The UNB Art Centre welcomes the public back to the galleries for the final exhibition of 2021 celebrating SilverFish Photography Collective's 20th anniversary. AFTERIMAGE features photography, collage, mixed media and installation to explore perceptual reality and optical phenomenon.
The SilverFish Photography Collective was formed in 2001 and founding members Karen Ruet and Burton Glendenning remain part of this group along with current members Peter Bjerkelund, Rob Blanchard, Jeff Crawford, Oliver Flecknell, Peter Gross, Lori Quick, Mike Meade, Roger Smith, Denise Rowe, and Mandy Wright. Over the past twenty years SilverFish has held 30 exhibtions shown in a number of locations around New Brunswick including Government House, The Playhouse, Charlotte Street Arts Centre, and the UNB Art Centre in Fredericton, the Grand Manan Art Gallery, McAdam Railway Station, the Axe Gallery in Sussex, Sunbury Shore in St. Andrews, McCain Gallery in Florenceville and the Saint John Arts Centre.
The SilverFish Photography Collective was recognized by Fredericton Tourism and Culture in 2017 and awarded an Arts Achievement Award. In 2019, they received a Creation Grant from Arts NB for the production of this exhibition.
AFTERIMAGE is a testament to the longevity of this photographic collective and a celebration of the art of photography. AFTERIMAGE opens at 5 pm on Nov. 5 and runs through Dec. 16, 2021.
View Roger Smith's Video (Youtube)
Roger Smith obtained a B.Sc. in Biology and M.Sc. in Plant Pathology from UNB. While working on his M.Sc., he began taking photographs for UNB's Department of Biology, and soon realized that photography was a more interesting pursuit than his research on potato blight. He was the scientific photographer for the UNB's Department of Biology for 35 years, retiring in 2011. Roger is a member of the SilverFish Photography Collective, Photo Fredericton camera club, and became a juried member of the NB Crafts Council in 2001. He has shown work in multiple shows with SilverFish and had a 40-year retrospective at the Charlotte St. Arts Centre in 2007.
A background combining photography and plant pathology has prepared him to observe subtleties in nature that might otherwise escape notice. He delights in revealing an interesting side to subjects that most people simply overlook.
It is only after careful observation that the images of miniature inverted worlds, refracted in raindrops, hanging from flowers after a gentle rain, become visible. Photographing these worlds in all their tiny detail is a challenging proposition. As anyone who has tried it soon realizes, one of the difficulties of macro photography is getting enough of your subject in sharp focus from front to back - what photographers call depth of field. Modern digital technology has provided an elegant solution, known as focus stacking. This process involves taking several photographs of your subject, each focused at a slightly different point from front to back. The result is a series of photographs, each containing a small section of the subject in sharp focus. Specialized focus stacking software analyzes these images, selecting the sharpest portion of each one and combining them into one photograph, which is in sharp focus from front to back.
The six images included in Raindrop Worlds represent my continuing attempts to perfect this technique. Each one is a combination of 8-10 separate photos, stacked as described above. At the size they are printed, either 19x13 or 26x12 inches, (48x33 or 66x30 cm), the tiny raindrops are enlarged to a magnification of anywhere from 20x to 30x their original size, enabling the viewer to catch a glimpse of the worlds within.
View Mandy Wright's Video (Youtube)
Mandy Wright is an artist, designer, and teacher who was born in Prince Edward Island and grew up in Fredericton, New Brunswick. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art in Fine Art Studio (photography) and a Bachelor of Visual Communications in Design from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1995. She is an artsnb award recipient and a City of Fredericton Arts Achievement Award recipient (with SilverFish). Her work is in the University of New Brunswick’s Permanent Collection. A member of the SilverFish Photography Collective since 2007, Mandy has also shown work independently in Fredericton, Saint John, and Halifax. Currently Mandy lives with her husband, teenage daughter, and two cats in Jinan, Shandong, China where she teaches art and English and is on a very big adventure.
