration I began as a literary-historical scholar: of the relationship between the physical structures we build, the culture we weave, and the selves we construct within those physical and cultural spaces. At times this exploration masks itself in the entirely fictive but still recognizably photographic; at others it takes on the cloak of the documentary.

I currently create primarily digital images but retain a degree of nostalgia for film and the smells of the darkroom. I learned in that darkroom that light is not the only material for photography: the image created in bending and capturing that light is itself material for transformation. Today I carefully choose when I will let the inevitability of technological mediation show itself and when I will give in to the ideology of photographic immediacy.

In tracing, bending to shape, and making material envisioned moments of sublimity, both large-scale and intimate, intended and unintended, I seek to illuminate the equivalent possibilities of the conscious construction of self—of a personal sublime—and of an erotics of the built world. Or at least to make you look up.

To see more of Stephanie's work visit www.stephaniefysh.com

John Wall

My work is drawn from my experience of people and things in rural and urban settings as they interact with me and with each other. I seek through art to engage the world with generosity and compassion. I look for moments that embody creativity in the construction and performance of the world and that result in images that will hold the viewer’s attention. I seek images that incorporate a tension between form and content and that extend the composition to include the viewer’s world.

My work is about time, about the recognition of a moment of composure in the ebb and flow of things and events. Each image brings back the moment of recognition but also records the loss of all the moments before and after. In the midst of loss, I hold on to the moments that make the past accessible. I make images from chance and random encounters, from writing and images on walls and buildings, from signs and wonders in the street. I seek the moment when action, expression, perspective, and light coalesce into an image that is dynamic and engaging and that invites the viewer into involvement, discovery, and delight.

I especially seek moments that comment on the changes and chances of life. I enjoy spontaneous interaction with my subjects while making images so that we collaborate in the creative moment.

To learn more about John, visit his website: jnwallphoto.com

Scott Geraci

Scott Geraci is a multi faceted artist who has worked in ceramics, steel, printmaking, and mixed media. In addition to being an artist, he is also an aspiring writer who is working on several children’s books.

Growing up on Long Island, Scott spent his summers watching his grandfather paint in his studio. During these visits, Scott would pass the time reading his grandfather’s collection of National Geographic magazines. The photography immediately drew him in and from then on, it became one of his first loves.

Scott finds himself drawn to things of uncommon and unexpected beauty. Whether it is an old broken down truck, an abandoned building, or even a chair, he strives to find beauty in what others may consider ordinary or even ugly. Regardless of the content, Scott’s goal is to present his subject matter from a point of view that we might not normally consider.

Scott lives in Tallahassee with his wife and their six children. He credits his children as a source of constant inspiration and for helping him to see the world from a different perspective.

To learn more about Scott please visit his website: scottgeraci.com

Gloria DeFilipps Brush

Gloria DeFilipps Brush lives in Duluth, Minnesota, where she is Professor of Photography in the Department of Art & Design at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Born in Chicago, she earned the M.F.A. degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Brush has received artist fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Arts Midwest, the Minnesota State Arts Board, Polaroid Corporation, and the Bush and McKnight Foundations. Her work has been published in Leonardo, Zoom Inter-national, American Photographer, Darkroom Photography, Lightworks, Angeles, Harper's, and Viewcamera magazines, and in Naomi Rosenblum's book A History of Women Photographers.

Her photographs have been included in exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Cologne Photokina, SIGGRAPH, D-Art at the University of London, the BrasÌlia Art Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Print Club in Philadelphia, Clarence Kennedy Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Silver Image Gallery in Seattle, The Ansel Adams Center in San Francisco, the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, among many others.

Artist Statement:
My evolving series Reconstituting uses an opened book as the recurring connotative premise and arena for interactions of language, objects, and pictures.

The book itself as object is multivalent, its meaning shifting with the expectations and framing of the reader. The relationship between fact and fiction may be altogether evident to one individual, unfathomable to another, or the very distinction seen as irrelevant or non-existent by still others.

The template of an open book, with pages coming before and after, courts habits of thought involving sequence or succession. Two facing pages propose a seemingly inevitable correlation, even if only to mark an end and a beginning.

Reconstituting fuses the innate power of objects with overheard, recorded or sometimes imagined dialogues. Photography’s own uncertain presence as observer is implicit.

To see more of Gloria's work visit her website.

Jerry Atnip

Jerry R. Atnip has been a professional photographer and designer for 30 years specializing in shooting for advertising, annual reports, celebrities, political figures, book, CD & video packaging, magazines, calendars and television.

He’s had the privilege of exploring the world shooting travel photography. His photographs have been published in 40 countries and his work has been honored with over 60 awards.

He has recently opened LightSpace Studio, a multi-media creative environment in a 100+ year old building.

To find out more about Jerry, visit his website jerryatnip.com