cu.ra.tor: noun
an artist partially hidden
Of all the exhibitions we produce each year this exhibition is a gift, both to, and from the artists featured as well as to our members and gallery visitors. It is not a member exhibition, it is not part of an annual series, or ongoing topic of exploration, nor is it driven by an outside juror. It is it’s a unique invitational that provides a chance to explore new directions and features work not previously exhibited. This year with help from Emily Belz, we are shining a light on a group of photographers who spend much of their time working behind the scenes to share work made by others.
Curator, a name given to someone who curates – To curate, an activity carried out to satisfy an itch, to organize, to present, to share and celebrate, typically, the work of others. These are some of the impulses that motivate curators and reflect how I think about my role as a curator. The process, much like the creation of the work itself is driven, in part by an attempt to organize and better understand the world around us. While the description of curating is purely my own, the definition of “curator” that makes up the exhibition title is, in fact, the first alternate dictionary definition and we present it here quite literally.
For this invitational exhibition we are excited to be able to lift the curtain a little and present new work from six regional curators who are themselves, photographers. This exhibition provides a rare glimpse at work from artists most often working behind the scenes and provided, in my case at least, the incentive, if not the permission, to focus on producing my own work.
A special thank you to Emily Belz and all the curator/photographers who joined in making this exhibition possible.
– David DeMelim,
Managing Director,
RI Center for Photographic Arts
From the Creators: Emily Belz & David DeMelim
The concept for this exhibition came quickly, the path to creating it was rather longer and more convoluted. As we sat on the couch last spring, at the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Art, our conversation turned to the central roll photography plays in our lives, overlapping our personal and professional lives in a myriad of ways. We spoke about the delicate dance between making art and supporting the work and careers of others who are making art. How the one informs the other, doubles back, is elastic, and inspires. With that conversation, the idea for this exhibit was born: to bring together regional lens-based artists who nurture the creative paths of others through curation, education, and mentoring. Our intent was to embrace new conversations, showing the latest, developing, or previously unseen bodies of work from the invited artists. We wanted to present something fresh, and provide an opportunity for these, often hidden artists, to share their own work. The gift of an exhibition opportunity doesn’t come often when you are the one providing the invites.
Six months of studio visits brought rich conversations, new ideas, and solidified a collaborative vision. As you explore the singularity of each artist’s works, we invite you to consider the overlap of methods, ideas, and concerns. We found that when artist and curator merge, it’s a delight to discover the points of connection.
We are excited to provide this opportunity for you to view the work of these regional artists who have curated many exhibitions, both regionally and nationally, including some you may have been featured in.
cu.ra.tor: noun
an artist partially hidden
For this unique curated exhibition we will be filling the gallery with the work from a selection of local curators who are also photographers. The exhibition will feature new work from; Jessica Burko, Creative Director, Photographic Resource Center; Emily Belz, Independent artist, educator and curator; Erin Carey, artist, curator, and educator; David DeMelim Managing Director, RI Center for Photographic Arts; Frances Jakubek, independent curator, co-founder of A Yellow Rose Project & Francine Weiss, Senior Curator at the Newport Art Museum, to present and explore the work of these artists who spend much of their time working to promote the work of others.
Most of our featured artist/curators have juried or curated exhibitions at the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts and the rest are on the short list for upcoming exhibitions here in Providence.
Gallery Night Providence Reception: July 18th, 5:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Exhibition: Thursday, July 18th thru Friday, August 9th
View the exhibition in 360˚
This exhibition features a selection of work from curators:
Emily Belz, Jessica Burko, Erin Carey, David DeMelim, Frances Jakubek & Francine Weiss
Emily Belz
Artist Statement: The Seeds Scatter
Before I was born, my parents chose two potential names for me—Emily, after my paternal grandmother’s favorite relative, or Cody, after Cody, WY, the birthplace of the painter Jackson Pollock. The middle name for both would be the same: Bradford. My grandmother was a genealogy buff, and her meticulous research traced our family’s direct descendancy to eight Mayflower passengers who made the voyage to Plymouth in 1620. Her most complete research involved William Bradford, author of Of Plimouth Plantation and influential governor of Plymouth County. My parents named me Emily Bradford in honor of this legacy. My nephew and cousin share the same middle name.
