Michael Crouser on NPR

Check out this awesome article on VERVE artist Michael Crouser from NPR titled:
The Art of Finding a Photographic Voice.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2012/01/13/144928895/the-art-of-finding-a-photographic-voice

PHOTO ARCHIVES EXHIBITION

Download this press release complete with images on our website, here.

VERVE Gallery of Photography Presents

PALACE OF THE GOVERNORS/
NEW MEXICO HISTORY MUSEUM
PHOTO ARCHIVES FUNDRAISER

With

Herbert A. Lotz
Jane Phillips
David Robin
Genevieve Russell

Opening Reception: Friday, January 20, 2012, 5-7pm
Exhibition is on view through Saturday, February 18, 2012

VERVE Gallery of Photography is pleased to present a very special exhibition to raise funds in support the Photo Archives of the Palace of the Governors/New Mexico History Museum. VERVE Gallery and the New Mexico photographers in this exhibition recognize the importance of the Photo Archives and the archive’s need for funds to support its mission: the preservation of a unique collection of over 800,000 items of the region’s photographic history. The photographic collection at the Photo Archives “focuses on the history and people of New Mexico and the expansion of the West; anthropology, archaeology, and ethnology of Hispanic and Native American cultures.” The Archives is open to the public and has a searchable online database of images available in its digitized collections. VERVE’s and the photographers’ goal in this exhibition is to raise $10,000 in support of the Photo Archives.

Four local Santa Fe artists have been invited to participate: Herbert A. Lotz, Jane Phillips, David Robin, and Genevieve Russell. Each photographer has offered portrait sessions to local individuals or families for a direct tax-deductible contribution to the Photo Archives. In addition to portrait commissions, each artist was invited to exhibit their own work. The work will be available for sale. All proceeds from the sale of their artwork will be divided equally between the photographers and the Photo Archives.

The public reception for this exhibition takes place on Friday, January 20, 2012 from 5 to 7pm at Verve Gallery of Photography, 219 East Marcy Street.

Parking is available across the street, courtesy of First Citizens Bank, formerly IronStone Bank.

The exhibition is on view through Saturday, February 18, 2012.

HERBERT A. LOTZ

Herbert A. Lotz has been a respected photographer in the Santa Fe community for over 40 years. Herb is a commercial photographer, making portraits and photographing the works of local artists. Lotz’s portrait commissions in support of this fundraiser include that of Ana Pacheco, founder and publisher of La Herencia magazine from 1994-2009. In 2004 Pacheco was the recipient of the New Mexico Governor’s Award for outstanding women of New Mexico. Herb Lotz will be exhibiting his own work. That work consists of Santa Fe luminaries such as Fine Art for Children and Teens’ founder Juliet Myers, Ceramic artist and author Rick Dillingham, and gallerist James Kelly.

Herbert Lotz was born in Illinois in 1944. He was raised in a small farming community south of Chicago. He was given his first camera, a Kodak Brownie, at the age of six and the photographs that he took foretold his future. He was accepted and entered The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in a joint degree program with the University of Chicago to study painting. However, after enrolling in a survey course in photography Herb changed his major to photography. In 1967, while working and attending school, he was drafted into the U.S. Army. He was trained as a radio/teletype operator. Thereafter, he was sent to the war in South Viet Nam. Herb was detached from his signal corps. unit and assigned to the 25th Infantry Brigade at Cu Chi in the so-called Iron Triangle. While there, in his off duty time, he photographed life at the base camp. When he finished his tour in the Army in 1969, Herb moved to New Mexico to start a new life.

JANE PHILLIPS

Jane Phillips has more than twenty years of experience as a photojournalist. For the past sixteen years she has been a staff photographer at the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper. For this exhibition, Jane’s portraits include local artists, Nance & Ramon Jose Lopez; County Clerk, Valerie Espinoza; New Mexican farmer, Matt Romero; and, Acequia Madre Elementary student, Rebeccah Lucy Peshlakai. Her personal work in the exhibition are selected images that reflect pivotal moments in her career: images, such as, a ten-year-old boy taking a cigarette break at a county fair in southern New Mexico to spending time with the peoples of Africa.

