Energy in Flux

October 4- November 30, 2024

Todd Watts
Susan Newbold
Sarah Hood Salomon
Luc Demers
Jim Nickelson
Caroline Savage
Elizabeth Greenberg
John Woodruff
Claire Seidl
Brenton Hamilton
Paul Rider
Bernie Meyers
& Guest Presenters:
Meg Weston, gary green and Kevin Leduc

Todd Watts

I make photographs. It is said that a photograph captures a moment in time, an event perhaps. That may be, but the source of this notion originates from the mechanical manifestations of cameras, lenses, and film. People do not capture moments of time. How would we do that? Our personal experience of time is fluid. The events in our lives do not hold still.

My pictures do not capture moments. They are photographs, but they do not depict particular events. Grace Hartigan put it this way, “One of the most difficult things of all, is not to have the painting be a depiction of the event but the event itself.” Her words are a well known mantra of contemporary art. But we don’t need to know the histories surrounding a picture to add it to our personal history. In every way, art and life are inseparable. At the beginning of each day, I can speculate but cannot know what will happen. An unexpected conversation may completely alter my assumptions or the lack of an ingredient may impact my dinner plans. It is the same when I make art.

When I make my pictures I speak to them, often out loud, and they whisper back. The work is completed when, as in any conversation, the subject changes. The conversation remains encapsulated only in the work, to be continued by myself or by anyone else. After lunch, perhaps, or during a long flight to Paris, or right now. – Todd Watts

“ (Todd) Watts, attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City, moved to Blanchard, Maine, in the mid-1970s to produce limited edition portfolios for Berenice Abbott (1888-1991). He has shown in a variety of venues in recent years, from Susan Maasch Fine Art in Portland to the Leopold Museum in Vienna, Austria. A master printer, he has printed vintage photographs, most recently, Bert Lincoln Call’s nineteenth-century images of the Maine woods. Watts is a consummate illusionist who nonetheless treasures the real.” Excerpt from Art New England by Carl Little.

Jim Nickelson

A Field Guide to the Pyrocene- Even if extreme action were taken now in the face of the climate crisis, many aspects of the natural world have already been or still will be irrevocably changed. Annals of the Former World is my testimony to the wonder of the natural world as we found it, and serves as my record of this world for my own daughter and future generations, both what we had and what we lost, an elegy for a world that will never be the same. In A Field Guide to the Pyrocene (part of the broader Annals project), I photograph landscapes threatened by climate change, make prints of those photographs and then burn each print. This allows me to reassemble the remains into new compositions, creating a new landscape from the ashes of the old. In this first chapter of A Field Guide to the Pyrocene, all of the source photographs were made in Maine in the winter of 2022-23, the most recent of Maine's disappearing winters where snow and ice continue to be reduced in intensity and duration because of warming temperatures The Pyrocene, coined by professor and author Stephen Pyne, is a proposed name for our current geological epoch where mankind used fire to rise to the top of the food chain and then continued to burn the planet in an indelible way. In the Pyrocene, the fiery combustion of fossil fuels continues to contribute to the rising global temperature and the proliferation of wildfires and destruction. - J.N.

Based in Camden, Maine, Jim works as a fine art photographer, custom digital printer (as Nickelson Editions), bookmaker, and teacher. Before committing himself to the photographic life, he pursued the classic artistic career path of NASA engineer and corporate attorney. Jim has been honored with artist residencies at Acadia National Park, Chiricahua National Monument, Baer Art Center in Iceland, and the Maine Media Workshops + College book arts studio. Jim has exhibited widely and his work resides in museum, public, university, corporate, and private collections across the United States and Canada.

Bernie Meyers

My work explores the convergence of photographic realism and abstract expressionism. I am drawn to images that stir eidetic memories, my father’s hand tools, my grandmother’s kitchen utensils. l want to memorialize and monumentalize these vanishing implements that shaped our society. I am also a process artist. I embrace the serendipity and discovery that occurs experimenting with materials. I create the background imagery from multiple sources, photographs of color, light, texture and content that speak to the subject. With the tool I emphasize grit, age, history, depth and flaws. I strive to reveal the edgy aged surface that only sweat equity can create. - B. M.

Bernard C. Meyers is an American abstract contemporary artist. With an MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology in traditional printmaking the work explores the intersections of photographic realism and abstract expressionism. His work has been featured in gallery, museum and institutional solo exhibitions in addition to numerous group shows throughout his career. His work is held in museum, library and private collections nationwide.

Claire Seidl

Portrait (Ellen), is another portrait of a woman after dinner. She uses her hands to communicate as well as her voice and moved around enough to have her facial features and expressions blend together as she becomes more invisible and more present at the same time.

Petra (On the Phone) is a portrait of sorts of a young woman at our dinner table, checking her phone after the meal. The camera had been open all evening with various long exposure shots but mostly from a distance while this is more of a closeup. The phone is as much a source of light as the dinner candles and citronella candle.

