Review of the Best Series by juror Diana H. Bloomfield (Juror Debra Achen is in complete agreement):

"When I first saw this work, I was impressed by the originality, the uniqueness, and the historical revisioning narrative. These found images and ephemera, transformed into religious
altarpieces that elevate and celebrate women of color, I found so compelling. The narrative can be read in so many different ways. I’ve looked at this series many times now, and each time, I see something new. I love the transformative nature of these pieces, with these unnamed, “found” women depicted as central unifying figures- and as spiritual beings- at once elevated and connected to the universe and the divine. These mixed media pieces
themselves are fully and expertly realized. I would love to see these in person. As an aside, I think this is an entirely appropriate use of gold leaf, which is meaningful to and seamlessly meshes with the subject matter. An outstanding portfolio."

Linda Plaisted says, "'The Altarpiece’ Series is mixed media work layering by hand my original photography with found photos, maps, and book pages deliberately torn, then collaged onto cradled birch panel, finished with either encaustic or cold wax and mended with gold leaf, to honor ancestral mothers whose legacy I have inherited; both their traumas and their strengths.

The finished pieces bring together many overlapping cultural practices that strive for ancestral healing and affirm that the outdated beliefs and patterns of the past end with me and will not be passed on to my descendants.

Glimpsed through the layers of the piece are pages from a 105 year old book, “The Trees of Pennsylvania” that represent where I was born, along with vintage maps of where my ancestral mothers lived. I layered images on a background of golden joss paper, commonly used as burnt offerings in Chinese ancestral worship, to ensure that the spirits of the dead have sufficient means in the afterlife. There are both incised and raised elements that go below and rise above the surface, revealing words and symbols that reflect the passage of time and the ups and downs weathered by these resilient women, to whom I owe my very life.

Though torn and imperfectly-mended with gold leaf in the method of Japanese Kintsugi, the elements surrounding and bleeding through the central figure evoke the iconography of ancient Byzantine altarpieces. These compelling icons gave visual form to complex theological concepts such as the sacrifice of the Saint, here embodied as a Woman, and how she suffered and continues to be sacrificed for our sins.”

Linda Plaisted is an award-winning American multi-disciplinary artist whose exploratory practices include photography, collage, painting and encaustic. Her work has been exhibited widely in galleries throughout the United States. She has also illustrated book and magazine covers for major publishers and contributed to art and literary journals. 

She is a 2023 Julia Margaret Cameron Award Winner and 2023 Photolucida Critical Mass Finalist. 

Each piece she creates tells a story by pushing beyond the boundaries of medium into myth, using traditions of collection, synthesis and cultural interpretation. Approaching her work as both artist and historian, she uses her unique visionary practices to champion women and the natural world. Layering her original photography and paintings with found images and gathered ephemera, she creates photographic mixed media pieces with translucent veils of narrative; layers of time and memory bleeding through one another to seek a deeper truth.

IMAGES FOR SALE-

Each piece is one of a kind. Prices on request.
Contact: Linda@LindaPlaisted.com


http://lindaplaisted.com
https://www.instagram.com/themanymuses/

Laurie Peek says, "“In Lieu of Flowers" is dedicated to my son Jackson and others I’ve known whose funerals I could not attend. And it’s for all those who've suffered the loss of a loved one. Making this work has been healing for me and is meant to help heal others.

With this memorializing project, I draw on my long-time fascination with layers, abstraction, ambiguity and the natural world. Working with floral elements, mostly from my garden, I am grateful for the world of plants that are ever-renewing and ultimately provide life and sustenance for everything on the planet. Arranging and layering them, mixing up the scale, finding the right colors, is all-absorbing and allows me the freedom to create a new, mysterious reality.

The final images are digital composites, printed as archival pigment prints on semi-translucent vellum. Hand-applying gold and silver metallic-leaf gilding to the backs of the prints creates a shimmering glow evocative of sacred art. Carefully rubbing the gilding onto the vellum and varnishing the finished results reconnects me to the craft of film photography and makes each print unique.