Growing up I remember trips with my Grandmother to Plymouth, MA, to visit Plimouth Plantation, to see Plymouth Rock, and to tour the Mayflower II. I developed a growing awareness that the perceived standards and aesthetics of the early Plymouth settlers seemed to shape the way my mother was raised, and in part, was raising me. I was taught the value of productiveness and to accept, and not question, tough conditions. It’s been some time now since those trips to Plymouth with my Grandmother, and even longer since the Pilgrims made their voyage on the Mayflower. My 14-year-old son knows a very different version of this heritage. He has been taught the fictions of this history, its fallibility, and undeniably, its violence. Visiting historical recreations of the homes of early Mayflower settlers he has remarked, “these houses look like Grandmom’s.” My photographs explore this legacy, and what lingers.
I have chosen to print this part of the series using the anthotype process, because it, much like the telling of histories, is not fixed, is variable, and changes over time. I have used beet root, a crop of the early Mayflower settlers, to produce the magenta hues you see in the images. These anthotypes are part of a larger body of work that is in process and ongoing.
– Emily Belz
About Emily:
Emily Belz is an independent artist, educator, and curator based in Lincoln, MA. She is a place-based artist; her photographs focus on domestic still lifes, telling stories through the traces, objects, and slants of light that have been left behind. Belz has exhibited her photographs widely in both solo and group exhibitions at venues including Gallery Kayafas, the Danforth Museum, and the Newport Art Museum. She is represented by Gallery Kayafas in Boston.
Belz holds a BA in photography and art history from Hampshire College (1997); an MA in community-based art education from the Rhode Island School of Design (2009); and an MFA from the New Hampshire Institute of Art (2017). She teaches classes and workshops at the Griffin Museum of Photography (Winchester, MA) and the deCordova Museum (Lincoln, MA), and is on the faculty at Lasell University (Newton, MA). Belz works privately with artists as a mentor, and specializes in reviewing and sequencing portfolios.
With 20+ years in the art world, Belz brings this experience to her role as juror for photography competitions, and as a reviewer for regional portfolio reviews. She enjoys curating exhibitions in collaboration with emerging artists in the Boston area.
Website: emilybelzphotography.com
Jessica Burko
Artist Statement: Fractured & Found
The work in this exhibition is part of the Fractured & Found series. The mixed media works in this series make connections between interior being and being on display, creating emotional divisiveness while in demand by conflicting forces. Searching for balance between selfhood, motherhood, working, and rest, feeling overwhelmed and exhausted by compartmentalizing and forcing a fit into each role. Through the juxtaposition of isolated compartments of broken moments and emptiness there appears to be room for breath, for rest, or perhaps they are intervals yet to be filled. The absence of image hints further at a disjointed existence. Incorporating found materials helps me feel grounded in what’s real and what exists outside of my head. The drawers symbolize not just boxes I’m trying to fit into, but also spaces that were once private, now revealed and put on display. Much of my work grows out of the battle between yearning for one thing but doing another. Embedding the images into encaustic is like sealing time in a bottle, making it quiet and still, like secrets hidden beneath folded cotton.
Technical information
The modular structures are built with drawers found on curbsides throughout the Greater Boston area. Incorporated into the drawer beds are images transferred into encaustic medium, which is a combination of natural bees wax and damar resin (crystallized tree sap). The transfers are made by burnishing a powder-based (toner) print into warm encaustic. Once the burnishing is complete the paper is washed away leaving the image attached to the encaustic surface. Before transferring, the images were captured with an iPhone, processed with Photoshop, and printed with an HP LaserJet.
– Jessica Burko
About Jessica:
Jessica Burko is a mixed-media artist combining traditional photography with encaustic medium. She has been exhibiting her work since 1985 in solo and group shows throughout the United States, including venues such as Attleboro Arts Museum, the Danforth Museum, and the Rochester Museum of Art, NH, Maine Museum of Photographic Arts, and Shelter In Place Gallery, Boston, MA. She holds a BFA in Fine Art Photography from Rhode Island School of Design, and an MFA in Imaging Arts and Science from Rochester Institute of Technology. In addition to being a practicing artist, Burko is the Creative Director at the Photographic Resource Center, Cambridge, MA. She is also an independent curator with more than thirty exhibitions produced since 2000. Burko’s work in the arts community allows her to support artists in achieving their creative and professional goals through lectures, workshops, and partnerships with organizations such as ArtsWorcester, Worcester, MA, Mass MoCA’s Assets for Artists Program, North Adams, MA, and the South Shore Arts Center, Cohasset, MA. Jessica Burko is originally from Philadelphia and currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
Website: jessicaburko.com
Erin Carey
A Spring that Love Remembered
What Does Love Remember?
The Afternoon light shuttered.
Two Doors: one for bodies, one for flowers.
An extra set of teeth in a plastic cup I wish I kept.
