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Garth Amundson & Pierre Gour

Amundson and Gour have artistically collaborated for the last 29 years. Their work explores the perceptions and politics surrounding the domestic sphere and identity. They use collage and photo-scanning techniques to speak metaphorically about social construction. Some of their work is literal collaboration, and at other times, they serve one another in a support role. They are a team who insist on producing challenging work that provokes a response.


Amundson holds an MFA from Syracuse University and Gour from the University of New Mexico. They both currently teach at Western Washington University in the Department of Art. Their work has been exhibited in South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and throughout North America. They have completed several residency programs, both independently and collaboratively; Sculpture Space in NY, Cimelice Castle near Prague, Fundación Valparaíso in Spain, Lademoen in Norway, and a Fulbright in Mexico. Recently they received a Rockefeller Foundation Residency Award and will be at The Bellagio Center in summer 2014.

Learn more about Garth&Pierre here

Garth is also coordinating the upcoming SPE-Northwest Regional Conference at WWU in Bellingham, WA on October 10, 11, &12, 2014.. The title for the conference is TRANSFIXED|TRANSMEDIA which is designed to address new definitions of photography.

The committee is looking for applications that push the boundaries of image making, image consumption, theory, and discourse in all contexts. The conference will highlight both Rodney Graham, as the keynote speaker, and Jess T. Dugan, as featured speaker.

Applications are open to virtually everything! Please pass the submission forms on to your friends and colleagues. The deadline is April 30, 2014.

https://www.spenational.org/resources/calls-for-entry/spenw-2014-conference-call-for-proposals

Project Statement 

The work itself is in keeping with the rest of our experiments with appropriation of vintage photography. In this context, we have paired turn-of-the-century studio portraits of two men into single images. Referencing the complexities of queer identity and the often convoluted morphing of two beings into a single relationship, these "couples" awkwardly hold space in an absurd and monstrous fashion. As if they were suspended trophies, the couples hang together in a strange and whimsical groupings.

Nick Schietromo

Nick Schietromo is a fine art photographer, residing in the Boston area. His work deals with various aspects of domesticity. He is a recent graduate from the New England Institute of Art and currently works as the Assistant to the Director of Gallery Kayafas in Boston, a framer at Panopticon Imaging in Rockland and an intern at the Nave Gallery in Somerville. Recent exhibitions and publications of his work include a solo show at The Nave Annex Gallery, the Flash Forward Festival 2013: Undergraduate Photography Now, Aint-Bad Magazine and Stampsy.

Project Statement 

While rummaging through shoeboxes and hand woven baskets at yard sales, I search for memories of domestic pasts via the anonymous photograph. These prized possessions, once intended to be stuck to refrigerators, thumbed through in albums with intimacy and care, are now displayed for all to pillage through in estate sales. Now void from their original context and stripped of identity, these objects exist with bent corners, faded coloring and patinas offering endless narratives. The more antique images I discover, I wonder what photographs from present day would look like in the future. Will we treat the digital decay of a photograph as fondly as a well-worn print corner or a faded and stained image in a frame? Through digital manipulation via binary code corruption of these found vernacular photographs, I am reassigning image value within a social archive. The new image creates a questioning of the societal shift from storing and exchanging analogue images to the storing and sharing of the digital files, and ones intra/interpersonal relationship to this imagery.

Athena Petra Tasiopoulos

I was immediately struck when I saw Athena Petra Tasiopoulos' hypnotizing work. The images brought to mind a victorian photo collage exhibit I saw at the Met in 2010 called, "Playing with Pictures". This connection to the history of women in photography, and the beautiful combinations of photographs and drawing makes Athena's work especially powerful to me. 

Athena Petra Tasiopoulos is a mixed media artist & photographer. Originally from Philadelphia, she currently resides in Montpelier, Vermont. 

View more of her work here 

Statement 

I create altered realities from found photographs; second hand images that contain a glimpse of our shared humanity and beg to be examined and explored. My imagination is continuously lured by the mystery of these forgotten artifacts. The unsettling knowledge that most of my subjects are no longer living creates a heavy finality in their expressions and gestures. They possess a sad quietness, beautifully captured in an interesting sort of limbo—simultaneously trapped and saved. I find myself feeling compassion for them, an obligation to free them. By stripping my subject of her superfluous identity and alleviating her from the constraints of time and place, I aim to give her a voice. Process: My works are mixed media composites from found imagery, reminiscent of traditional collage technique. Scanned cabinet card and carte de visite portraits of women are my subjects. The digital composite serves as the skeleton of my piece. My prints are then hand embellished with graphite, watercolor, acrylic and gold. I am intrigued with primitive mark making and evidence of the artist’s hand.

MFA Thesis: Daniel W. Coburn

Daniel W. Coburn lives and works in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Selections from his body of work have been featured in exhibitions at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art and the Chelsea Museum of Art in New York. Coburn's prints are held in many public and private collections including The Mulvane Museum of Art, The Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, The Mariana Kistler-Beach Museum of Art and the Moraine Park Museum. His writings and photographs appear regularly in regional and national publications including Fraction Magazine and Photo-Eye Magazine. Coburn received his BFA with an emphasis in photography from Washburn University where he was the recipient of numerous honors including the Charles and Margaret Pollak Award. He is currently an instructor and graduate student studying photography at the University of New Mexico.

Find out more about Dan here 

Statement 

In Domestic Reliquary I use appropriated imagery and iconography to explore my own dark family narrative. A complicated relationship with my family, and an immersive, cult-like experience with an evangelical Christian church resulted in my loss of spiritual and domestic faith. My work relates specifically to these personal struggles and explores the quiet suffering that occurs within the perimeter of a family unit living under the auspices of the ideal American dream.

I use the salted paper process to reproduce a series of found objects and photographs. This antiquated printing technique is linked directly to the domestic environment because it employs simple household chemicals that combine to make the printing paper light sensitive. The imperfections and technical artifacts of the process allow me to simultaneously deconstruct and repair the image. This method is cathartic and has become a metaphor for my own personal healing process. 

By working into each print using a variety of mixed media, I create a series of one-of-a-kind domestic artifacts. This work explores concepts related to gender, loss of innocence, and the small tragedies that occur within the confines of suburban dystopia.  I correlate domestic to religious symbolism, reinterpreting objects and icons to create my own sacred visual vocabulary.