Honoring my losses and celebrating the memories of departed loved ones has given me a strong sense of purpose and agency. These are the flowers I did not send."

Laurie Peek (1949- American): 
A practicing visual artist for over twenty-five years, Laurie Peek’s experience in photography runs deep. This includes a staff position at the Eastman House Museum, an MFA in Photography from Visual Studies Workshop/SUNY Buffalo; working as a photo librarian for the Bettmann Archive (now Getty Images) and Sygma Photo News; photojournalist (The Brooklyn Paper, Village Voice, City Limits, The Progressive); staff photographer for NYC’s Dept. of General Services; PR photographer for national political campaigns; and gallery manager for the NYC Art Students League Vytlacil campus. 

In recent years Peek has returned to her fine-art roots and has been exhibiting her photographs widely across the US and internationally.

Recognition for her work includes: Finalist in: Klompching Gallery’s “Fresh 2024”; “2024 International Garden Photographer of the Year,” at Cambridge Botanic Gardens, UK; and Photolucida’s ”Critical Mass 2023.” 

For nine years she has been juried into the “Julia Margaret Cameron Awards for Women Photographers” competition at the FotoNostrum Gallery in Barcelona, Spain.

She is in the collections of The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Center for Photography at Woodstock, Center Santa Fe, Visual Studies Workshop, and the private collection of Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Her work has been published and reviewed in print and online at, among others: Artdoc Magazine, Fraction Magazine, A Photo Editor, Lenscratch, and The Photo Review.

Peek resides with her husband in New York’s Hudson Valley where she relishes her garden and creating her art.

Images for Sale:

For Caren
14"H x 10.5"W
Archival pigment print on vellum, gilded on back with silver-toned metallic leaf
$950 Unframed
Limited edition of 5
Signed on back

For Jesse
14"H x 10.5"W
Archival pigment print on vellum, gilded on back with silver-toned metallic leaf
$950 Unframed
Limited edition of 5
Signed on back

For David
14"H x 10.5"W
Archival pigment print on vellum, gilded on back with silver-toned metallic leaf
$950 Unframed
Limited edition of 5
Signed on back


For Jeffrey
14"H x 10.5"W
Archival pigment print on vellum, gilded on back with silver-toned metallic leaf
$950 Unframed
Limited edition of 5
Signed on back


For Alec
14"H x 10.5"W
Archival pigment print on vellum, gilded on back with silver-toned metallic leaf
$950 Unframed
Limited edition of 5
Signed on back


For Gregory
14"H x 10.5"W
Archival pigment print on vellum, gilded on back with silver-toned metallic leaf
$950 Unframed
Limited edition of 5
Signed on back

Contact: Laurie Peek lapeek@gmail.com

www.lauriepeek.com
www.instagram.com/lauriepeek

Laura Noel says, "'Crawling Backwards', my extended family’s former home in small Griffin, Georgia, was like an enchanted kingdom, rooted in the American South but filled with rivers flowing out, to anywhere I could imagine. 

You might not even believe me when I tell you that the big house out on the 6th Street Extension was filled with butterflies carefully pinned in display cases, a Polar Bear rug, an Anaconda skin, and a set of poison blow darts.  

Every night my Grandmother and Great Aunt drank cocktails in their dressing gowns on matching sofas in the Bug Room, their name for the formal living room, that housed these amazing objects. My sister and I crushed ice for their nightly Highballs and basked in the exotica of the room - a place worlds away from our house in the center of Atlanta.

How did we get such treasure? In the 1940s, My great aunt Constance, who was the daughter of missionaries, married a wealthy inventor and natural history collector.  The story is complicated, but when I was 12, almost every precious object was sold at auction after Constance’s death.

These pictures capture my desire to crawl backwards into the childhood Eden that fate gifted me. This series, Crawling Backwards, refers to a kind of emotional, time travel – my metaphorical way of trying to return to a time when the world lay open before me, full of adventure and possibility.

A time before the grownup world and its ills dimmed the bright sky. Today I can only see the old house from the far side of a fence. I use image making as a way tunnel backwards to this almost perfect pre-adult place. Reversing time is, of course, impossible. Photography makes me almost believe."