Jane Phillips earned a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City where she was born and raised. Her work experience includes New York Newsday, New York Times, New York Post, UPI and both the Maine and Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. Throughout her career she has traveled extensively and photographed a wide range of people from the anonymous to the world- renowned. She’s captured, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Edward Kennedy Robert Redford, Juan Hamilton, Sam Shepard, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gladys Night, Ray Charles, among many others. Chosen from more than 1100 entries worldwide, her photograph, “Cigarette Break” garnered first prize in the Santa Fe Center for Photography, Singular Image Color Category in 2005. She was a finalist for the prestigious New Mexico Arts Tamarind Institute grant, 2010.

DAVID ROBIN

David Robin began his career as a chief fashion photographer for a major national retailer where David honed the skills necessary to become a professional commercial photographer. David Robin will be exhibiting his personal work from the series the Les Rêves Des Rois / Dreams of the Kings, images taken at the Palace of Versailles and the châteaux of the Loire. This collection of images was created by David as evidence of the aesthetic dreams and visions of Françoise I and Louis XIV (The Sun King) of France. The body of work speaks to their indelible impact on our collective visual conscience.

After college, David apprenticed for some of the world’s leading photographers. Early in his career he served as a master printer for the likes of Irving Penn and others. David is now known for his mastery of the black and white silver print. David Robin’s commercial work can be seen in everything from CD packaging, advertising campaigns, editorial spreads and book covers to fine art galleries and installations. He has received numerous professional awards for his commercial work for such clients as Levi Strauss, The Gap, Blue Note Records, Sony, BMG Records and Norwegian Cruise Lines. David also pursues self-directed projects that reflect his personal vision. His work has been exhibited in New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Four years ago David Robin traded the sounds of Manhattan, his home for the last ten years, for the quiet beauty of Northern New Mexico.

GENEVIEVE RUSSELL

Genevieve Russell’s work as a photographer and as a visual storyteller is grounded in community documentary projects that seek to highlight people making a difference. She works to call out not the crisis, but the compassion, beauty, imagination, and possibility of people, places and things. Russell’s portrait commissions include photographing the owners of VERVE Gallery, Jenna and Wilson Scanlan, and their children. In addition to being active in the arts, the Scanlans are committed to education, immigrant rights, and social justice. Russell has also photographed Wendy Borger and Halid Hatic, owners of Spandarama Yoga Studio and Rasa Juice Bar / Ayurveda and Juliana and Daniel Coles, both community organizers, and their children. Russell’s personal work in the exhibition includes work from a trip the artist made with the Bali Art Project, an organization that gives Santa Fe area High School juniors the opportunity to travel and experience a culture different from their own by traveling to Bali. The work in this series is titled, An Offering, that the artist describes as “…simple pictures; daily meditations found along the path. Each image is a personal memento, a message, an offering…”

Originally from Charlottesville, Virginia, Genevieve Russell has lived and worked in Santa Fe for over eleven years. She founded StoryPortrait Media to create short films and multimedia pieces that educate, engage, empower and inspire. StoryPortrait Media collaborates creatively with non-profits, small businesses and artists committed to making a positive impact, both socially and environmentally. She has taught at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, the College of Santa Fe, and the Santa Fe Community College. She currently serves as the photographer for Santa Fe Living Treasures and is on the Kitchen Cabinet of the Santa Fe Time Bank. She has two feature length documentary film projects underway, The Bali Art Project and In Search of Home.

PALACE OF THE GOVERNORS PHOTO ARCHIVES

The Palace of the Governors was originally constructed in the early 17th century. It served as Spain's seat of government for what is today the American Southwest. The Palace of the Governors chronicles the history of Santa Fe, as well as New Mexico and the region. This adobe structure, now the state's history museum, was designated a Registered National Historic Landmark in 1960 and an American Treasure in 1999.