I-phone, TV light, Jon was shot from outside and through the living room window. It was a long enough exposure that the phone was moved around quite a bit. Some of the outside is reflected in the glass and becomes enmeshed with the inside of the house. I often think of my photographs as two-dimensional carriers of a short film. - Claire Seidl

Claire Seidl was born in Riverside, CT in 1951. She has lived and worked in New York City for forty-five years and, in Rangeley, Maine since 1985. She received her BFA in Painting from the College of Visual Arts at Syracuse University and her MFA in Painting from Hunter College, City University of New York. After teaching in the art department at Hunter College for a decade, Seidl went on to study photography at the International Center for Photography. She is an abstract painter as well as a photographer. Seidl has had forty solo shows and has exhibited in over one hundred group shows in the US, Europe and Asia.

Paul Rider

Actions always have reactions. We live in a complex world in which we need to continue to live our lives, be productive and keep the economy moving forward. We have an addiction to fossil fuels, it propels our lives while leaving a vast Carbon Footprint. There are consequences for how we live, and recently our actions have been felt mostly by others. Sometimes the effects of our actions knock at our door forcing us to take notice of this stark reality of the need to change our actions. Or not. Imagery of carbon deposits on a roof after the smoke from Canadian wildfires migrated south into the US during the summer of 2023. - P. R.

Paul Rider is a Philadelphia based artist having earned his BFA in Photography from Philadelphia College of Art, Philadelphia, PA., (now University of the Arts), and his MFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art & Design, Savannah, GA. Working in discrete series, Rider creates his imagery by constructing still life in the studio utilizing found objects and also through the use of abstract and documentary photographic styles. One compelling theme that has driven his work, is the interface and struggle between nature and manmade urban culture.

Luc Demers

Caroline Savage

I make inventive collaborative photographic work using my cinema eye to explore the chemical and physical possibilities of photographic processes.

Sir John Herschel invented the pre-silver nitrate process, ferroprussiate (Cyanotype) in 1842. He discovered that Iron (ferrous) salts could create a blue and white image when combined with Ferric ammonium citrate and exposed to light. This is how the botanist, Anna Atkins, created her first historic book, British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions in 1844. I learned of cyanotypes from a Non-Silver Photo Class in 1976. It opened my eyes to obvious possibilities: physically collaborating with light-sensitive chemistry, light and time and water. This opened my life-long focus on “What If, and If Not Now, When?”

My “Ice, Ice,” cyanotype series has the same base and process: cyanotype chemistry (traditional formula) applied to Color Photo Print Paper, exposed to light with found natural materials, placed on the surface, including ice, water, glass fragments. What I varied was how I responded to changing weather:sensitized papers were placed in the snow overnight, allowing for unpredictable results.  The glory of working with cyanotypes is the printing-out process in natural light and the “developing” in water. The image is a record of the ice melting, the wind blowing and light changing. Again, I bow to the wisdom of renowned physicist, Richard Feynman - "The prize is in the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery, ……those are the real things.…” The images enable the viewer to imagine, be curious and be in awe, simultaneously. - Caroline Savage

I have lived in Port Said Egypt, Karachi, Pakistan; London, England; Arlington, Virginia, Dobbs Ferry, New York and San Francisco and Pacifica, California, and Carlisle, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Currently, I live in Portland, Maine. I travel by airplane, train, car, ship and foot across landscapes, terrains always in flux, our transient geography. This shaped my interest in noticing and experiencing the landscapes as a voyeur and flaneur of the transitory world. Light, time, space, chemical and physical processes became my artistic tool. Moving from the precision of photographers Ansel Adams, Aaron Siskind and Minor White, the romance of Imogen Cunningham, Linda Conner to the experimentation of filmmakers Marie Menken, Hollis Frampton, Michael Snow and Malcolm Le Grice, I honed my craft at the San Francisco Art Institute, immersed in possibilities of painting with light, time and motion as still and moving pictures, through historical processes (cyanotype, gum printing, hand coloring, analog and digital processes.)  Musicians John Cage and Steve Reich introduced me to chance, strategy and synchronicity to discover and reveal the harmonic sound, visual  patterns in nature.

Elizabeth Greenberg

Susan Newbold

Sarah Hood Salomon

My work is rooted in a deep love and admiration for trees. Climate change and urbanization have created enormous challenges for the survival of our forests, and the ever-expanding human population has severely limited the amount of natural habitats. These images were taken on properties about to be developed - the trees in the pictures will soon be destroyed. I have purposely scratched, sliced, and puréed my photographs in response to the tragedy of their imminent destruction. The original images are unrecognizable and can’t be reconstructed, just as landscapes altered by humans can’t be reassembled. - Sarah Hood Salomon

Sarah Hood Salomon is a fine art photographer whose work explores the emotional and environmental aspects of the world around her. Her award-winning images and sculptures have been exhibited in numerous group and solo shows. She received her Master’s degree in photography, and is a photography judge, curator, educator, and author.

John Woodruff