Laura Noel is an Atlanta-based, photographer, and installation artist. Her work often addresses issues of memory, loss, and consumption, as well as explorations of her personal history.

Her work is in the collection of The High Museum of Art, The George Eastman House, The Ogden Museum in New Orleans, MOCA GA and a number of private and public collections. She has been a Walthall Fellow, recipient of an Idea Capital Grant, and an Artadia finalist. 

Noel received a BA in Public Policy Studies from Duke University and an MFA in Photography with Distinction from the University of Georgia.

Her prints been featured in exhibitions at the Pingyao International Photography Festival in China, the Contemporary American Photography exhibition at the Internationale Fototage Festival in Mannheim, Germany, Gallery 24 in Berlin, United Photo Industries in New York, The Rhode Island School of Design Museum, The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia, Jackson Fine Art, Lumiere, Davis Orton Gallery in upstate New York, and Gallery 1401 in Philadelphia. Smoke Break, her book of psychological portraits of smokers, will be published by Fall Line Press in the fall of 2024.

IMAGES FOR SALE

Crystal Skull, 19.5 x 15.5 in
Archival pigment print
$600 unframed
Limited edition of 10
Signed on back


 Apple Dreams, 19.5 x 15.5 in
Archival pigment print
$600 unframed
Limited edition of 10
Signed on back

Unicorn, 19.5 x 15.5 in
Archival pigment print
$600 unframed
Limited edition of 10
Signed on back


Seahorse, 19.5 x 15.5 in
Archival pigment print
$600 unframed
Limited edition of 10
Signed on back


Sisters, 19.5 x 15.5 in
Archival pigment print
$600 unframed
Limited edition of 10
Signed on back


Mocking Bird, 19.5 x 15.5 in
Archival pigment print
$600 unframed
Limited edition of 10
Signed on back
Contact: Laura Allen Noel, laura@lauranoel.com

www.amaterialwitness.com
www.instagram.com/lauraanoel
 

Kimberly Schneider says, "Preface-
All of my photographs are essentially subconscious self-portraits (or natural equivalents), which reveal themselv­es during my printing process(es). While I photograph what inspires me, the darkroom is where I come to learn about the deeper meaning of my images... The more I print, the more I see the part of me that was unconsciously exposed, and that revelation is largely what my work is about. However, when it comes to my photograms, that becomes more apparent during my titling process (orientation is never final until the titles come to me); The lumens (also photograms) are new for me, and despite being made outside of the darkroom, they too are equivalent images.

Pre-2020, I was primarily a maker of true infrared (and traditional black-and-white/film-based) spiritual landscapes. That said, I fell into photography by way of philosophy/eastern religions a lifetime ago, and the latter quickly found its way into my work – and never left (I’ve never been able to separate myself from my photographs, so whatever is going on in my life, always finds its way into the prints). Further, when it comes to making photographs, I am drawn to the western United States (and live on the east coast) ...
 
At the time of the shutdown, I had an unfinished darkroom taking over 2/3 of my living room, a ton of old paper from my previous (home) darkroom (which I lost to NYC rent hikes in 2017), and nearly 3 years of printing withdrawal... Fortunately, the wet side of my second home darkroom  was nearly done just two weeks prior. I made my first experimental photogram in June 2020, with flowers and a flashlight – and was honestly quite shocked at how quickly inspiration took over. Within a month, my first photogram series was born and completed. My processes quickly took a turn for the messy and more experimental, and over the past 4 1/2 years, my photograms have morphed into landscape photographs themselves (they also happened to be responsible for the bulk of my post covid-income until just recently, which I’ll briefly address below).
 
[I think of my photograms primarily in terms of printmaking and sculpture, as I not only work my materials a bit between (and sometimes during) exposures, but also build them up, layer by layer. Further, some of my processes, such as my ice-rubbing process, were inspired by printmaking processes, but translated for silver gelatin.]
 
