Griffin Opening Recap

© Colin Blakely

This past Thursday, Shen, Natasha, and I made the journey up to Winchester, MA, for the opening of the 13th Annual Griffin Museum Juried Show. Any time I am covering that much ground on the highways I take along my tripod and the RZ just in case there are some stranded motorists along the way. I am always looking to fill out the series and I was secretly hoping to show off my process to my driving companions. We pulled over twice, but I got a very rare 'no' in the first situation and in the second situation the family had pulled over so their child could pee in a traveling kiddie porta-potty. Oh well.

We arrived at the Griffin Museum, which looked like sweet ginger bread house nestled in an upscale Boston suburb, and met the curator, Paula Tognarelli. After the members and the ever dapper juror, Brian Clamp, arrived, four of the photographers in the show gave presentations on their work. I talked about my process, influences, and took the members through the stories behind each of the five images in the show. My presentation generated so much enthusiasm and so many questions about the Domesticated series, I almost felt sorry for sad sucker who had to follow me. Wait, that sad sucker was Shen. No worries, he did a fabulous job with his presentation, too.

That night I had many a great conversation with members of the Boston arts community and saw a ton of amazing work. Mr. Clamp did a great job of selecting work from the over 2000 photos submitted for entry. Highlights for me included pieces by Shen Wei (of course), Dylan Chatain, Dina Kantor, Daniel Traub, and a real stunner by Colin Blakely.

The whole affair wrapped up around 10 PM and Shen and I made the tactical decision to drive back to New York. We said our goodbyes to Natasha and hit the road. To Boston and back in the same night? Crazy? You bet. But, that's how we roll.