The Palace of the Governors Photo Archives contains an estimated 800,000 items including historic photographic prints, cased photographs, glass plate negatives, film negatives, stereographs, photo postcards, panoramas, color transparencies, and lantern slides. This important collection includes material of regional and national significance, dating from approximately 1850 to the present, covering subject matter that focuses on the history and people of New Mexico and the expansion of the West; anthropology, archaeology, and ethnology of Hispanic and Native American cultures; and smaller collections documenting Europe, Latin America, the Far East, Oceana, and the Middle East.

HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST AND LOW RES JPGS AVAILABLE WITHIN ATTACHED PDF

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Jennifer Schlesinger, Director
219 E. Marcy Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501
Email: jennifer@vervegallery.com
Phone: 505-982-5009 Fax: 505-982-9111
vervegallery.com (or join us on Facebook!)


CONTACT INFORMATION FOR THE ARTISTS IN THE EXHIBITION
HERBERT LOTZ Email: herbo@zianet.com
JANE PHILLIPS Email: janephillips123@comcast.net
DAVID ROBIN Email: david@davidrobin.com
GENEVIEVE RUSSELL Email: genevieve@storyportraitmedia.com

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR THE PHOTO ARCHIVES OF THE
PALACE OF THE GOVERNORS/NEW MEXICO HISTORY MUSEUM
KATE NELSON Phone: 505- 476-1141; Email: kate.nelson@state.nm.us

Tony O'Brien: Light in the Desert

Show includes Tony O'Brien and his new book. (Also includes work by Verve Artist Janet Russek and other local artists.)

(Text taken from The Museum of NM.)
Oct 23, 2011 through Dec 31, 2012
10:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Contemplative Landscape
New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors

After covering the lives of drug addicts and prostitutes in America and the struggle of Afghan rebels fighting the Soviets – including a stint as a prisoner of war – Santa Fe-based photojournalist Tony O’Brien turned to Christ in the Desert Monastery in Abiquiu, N.M., to restore his spirit. During the year he spent living with the Benedictine monks, they allowed him to document their daily activities and rituals, both contemplative and secular.

O’Brien’s work from that era now forms the heart of a new exhibition at the New Mexico History Museum, Contemplative Landscape, Oct. 23, 2011, through Dec. 31, 2012, exploring how photographers see the state’s meditative topography: the land, art, architecture, and people who build and populate the sacred.

Download high-resolution images from the exhibit by clicking on "Go to related images" at the bottom of this page.

Drawing on the extensive holdings of the Photo Archives, with the participation of contemporary photographers, Contemplative Landscape’s black-and-white photographs explore the emotional and ceremonial practices of people as varied as Buddhists, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Sikhs, to name just a few of the diverse faith-based communities who call New Mexico home.

Throughout our time, creativity and spirituality have blended in ways as monumental and communal as the world’s great cathedrals and as small and personal as a roadside descanso marking another person’s passage from the earth.

“The idea is to think about the spiritual, however it manifests for the viewer personally,” said Mary Anne Redding, curator of the Photo Archives. “What is considered sacred or contemplative varies. What these places have in common is that they draw people to them either in the built or natural environment. Each is infused with an energy that collects over time as people come together or seek enlightenment. New Mexico encompasses and encourages radically different religious practices. Each of these communities adds a different perspective to the meaning of religion and contributes their practices to the diversity of spiritual belief.”

Contemplative Landscape shares its space and spirit with Illuminating the Word: Saint John’s Bible (Oct. 23, 2011, through April 7, 2012) in the museum’s second-floor Albert and Ethel Herzstein Gallery. As part of the exhibition design, visitors will be invited to enter a contemplative area to pray, meditate or simply sit in silence – opportunities too often lacking in the 21st-century world.