Winds of Change (the silver gelatin mixed-process photograms) commenced as a series of 5 demo prints I made while working with a Zoom photograms student (who needed a little help getting out of her head). Made with ice, sand, flowers, produce, glitter, and more, in November 2022, it wasn't until January 2023 when the titles came to me and the series was born. From there, it pretty much took on a life of its own - beginning with ice-rubbings that quickly (unintentionally) began to resemble the visual textures of Point Lobos, and areas in Colorado that I had previously captured on film; by the summer, they had morphed into (unique but undeniable) landscape photographs, as inspiration had led me to literally collect the land and the sea and bring it into the darkroom with me...

In July 2023, I was invited to teach a brief photograms course at the Photographer’s Eye Collective in Escondido, CA (which brought me to the gallery while my work was on the wall, for the (S)Light of Hand exhibition, which I showed at with both of our jurors). While there, I was inspired to go to Windansea Beach, where I collected sand, some Pacific Ocean water, seaweed, palm leaves, and more, and shipped it to myself in NYC, specifically for location-specific photograms. [This soon inspired my vision for the contents of EQUIVALENCE, my upcoming fine press book with Veritas Editions, which presently is in need of a lot of funding but will eventually include both cameraless and lens-based landscape photographs, made in (or collected from) various locations of the western United States – as part of the book]. I have been making all of my cameraless photographs with these materials since November 2023.
 
Three of the four Winds of Change prints that I am submitting today were made mere hours before my former home darkroom had to be dismantled, in May 2024 (my formerly darkroom-friendly landlord decided to push me out/gut the place when my lease ended; I am sadly between darkrooms for at least a few more months); "San Diego (aka Saturn), Windansea Beach, CA" was my very first location-specific photogram.
 
Impermanence began as a way to prepare for the (then upcoming) loss of my second home darkroom and is essentially the colorful translation of Winds of Change. I began experimenting with location-specific (mixed process) lumen prints in April 2024; thankfully inspiration took over immediately. While this began rather experimentally, with a led panel a former coworker was kind enough to gift me (he thought that’s what a light box was; it worked, but my exposure times were incredibly long), I do have a proper light box to work with these days. However, the two Impermanence lumens that I am submitting were literally exposing while my darkroom was being dismantled and were made over the course of several days, with the panel ("Self-Portrait in Blue" was literally still exposing two days before I moved). The newer prints of the series (and a few earlier ones) have yet to be scanned, but I'm about 10 prints into the series as of today."

Kimberly Schneider is a visual artist, educator, and printer, who has been dedicated to the art of the handmade print for over two decades. Specializing in true infrared film, spiritual landscapes, and experimental photograms, she holds a BFA in photography (and minor in philosophy) from Colorado State University, exhibits her work regularly, and has received quite a few awards over the past several years. 
 
Based in New York City, where her work recently debuted at AIPAD (Association of International Photography Art Dealers/Photography Fair) via Scott Nichols Gallery, Kimberly teaches many of her processes (privately, as well as publicly, and remotely via Zoom) with an emphasis on learning to use art as a means of therapy. 

Her work has also been in notable exhibitions at Scott Nichols Gallery, Photo Forward Los Angeles, The Camera Obscura Gallery, The Photographer’s Eye Collective, San Diego Art Institute, ZIA Gallery, and Foto Nostrum (Barcelona, Spain), as well as virtually at The Louvre; She is honored to have work in the collection of Susan Herzig & Paul Hertzmann, San Francisco and to have Veritas Editions as the future publisher of EQUIVALENCE, her upcoming monograph. 
 
[Recent Awards include Honorary Spider Fellow (Nominee), 18th Black and White Spider Awards; Honorable Mention, LA Photo Curator, Surrealism competition; Honorable Mention, 18th Julia Margaret Cameron Awards; Runner Up (to the Series Winner), 17th Julia Margaret Cameron Awards; 3rd Place, 16th Julia Margaret Cameron Awards; Honorable Mention (16th) Pollux Awards; Honorary Spider Fellow (Nominee); 16th Black and White Spider Awards.]

