Memory, Identity
and Place

HERA GALLERY
March 12 - April 16 , 2005

Opening Reception
Saturday, March 12, 6 - 8 pm
Gallery Talk, March 12, 4 pm

Curator:Alexandra Broches

<< Image by Luke Buffenmyer

Luke Buffenmyer  lives in Syracuse, New York and teaches at Onandaga Community College. He received his MFA from Syracuse University and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Buffenmeyer photographs places he is drawn to, rather than the exotic locales preferred by the 19th Century landscape photographers he references. Choice of format (an 8 x 10 negative), vignetting, toning and manipulation of the negative are techniques he uses to map his personal narrative onto the genre of landscape photography. Buffenmeyer says of his work, "These images are about context, illusion, reality, nostalgia and a sense of place. Through selection, manipulation and thought they are an attempt to make the place viewed my own. They reference the grand 19th Century landscape and question the premise of authorship and originality."

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Nancy Dudley  is a photographer and Adjunct Professor of Art at Salem State College in Salem, Massachusetts. Dudley is interested in the history contained in the coastal New England landscape surrounding her home in Essex, Massachusetts. Glacial activity combined with human and animal use, have created a site whose appearance perpetually fluctuates between the cultivated and untamed. Dudley's silver gelatin prints of her garden record her participation in this continuum.

Above: "Jonquils I", Nancy Dudley, toned gelatin silver print, 20" x 24", 2002

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Below: "Florida", Susan E. Evans, from "Views", ink jet print   

Susan E. Evans   teaches at Onandaga Community College. She will exhibit pieces from two recent series, “Views” and “See America”. In “Views”, photographs of words in white letters on a black background describe panoramic scenes. The absence of images invokes our own memories, assumptions, and imagination about these places and our relationship to them.

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Adam Eckstrom  is an MFA candidate
in the Department of Painting at The Rhode Island School of Design. In our rapidly chang-
ing environment, natural and architectural touchstones that serve as repositories of cultural history are frequently removed from view. The result is a collective and personal amnesia addressed by Eckstrom is his paintings. He states, "I use domestic objects and architecture to create a narrative that speaks about my own experiences as well as comments on the current state of affairs. The architecture and objects are often stand-ins for actors in a drama about communication and memory breakdown."

Above: "A Community Overlooks Remnants of the Departed", Adam Eckstrom, acrylic on panel,
72" x 120", 2003
 

Penelope Manzella  resides in Barrington, Rhode Island and received her BFA from the Columbia University School of Painting and Sculpture. She will show a selection of four paintings from a series on water towers, which she identifies as "industrial sculpture". The series was inspired by the water tower photographs of the German photography duo Bernd and Hilla Becher. Manzella has taken the Bechers' towers and situated them within an imaginary, idealized painted landscape. Her "picture of a picture" strategy emphasizes the towers' iconic quality.

Left: "Water Tower #4 (Herault, France)", Penelope Manzella, oil/linen, 32" x 22", 2003

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Photographer Olivia McCullough
teaches at Northeastern University in Boston
and Roger Williams University in Rhode Island.
Her series of cyanotypes , titled "Orleton Farm", incorporates material such as letters, checks and photographs found on her grandparents' abandoned Kentucky farm. The work is elegiac to her own memories of the place, her deceased grandparents, and a vanished way of life.

Right: "Orleton Farm", cynanotype, 9 1/4" x 12 3/4"
 

Shaun Wilson  recently received his Phd from the University of Tasmania and is a lecturer in the School of Creative Media at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Wilson uses film as a means of articulating the themes of memory, identity and place. By deconstructing family home movies, the videos he creates function as a filmic blank slate onto which one may project or reflect on one's personal familial narrative.

Left: video still from the series, "The Place of Memory in Film", Shaun Wilson