In addition to O’Brien, photographers represented in the exhibit include:

Wyatt Davis

Tyler Dingee

Ferenz Fedor

Miguel Gandert

Laura Gilpin

Kirk Gittings

Cary Herz

Debora Hunter

William Henry Jackson

Ernest Knee

Paul Logsdon

Elliott McDowell

Teresa Neptune

Jesse L. Nusbaum

T. Harmon Parkhurst

Edward Ranney

David Robin

Janet Russek

Sharon Stewart

Don J. Usner

Adam Clark Vroman

Nancy Hunter Warren

George Ben Wittick

The photographers have used their work to explore and renew their faith, even challenge their own and others’ beliefs. The result is an exhibit that marries an adobe morada abandoned by the Penitentes to processions of robe-clad monks carrying out the Stations of the Cross in desert canyons. For so many of these photographers, their images illuminate their personal quests.

Award-winning photographer Cary Herz, who died in 2008, was working on a project in the Las Vegas, N.M., Jewish Cemetery in 1985 when someone told her of other Jews in New Mexico – people who had practiced their faith in secret. As Herz began investigating, she found slides of grave markers that appeared to contain Jewish symbols, a discovery that led her to cover 10,000 miles documenting the lives of people in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona, the descendents of a secret history that has its roots in the Spanish and Portugese Inquisitions.

Another example is photographer Kirk Gittings, who was hired by New Mexico magazine to photograph the rapidly deteriorating historic churches of northern New Mexico. Through that work, he and writer Michael Miller won a National Endowment for the Arts grant that for four years allowed Gittings to immerse himself in Catholic spirituality. Given the keys to a church to photograph at his leisure, he would sit in the pews, breathe the scent of candlewax and reconnect with the saints. A few years later, he converted to Catholicism.

Of his own work, Edward Ranney says: “The petroglyphs associated with the ancient Pueblo sites in New Mexico's Galisteo Basin give us an entry to the imaginative and religious world-view of these early Pueblo people. In addition, as Lucy Lippard has observed, they `focus space,’ and make visible the Pueblo people's concerns and beliefs, and their relationship with their gods.”

And, says Teresa Neptune: “My camera serves as a tool for my own awareness; with it I challenge myself to constantly pay more attention and see the world in a more creative way. Every landscape, every street has the potential to be seen contemplatively. What a joy to share and celebrate this way of seeing in "Contemplative Landscape."

The Photo Archives at the Palace of the Governors recently acquired 20 of O’Brien’s images from his Monastery of Christ in the Desert portfolio. O’Brien’s experiences in the monastery are the subject of his new book with writer Christopher Merrill, Light in the Desert: Photographs from the Monastery of Christ in the Desert (Museum of New Mexico Press), debuting with the exhibition.

A New York City native, O’Brien began his photography career in 1973 at the Santa Fe New Mexican, the Santa Fe Reporter and the Albuquerque Journal North. His work has appeared in national and international publications, including Life magazine, Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. He has also worked with the Ford Foundation on a land-use project on Zuni Pueblo, as well as a water-works project in the colonias along the Texas border for the Pew Foundation.

Among the places that have exhibited his work: the Museum of Our National Heritage, Massachusetts; the Southeast Museum of Photography, Florida; the Adham Center of Photography, Cairo, Egypt; The Newseum in New York and the Sag Harbor Picture Gallery. In 1990, O’Brien was awarded the first Eliot Porter Foundation Grant for his work in Afghanistan. He has taught documentary photography and was director of the Documentary Studies Program at the Santa University of Art and Design (formerly the College of Santa Fe), where he is on the faculty at the Narion Center of Photographic Arts.

In 1989, while on assignment for Life magazine, he was taken prisoner in Afghanistan for six weeks, an experience that led to his 1994-95 sojourn at Christ in the Desert as a practicing member of the contemplative community.

“You sit in that chapel and the light dances throughout the day,” O’Brien said. “It can go from just plain to pure beauty. I began to look at things a little differently. I began to be more aware of what it was that I was looking at and really taking my time. And the willingness to let things go.”