The way he called her, “my old bag o’ bones…”
Past the bend at Pender’s farm, past the strawberry moon, past forgetting
I carried them
and the fields lay fallow.
Fire came to the island and went.
He picked corn and flowers from the front garden
and asked me to stand still.
“ Hold these, I’ll be right back.”
It’s time for apple harvest again
and the new baby has learned to crawl
but is desire ever simple?
Where will these things go when I deliver them
beyond the end of the spectrum of light?
–E. Carey, June 2024
About Erin:
Erin Carey is a photographer, educator and independent curator based in New England; she earned her B.A. in Art History and Criticism from Sarah Lawrence College and an M.F.A. in Studio Art from Tufts University. Erin’s photographic work explores the nuances of the American landscape and its vernacular. A Spring that Love Remembered is an ongoing project which debuted in the summer of 2020 and addresses family, loss and the experience of ecstatic time. This project is exhibited for the first time at the Rhode Island Center for Photography.
Erin is the Assistant Director of Graduate Admissions for the studio art programs at Tufts University and is a part-time preparator at the Addison Gallery of American Art. She is a regular contributor to regional portfolio reviews for emerging professionals and has been featured as a juror at Photoville’s The Fence (2016 & 2019) and Dodho Magazine (2020). Recent curatorial projects include Let America (2021) and Ripening Towards the Knife (2020) for the Photographic Resource Center, Boston. Erin currently serves on the Board of Directors at the Griffin Museum of Photography.
To learn more about Erin’s work, please visit: www.erin-carey.com
David DeMelim
Artist Statement: In my world: Studio Visions
Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum nor is it created in one…
Studio Visions presents a few pages from my visual diary… a camera goes everywhere with me, it has become both my notebook and my sketchbook. I capture the world as it passes in front of my lens, not looking for the decisive moments, but with a focus on the spaces between – to capture the unguarded moments and the larger experience. The built panoramic images presented here are digital collages, moments captured with the intention of being stitched together to capture an experience or record an event. They are, in effect, single frame movies, a memory made visible, or a story, to be played back, shared, explored and replayed…
For me, the life of an artist includes a large component of viewing work by other artists, not in search of new ideas, but to enjoy their success, support their efforts, and to be surprised… While my efforts running the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts are largely focused around supporting and promoting other artists, this is only one part of my daily experience… my professional practice brings me into a large number of artist’s studios who work across a variety of media, to photograph their work for publication and otherwise support their exhibition activities.
An early interest in animation, story boards and nonlinear storytelling all come together in this selection of work, to explore the ability of an otherwise still photograph, to present multiple moments of time in a single image. Like the Cubists, my interest is in providing a fuller, more complete picture, by combining multiple points of view and multiple moments in time into a single frame.
My process is organic, an extension of my daily activities, it doesn’t require exotic locations, specialized equipment or a lot of preplanning. It only requires being present in the moment…
– David DeMelim
About David:
David DeMelim is an artist, an educator, and Managing Director and creative force of the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts (RICPA). Curating a new show every month (sometimes two), he brings together regional, national, and international artists in conversation through photography. Consulting, portfolio reviews, project development, and private mentorship are his specialties, and available through RICPA.
As a printmaker and photographer, David has been involved with computer generated graphics for decades, predating the initial releases of Digital Darkroom and Photoshop. This early involvement with technology has influenced both his artistic passions and his professional path. Yet, born 50 years earlier, he has no doubt he would have been a painter.
A career managing technology and production in graphic design and commercial printing was focused on designing and implementing digital workflows to replace analog methods and materials. Over the course of 30 years, razor blades, hot wax and the process camera gave way to a fully digital workflow with print ready files sent direct from the computer to high speed offset printing presses with no intermediate steps or consumable materials. Many technologies and specialized processes came and went along the way often with dire predictions for a future with, or with out the current development.
David maintains an active photographic practice, with a focus on photographing art work for reproduction and related graphic design services. He exhibits his work both nationally and internationally. Currently, The Rites of Memory, an exhibition of his work exploring memory and the process of assimilation as real world experiences are recorded, and reimagined, is touring Cuba through the end of the year.
Website: daviddemelim.com
Frances Jakubek
Artist Statement: Private Publicity
Our online activities become evidence of our existence. We are challenged to navigate the boundary between private and public space each time we open the screen. Private Publicity consists of images from my photographic archive and text from various online sources. The layered works include words from terms and conditions we often overlook and automatically agree to and the commands we follow simply to navigate our frequented networks. I am interested in the psychological consequences of this access to everything. By continuing to research the language of how we navigate through space and in our relationships, it is impossible to ignore the repercussions of the omnipresent glow at our fingertips.
