Hillwood Art Museum on the C.W. Post Campus Presents

Inspired Portraits

September 10 – November 10, 2007

Opening Reception with the Artists, Thursday, September 20, 5 to 8 p.m. Panel Discussion with the Artists, Tuesday October 2, 7 p.m.

The Relationship of the Self to the Other in Photography: Lecture by Peter Moriarty, Tuesday, October 23, 7 p.m.

Brookville, NY – There is no image as beautiful or compelling as that of the human face.  This is the theme that drives this exhibition of 50 photographic portraits at Hillwood Art Museum this fall.  The exhibition Island to Island: Inspired Portraits was previously held at Dimbola Lodge Museum, at Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight, UK.  Dimbola Lodge, the home of nineteenth-century pioneering female photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, has long had a connection to photography.  These kinds of connections in place, spirit, and medium have brought together the group of eight women whose photographs comprise this exhibition.   

Julia Margaret Cameron, whose close-cropped style of photography influences portraiture through the 21st century, wrote “I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, and at length the longing has been satisfied.”  This statement describes the work of the photographers in Inspired Portraits as they approach the portrayal of the human countenance from eight varied perspectives.  They photograph total strangers, friends and acquaintances, their progeny and themselves.  They work at home, in the studio and in the street using every format camera from view to pinhole.  “What is most interesting from a curatorial perspective is that the photographers themselves are colleagues and friends who have worked together, studied with some of the same mentors and in several cases mentored each other and yet, have developed such different points of view, ” says Professor Joan Harrison, the guest curator for the exhibition.  Not only is each photographer mesmerized by the portrait, but also has been inspired to share, with the viewer, the intimacy of one person seeing another.

Hillwood Art Museum presents a year-round schedule of temporary and permanent exhibitions that cover topics from antiquity to the cutting edge of contemporary art from a scholarly perspective. The 4,500 square foot Museum boasts a curved gallery which Phyllis Braff of The New York Times has called “one of the Island’s most dramatic showcases for art.” Hillwood Art Museum’s eclectic Permanent Collection consists of objects dating from the earliest of man’s creative endeavors to contemporary art. The Museum, an established leader in visual arts programming on Long Island, conducts an active and well-attended Education Program that includes Family Day activities, an Evening Lecture and Performance Series, and extensive hands-on educational programs for local schools.  Projects recognized by the New York Council for the Humanities and the New York State Council on the Arts confirm Hillwood Art Museum’s emphasis on education.

Admission to Hillwood Art Museum is free and open to the public.  Museum hours are Monday to Friday 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Thursdays until 8 p.m. and Saturdays 11-3 p.m.  Hillwood Art Museum is located on the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, 720 Northern Boulevard (Route 25A), Brookville. The Museum has ample free parking and is handicap accessible. For more information, call (516) 299-4073 or visit www.liu.edu/museum.

Hillwood Art Museum

Island to Island: Inspired Portraits

Exhibition Checklist and Artists’ Statements

(all works are digital ink jet prints)

Ann Chwatsky

My photographs explore the shifting boundaries between conventional gender distinctions.  Their aim is to investigate the unique sensuality of the androgynous experience from the point of view of the aesthetic, rather than that of the socio-political: I am concerned with the beauty and eroticism inherent in this redefinition of the human, rather than with ideologies of sexual preference.  The aim of the ANDROGYNY series is to approach these currents of experience from the point of view of those who, in our own day, are actively engaged in the redefinition of the sexual self.

Untitled, Androgyny Series

Bernice Halpern Cutler

Pinhole photography catches a glimpse of what we cannot see. It reveals a spiritual, magical world beyond the mundane. We mentally convert the resulting image into fact...and are left wondering what is and is not reality.

1.  Larry

2.  Henry

3.  Nicole

4.  Paul

5.  Damien with Hands

6.  David with Band

Susan Dooley

My photography is an integral part of my life and has been for as long as I can remember. Though my photographic style still reflects my training and work as a professional photojournalist, my images have become much more personal.