Founded in the town of Abiquiu in 1964, the Monastery of Christ in the Desert follows the Benedictine life with no external apostolates. It maintains a guesthouse for private retreats where men and women can share the Divine Office and Mass in the Abbey Church with the monks. Set in the Chama Canyon, about 75 miles north of Santa Fe, the monastery is surrounded by miles of wilderness, assuring solitude and quiet.

Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible and Contemplative Landscape are generously supported by the New Mexico Humanities Council, the Scanlan Family Foundation, and the Museum of New Mexico Foundation.

Lectures, workshops and performances for Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible and Contemplative Landscape will be held in the History Museum Auditorium and are free with admission unless otherwise noted. The schedule:

Sunday, October 23, 2011, 2-4 pm

Opening reception in the museum’s second-floor Gathering Space. At 2 pm, join photographer Tony O’Brien and writer Christopher Merrill (Light in the Desert: Photographs from the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, MNM Press, 2011) for a lecture and book signing in the auditorium.

Sunday, November 6, 2 pm

“Lay Folk and the Psalms,” lecture by Carol Neel, medieval historian at Colorado College.

Monday, November 7, 6 pm, The Lensic Performing Arts Center

“Donald Jackson: Illuminating the Word,” a special evening with the lead artist and calligrapher of The Saint John’s Bible. $15. Private reception following, $50. Tickets at www.ticketssantafe.org, or call (505) 982-1234.

Friday, November 18, 6 pm

“Calligraphic Trails,” lecture by artist and calligrapher Patricia R. Musick.

Saturday, November 19, 10 am-4 pm, NMHM Classroom

“Irish Manuscript Bookhand,” calligraphy workshop with Patricia R. Musick. Cost is $80. Limited seating; call (505) 476-5096 to register.

Sunday, December 4, 2 pm

Sacred choral music by Schola Cantorum of Santa Fe and the monks of Christ in the Desert Monastery.

Sunday, January 22, 2012, 2 pm

“On the Weight of Words,” lecture by renowned artists Barry Moser and John Benson.

Saturday, February 25, 10 am-4 pm, NMHM Classroom

“Oh My Gouache,” calligraphy workshop by Dianne Von Arx, special treatment artist for The Saint John’s Bible. Cost is $100. Limited seating; call (505) 476-5096 to register.

Sunday, February 26, 2 pm

“Special Treatment Illuminations for The Saint John’s Bible,” lecture by Dianne Von Arx.

Sunday, March 25, 2 pm

“Endangered Texts: Preserving Ancient Books the Benedictine Way in the 21st Century,” lecture by Father Columba Stewart, executive director of the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library at St. John’s University in Minnesota.

Sunday, April 29, 2 pm

Contemplative Landscape photographers panel discussion; Kirk Gittings, Ed Ranney, Janet Russek, Sharon Stewart and Don Usner.

Friday, June 1, 6 pm

“Fragile Faith,” lecture by Contemplative Landscape photographer David Robin.

Friday, June 8, 6 pm

“Landscape and Memory,” lecture by artist and calligrapher Laurie Doctor.

Saturday and Sunday, June 9 & 10, 10 am-4 pm, NMHM Classroom

“Landscape and Lettering: Before the Separation of Drawing and Writing,” calligraphy workshop with Laurie Doctor. Cost is $200. Limited seating; call (505) 476-5096 to register.

Friday, July 13, 6 pm

“Poetry & Photographs,” discussion and poetry reading with Contemplative Landscape photographer Teresa Neptune and poet Miriam Sagan.

Sunday, October 14, 2 pm

“Ritualized Naming of the Landscape through Photography,” lecture by John Carter, photography curator at the Nebraska State Historical Society.

Sunday, November 4, 2 pm

Red as a Lotus: Letters to a Dead Trappist, poetry reading by Lisa Gill; and Compassion Rising, a film about Thomas Merton and the Dalai Lama.

Sunday, December 2, 2 pm

Sacred choral music by Schola Cantorum of Santa Fe and the monks of Christ in the Desert Monastery.