I started making these pieces because I felt overwhelmed by how “accepting friendship” allowed others to access my current whereabouts and reveal facts and fiction from my past. Benefiting from our human desire to see into others’ lives, intelligence is becoming less artificial and affecting our well-being by taking our actions far from moderation. The information we willingly give away is used against us to profit from us and to guide us down algorithmic alleyways. Working in a field that relies on an online presence, I’ve been navigating what personal space means in a realm designed for public consumption.
– Frances Jakubek
About Frances:
Frances Jakubek is an image-maker, independent curator, and consultant for artists. She is the co-founder of A Yellow Rose Project, past Director of the Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York City, and past Associate Curator of the Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts.
Recent curatorial appointments include Critical Mass for Photolucida, Pause at Art League Rhode Island, Potential Space: A Serious Look at Child’s Play featuring works by Nancy Richards Farese, Filter Photo Space, The Griffin Museum of Photography, British Journal of Photography, Les Rencontres d’Arles, Save Art Space, and Photo District News.
Jakubek has been a panelist for the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Photography fellowships and Adjective Production Prize, speaker for SPE National and Colorado Photographic Arts Center, and lecturer for the School of Visual Arts, Boston University, University of New Mexico, and Washington and Lee University. She has taught workshops for The Southeast Center for Photography, The Center for Fine Art Photography, Maine Media, and the University of Iowa. Her personal photographs explore the boundaries of private and personal space and the emotions that bind them. She has exhibited at the Center for Fine Art Photography, Colorado; The Southern Art Gallery, South Carolina; Filter Photo Space, Chicago; and Treat Gallery,
To learn more about Frances, visit francesjakubek.com
Francine Weiss
Artist Statement: “Letters to Myself and Others” and “Tipping Point”
Combining images and often texts, I create narratives that explore my present feelings, concerns, and anxieties. “Letters to Myself and Others” and “Tipping Point” began with my writing stream of consciousness letters and journal entries to myself and other people. These daily (unmailed) writings soon evolved into mixed media photo-based works as I began incorporating soon-to-be discarded materials from my house and workplace. Re-using and recycling materials not only made my art practice more affordable, it made it more sustainable. This decision to limit waste in my art-making was particularly fitting for “The Tipping Point” series, which focuses on the climate crisis.
My raw materials include: vintage magazines, botanical illustrations, old sketchbooks and dairies, damaged cyanotypes, cardboard boxes, plastic containers, old books, gift wrap and clippings bequeathed to me by my grandmother, buttons, instant photographs, dozens of color analogue photographs on trips to visit my grandparents, acrylic paint, and more. These found materials and objects present both challenges and possibilities because they bring with them their own associations. My art-making then is about reworking and transforming their codes to produce new meanings.
By integrating materials from different eras, I express the need to recover and ponder past losses in the present like the loss of family members, places, experiences, childhood, and opportunities. For “Tipping Point,” the works go one step further as they contemplate loss of the environment and become visual letters to an uncertain future.
– Francine Weiss
About Francine:
My role as an art museum curator and life as an artist are synergistic. As a curator-who’s-an-artist, I connect easily with the artists whom I exhibit and support. I find inspiration in their stories and in the art objects that I curate and collect. I also get to learn about different materials for making art. As an artist-who’s-a curator, I think about how my work fits into a contemporary context; I’m informed by art history and theory. I started my art career in photography and currently work in mixed media and photo-based collage. I have found that making collages is similar to curating: I assemble different elements to create a narrative or experience. My doctoral work focused on image-text relationships, specifically poetry and photography, and so does my studio practice.
The RI Center for Photographic Arts, RICPA 118 N. Main St. Providence, RI 02903
Located in the heart of Providence, RICPA was founded to inspire creative development and provide opportunities to engage with the community through exhibitions, education, publication, and mutual support.
RICPA exists to create a diverse and supportive community for individuals interested in learning or working in the Photographic Arts. We strive to provide an environment conducive to the free exchange of ideas in an open and cooperative space. Members should share a passion for creating, appreciating, or learning about all forms of photo-based media. We work to provide a platform for artistic expression, that fosters dialogue and drives innovation in the photographic arts.
We are member supported, the first step to membership is registration – https://www.riphotocenter.org/registration Details on membership options can be found at https://www.riphotocenter.org/membership-info
The Gallery at the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts is a member of Gallery Night Providence https://www.gallerynight.org
Questions: Contact gallery@riphotocenter.org To learn about other RICPA exhibits and programs, visit https://www.riphotocenter.org
Leave a Reply