Throughout my journey from photojournalist to artist, the portrait has been an essential part of my work. At least ninety percent of my images involve people. I prefer to photograph my subject in his/her natural environment. My goal is to make images that represent the human condition as well as the unique character and situation of the subject.

1.  Soldier, Beijing

2.  Ancient Wall, Pingyao, China

3.  Corner, Pingyao, China

4.  Merchant, Pingyao, China

5.  Butcher, Pingyao, China

6.  Passing Time, Pingyao, China

Joan Harrison

These portraits of my daughters are from a series of intimate images of family and friends at different stages in their lives and their relationships.  They are about capturing the beauty and individuality of human expression in those I care about most.  It was through the study of Julia Margaret Cameron’s life and work that I came to realize the truest subject for my “art” was to explore the reaches of my own life.

1. Chloe with Miss Kitty

2. Chloe, Trumpet Vine

3. Chloe with Wings

4. Emily, Clean Hair

5. Emily, Supergirl

6. Emily on her 15th Birthday

Susan Kravitz

These photographs, part of a larger body of work called “Real Women,” celebrate the strength, endurance and individuality of ordinary women living everyday lives. Benefiting from the anonymity of an auto focus 35mm camera, these photographs challenge the increasingly idealized, socially constructed projections of women in the electronic, film and print media - images that have more to do with the myths and fantasies of cultures than with physical reality. My project, influenced by the photographic tradition of everyday images, attempts to explore underlying expectations about how women should look.

1. Nogales

2. Florence

3. Fulton

4. New York

5. March, New York

6. Casa Grande

Joan Powers

My portraits are as much about me as about my subject.  I do not shoot just anyone, but pick my subjects very carefully.  By deciding whom I will photograph, I am making a conscious decision on the outcome of the image.

The cliché goes, “the eyes are the window to the soul”.  For me, the eyes of my subject are so crucial; I almost always have them looking right at me when I shoot.  I snap the shutter only when I feel I am reaching down and making a connection with the inner self of the person I believe them to be.

1. Jabbo Smith, Trombone

2. Niels Henning Orsted Pederson, Bass

3. Richard Waite, Student

4. Richard Stein, Artist

5. Chico Hamilton, Drummer

6. Peter Dotter, Architect

Ann Marie Tornabene

The basis of my work deals directly with the process of self-portraiture, including the challenges of being both the artist and the model, as well as the reality of physically and psychologically facing oneself on a conscious, concentrated level. The images I create may securely be classified as narratives – tableaux in which I directly respond to issues I have in my life: the sustained abuse growing up due to my obesity, issues with sex and relationships, the ultimate question of beauty as defined by the self and society, and other personal enigmas.

1. Ritual

2. Barn

3. Faerie

4. Water

5. Bubbles

6. Treehugger

Carol Huebner Venezia

If eyes are truly the windows to the soul what happens in a portrait without that window?  Snapshots capturing the subject with their shut eyes are regularly discarded.  I have always treasured them.  A few years ago I began to purposely pose people, asking them to close their eyes.  It began with my sister at the 4th birthday party of her older son and a mere 9 months she gave birth to twins.  She was single handedly throwing a circus party in the backyard, having set up games, decorated with balloons and streamers and dressed herself as the clown master of ceremonies.  Struck by the brilliant colors I asked her to pose for a second.  In that brief pause from the whirlwind of pre-party preparations her eyes closed.  The resulting portrait showed the exhaustion of a mother of baby twins and something more.  One sees her sacrifice, her loneliness, her conviction, her love.  As I continued to ask my subjects to close their eyes the final portraits gave me pause. They press us to examine more closely other parts of each face, the turn of the head, the marks of time, the way each individual reaches out in space toward or away from the present but invisible camera.  Young children believe they become invisible when they close their eyes.  I find my subjects are more clearly seen.

1. Sophie

2. Andrea

3. Elizabeth

4. Duncan

5. Jacob

6. Virgina
 
Long Island University C.W. Post Campus