Charbonneau/French & Jennifer Hudson Show Press Release

(Click on the artists' names to see their work.)

VERVE Gallery of Photography Presents

CHARBONNEAU / FRENCH
&
JENNIFER HUDSON

Opening Reception: Friday, November 4, 2011, 5-7pm
Exhibition is on view through Saturday, December 31, 2011

Conversations with the artists: Saturday, November 5, 2011, 2pm
Location: VERVE Gallery of Photography

VERVE Gallery of Photography is pleased to present an exhibition with three artists, the collaborative team of Jeff Charbonneau and Eliza French (known simply as Charbonneau / French) and artist Jennifer B. Hudson. These artists work narratively, using stories and ideas that play out visually in their staged imagery. Jennifer B. Hudson’s small prints will grace the walls of the smaller and more intimate room in the gallery and Charbonneau/French’s large scale work will be exhibited in the main gallery space.

The public reception for this exhibition takes place on Friday, November 4, 2011 from 5 to 7pm. There will be a conversation with the artists at VERVE Gallery on Saturday, November 5 beginning at 2pm.

The exhibition is on view through Saturday, December 31, 2011.

CHARBONNEAU / FRENCH

The collaborative team Jeff Charbonneau and Eliza French (Charbonneau / French) debut their first exhibition at VERVE Gallery with 21 large-scale photographs from both their Massillon and Playground series. Their work has been appropriately described as images with Victorian-era aesthetics and a 19th century craftsmanship. They produce their work by combining traditional black and white darkroom techniques with contemporary photographic processes.

The Massillon series takes its name from the Ohio town where Eliza French’s great-grandmother, Zeta Eliza Woolley, lived at the turn of the 20th century. Massillon reads as an unraveling narrative inspired by the artist’s memories, old family folklore, dreams and childhood reminiscence. These recollections are transformed into works that have been described as “stills, it would seem, [from] an Edgar Allan Poe film adaptation by Ingmar Bergman.” While the work is distinctively inspired by French’s ancestry, the artists say the work, “…is a meditation on memory, and how it functions through the two of us, and between us.”

The series Playground focuses on the study of primary shapes, and their literal and symbolic relationships to human subjects and the natural world. Eliza French notes of the work:

In these highly designed pictures we have strayed away from the emotionally driven narrative that characterized our previous series, Massillon, to create visual poetry through experiments with proportion, distance, and repetition in space.

With the Playground series, Charbonneau and French have ventured into such realms of influence as classic mythology, Buckminster Fuller’s utopian communities, mid-twentieth century architectural sketches, Dava Sobel’s book, Planets, and their own childhood experiences with weather balloons. Each photograph in Playground begins with the artists’ sculptural intervention into a found landscape or surface through the decisive placement of people and objects, including large monochromatic spheres and diminutive and fanciful female figures. The images conclude with performances, postures and arrangements captured on film that are often infused with elements of classical mythology and subtle references to the universe as created and manipulated by gods and goddesses of polytheistic times.

All of the work by Charbonneau and French is rendered via meticulously executed installation, staging and equally exacting post-production work. The artists utilize traditional darkroom techniques and shoot their scenes with film in medium and large format cameras. Jeff Charbonneau explains:

Our images are essentially staged performance/installation stills, as we are very interested in capturing a real moment in time and adhering to the sentiments of traditional film based photography. As such, we prefer manipulating our images in a wet darkroom environment, rather than in the digital domain. In our Massillon series, where clouds are upside-down, or superimposed over a figure, the manipulations were done strictly in the darkroom using multiple negatives. In Playground we only retouched minor areas where the large orbs were tethered to the ground with small weights.”

Charbonneau and French do, however, rely on digital technologies for the enlargement and printing process of their images. In the interest of maintaining consistency throughout their editions, large-scale exhibition prints are created using digital Chromogenic print technology based on their original silver gelatin masters.