IMAGES FOR SALE 

Bicoastal (aka Goodbye Gold Street Darkroom #2), San Diego, CA & NYC - Winds of Change (series) - 14"H x 11"W
Printed on Foma (Silver Gelatin) in May 2024
$1350 unframed
One-of-a-kind print (photogram/chemigram)
[made with the San Diego materials AND NYC snow]
Signed on back


Blizzard at High Tide (aka Goodbye Gold Street Darkroom #3), San Diego, CA & NYC- Winds of Change (series) - 14"H x 11"W
Printed on Foma (Silver Gelatin) in May 2024
$1350 unframed
One-of-a-kind print (photogram/chemigram/ice-rubbing)
[made with the San Diego materials AND NYC snow]
Signed on back


Phoenix (aka Goodbye Gold Street Darkroom #5), San Diego, CA - Impermanence (series) - 11"H x 14"W
Printed on expired Agfa (Silver Gelatin) in May 2024
$1350 unframed
One-of-a-kind print (cyano-lumen-chemigram/photogram)
[made with the San Diego materials]
Signed on back


Santa Ana Winds (aka Goodbye Gold Street Darkroom), San Diego, CA - Winds of Change(series) - 14"H x 11"W. 
Printed on Foma (Silver Gelatin) in May 2024
$1350 unframed
One-of-a-kind print (photogram/chemigram)
[made with the San Diego materials]
Signed on back


Self-Portrait in Blue (aka Goodbye Gold Street Darkroom #8), San Diego, CA - Impermanenceseries - 11H x 14"W
Printed on expired Agfa (Silver Gelatin) in May 2024
$1350 unframed
One-of-a-kind print (cyano-lumen-chemigram/photogram)
[made with the San Diego materials]
Signed on back


San Diego (aka Saturn), Windansea Beach, CA- Winds of Change (series) - 14"H x 11"W
Printed on Foma (Silver Gelatin) in November 2023
$1350 unframed
One-of-a-kind print (photogram/chemigram/ice-rubbing)
[made with the San Diego materials]
Signed on back

Contact: Kimberly Schneider - kimberly@kimberlyjschneider.com

www.instagram.com/kimberlyjschneiderphotography/
www.kimberlyjschneider.com

[Link to my upcoming book description via Veritas: www.veritaseditions.com/equivalence]


 

Kevin Black says, "These images are made from original 8x10 tintype images, then scanned, printed on vellum, varnished and then gilded with faux gold on the reverse.  When displayed in good lighting, they create a golden hour light, full of highlights and reflections.

My goal is to create an environment that is warm and welcoming to the viewer. When viewed as an exhibit, the viewer is immersed in the golden hour light and it creates a magical experience.

Every aspect of these prints is handmade, from the tintypes thru to the gilding of the vellums.

I have been a life long photographer since 1976.  First working in advertising on national and international accounts, now creating images for myself in the fine art world."

Images for sale:

Jade
16”w x 20”h (mat)
Archival pigment on specialty made vellum from an original 8x10 tintype
Gilded with faux gold
$350.00 unframed, archival matted
Signed on reverse in pencil

HandMaiden
16”w x 20”h (mat)
Archival pigment on specialty made vellum from an original 8x10 tintype
Gilded with faux gold
$350.00 unframed, archival matted
Signed on reverse in pencil

Twins
16”w x 20”h (mat)
Archival pigment on specialty made vellum from an original 8x10 tintype
Gilded with faux gold
$350.00 unframed, archival matted
Signed on reverse in pencil

Jesse
16”w x 20”h (mat)
Archival pigment on specialty made vellum from an original 8x10 tintype
Gilded with faux gold
$350.00 unframed, archival matted
Signed on reverse in pencil

Hopi Maiden
16”w x 20”h (mat)
Archival pigment on specialty made vellum from an original 8x10 tintype
Gilded with faux gold
$350.00 unframed, archival matted
Signed on reverse in pencil

Brandon
16”w x 20”h (mat)
Archival pigment on specialty made vellum from an original 8x10 tintype
Gilded with faux gold
$350.00 unframed, archival matted
Signed on reverse in pencil

Contact:
Kevin Black kevin@blackinc.net

www.blackinc.net 
www.instagram.com/kevinblack 

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