Jeff Charbonneau and Eliza French have been working together since 2004, when a mutual interest in the photographic medium brought them together. Their performance-based images are created through a partnership from conception to completion. Charbonneau/French’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in shows and art fairs since 2006, as well as featured in such international publications as Photograph Magazine, American Photo, and Photo +.

Jeff Charbonneau is a masterful printer working in traditional black and white darkroom technique. He attended the University of Wisconsin and UCLA for graduate studies where he studied music, anthropology and photography. He has divided his time between the motion picture and television industry and photography for twenty years. Eliza French studied screenwriting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and earned a degree in Art History from UCLA in 2001. In 2008, she became a full-time artist in collaboration with Charbonneau after working for several years in the entertainment and arts industries.

Both artists live and work in Los Angeles.

JENNIFER B. HUDSON

Jennifer B. Hudson’s exhibition consists of three bodies of work. All of Jennifer’s images find their inspiration in spirituality, in religious symbolism, the anguish in life’s transitory nature, and empathy in personal relationships. She is a dynamic and emotional illustrator who uses forgotten or discarded mechanical devices in staging her scenes. Hudson’s images are both artistically stylized and meticulously crafted into intimately small-scale prints.

Jennifer’s series Baptism is a personal exploration of a young woman's journey through life’s altering experiences to a spiritual reawakening. We follow the empowered woman’s heartfelt journey from guilt and transgression, temptation and despair, to prayer, commitment, reconciliation, and grace. This work illustrates adversity, agony and triumph; the mysteries of human religiosity. Jennifer’s Flora series, a work in progress, combines human forms to create floral arrangements of the more common spiritual icons.

Medic is a snapshot of physically or spiritually ill humans and their relationships with themselves and others in times of need----- the images are metaphors exploring introspection, empathy and compassion. Jennifer Hudson explains:

The work began wholly on one sentence whispered by my husband while we endured a deeply unsettling time together. He held my hand, lay close to me and said softly, "I just wish I could take the pain from your body, and put it into mine." I have been fortunate to know incredible love all my life, but at that moment I became suddenly and intensely aware of the magnificent power that exists between people who care for one another. When I was anxious and fighting to fall asleep each night, I began to invent miracle machines; contraptions that heal, deliver hope, legacy, remedy, and redemption. Each image from Medic is a thoughtful invention, strange and tender, revealing facets of the delicate human heart…. In the making of this work, I sought to begin to understand some of the most rare and beautiful relationships in the world, to expose their most frail, vulnerable moments, times of great intensity, and most cherished inner workings.

In the ten isolated chamber scenes in the Medic body of work we are invited to witness emotional experiences, exchanges, and confrontations brought on by life’s transitory nature. In some chambers, we are invited to experience life-changing moments for persons with humbling choices. In other chambers, we see exchanges of affection, tenderness, connection, mercy and empathy. However, each chamber metaphorically explores the challenges to both individuals and human relationships during serious illness and their fantasizing for a “miracle machine, a contraption that heals”.

In spite of having been raised in a religious and conservative home in rural Texas, Jennifer Hudson grew up imaginative, curious, introspective and experimental. She uses her formative experiences to bring insight and awareness to her intensely personal artwork. Hudson is currently working in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is an MFA Degree candidate at the University of New Mexico, in the Studio Art Photography Program. In addition to private portraiture commissions, she is an international speaker and lecturer sought out year after year by many professional public and private photographic organizations. Jennifer’s work has been a part of many exhibitions, and is represented by three major galleries across the country.

HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST


CONTACT INFORMATION FOR JEFF CHARBONNEAU AND ELIZA FRENCH
Email: contact@sevensistersasleep.com
Phone: 310-397-7936

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR JENNIFER B. HUDSON
Email: oliveavonlea@yahoo.com
Phone: 617-697-4544

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Jennifer Schlesinger, Director
219 E. Marcy Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501
Email: director@vervegallery.com
Phone: 505-982-5009 Fax: 505-982-9111

Check out our current exhibition or our other artists at our website!

Josephine Sacabo Solo Show (Click on the announcement to see it fully.)