Memento Mori In N Dimensions
"All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt." — Susan Sontag
This quote from Susan Sontag resonates with me. At the heart of it is what I personally think photography really is: light, time, love held still in an embrace. This work has repeating, reverberating, echoing elements - they are persistent but never exactly the same. They move through time with me. I hope something of them and their impetus will resonate with you. I hope you will have afterimages too.
After my mother passed away in 2016, I began waking up significantly more often during the night. Upon these frequent wakings, I strangely found that very often a "triple digit" time was showing when I checked the time on my phone or tablet. Surely only coincidence, but still it happened so often that I started to screen capture each occurrence. I decided to make use of these fleeting triple moments, telling myself that each time it happened it meant that "somewhere, somehow, my mother was thinking of me." It has become a comfort to me - like a way to remember and forget at the same time. These moments still happen all the time and I continue to record my momento mori.
My mother once told me she often dreamed of opening the door to find a huge menacing moose or buck confronting her. I told her I'd had dreams about "saving her" from natural dangers like tornadoes, or fires. About six months after my mom died, in the early hours of the night, the security light in our backyard switched on and woke me up. I looked at the clock: 1:11. I went to the window and saw a small doe standing in the floodlight. I felt like this was an animal reincarnation of my mother visiting me in the night. By then, I had decided to make a move overseas (where I am now). I needed to leave our familiar house and the small town that was the last place my mother ever lived. I took it as a sign that our move would be okay. It's not the first time such visions have come to me, but this one persists - an ethereal snapshot of love from memory.
View Peter Gross' Video (Youtube)
Peter Gross first came to New Brunswick from Montreal to work with Freeman Patterson 45 years ago. He subsequently taught photography at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design for over 35 years. Over his career, Peter has had several solo shows including Gallery 78, Gallery Connexion, the UNB Art Centre in Fredericton, and the Viewpoint Gallery in Halifax. He has received grants from both the Canada Council and artsnb and has served on many art juries. His work can be found in private collections as well as the New Brunswick Art Bank and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. For the last 8 years, he has participated in several group shows with the SilverFish Photography Collective based in Fredericton.
In these photos, I am exploring how the eye might see before the raw data from the optic nerve is processed in the brain. The retina at the back of the eye is spherical and, at any given instant, only one part of the image is sharp. I found that photographing through a crystal ball replicated this effect. I've used this technique as a new way to envision landscapes.
View Mike Meade's Video (Youtube)
Mike Meade has been a photographer for over 25 years, a member of the SilverFish Photography Collective for 19 years, and has taught 2 years of beginner's photography. He currently works as the Digital Imaging Coordinator at UNB's Harriet Irving Library, a role he has enjoyed for the past 20 years. He earned a Diploma of Photography from the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, and has worked for the Daily Gleaner, Harvey Studios, and UNB as a photographer. He is a freelance graphic designer, and a proud councillor for the Town of Nackawic.
My vision for these photographs was two-fold. First, I wanted to explore the phenomenon of pareidolia; the innate ability to recognize pattern or shape amongst randomness. Classic examples of this are seeing a face on the moon, or shapes in the clouds. I have always been aware of, and amused by, my own tendency to perceive the ephemeral within the actual.
Secondly, I wanted to take relatively flat mundane images and treat them as a blank canvas—a canvas upon which I would create my own vision by drawing out and enhancing characteristics without adding anything that wasn't already there. I aim to lead the eye and bring a dynamic robustness to a simple photograph of dirt, roots, and fallen leaves.
I set out to create a visual environment that could lend itself to interpretation by imagination. If you really take the time, what does your mind see?
View Oliver Flecknell's Video (Youtube)
Born in Saint John and now based out of Fredericton, Oliver Flecknell is a mixed media artist, practicing primarily in alternative photographic processes. Oliver enjoys the forgotten places, discarded things, and the quiet that this brings to his artistic practice. Rooted in the darkroom, he attempts to reach beyond the swirl of chemicals to play with our perception of photography today.
Oliver is widely involved in the arts, having worked as an instructor, designer, curator, and through participation in artist residencies. Oliver has been a member of various art collectives, including SilverFish Photography Collective since 2008. His work has been featured in group and solo exhibitions, and in publications.
Change is in the air; you can smell it from behind your mask. Children are pushing politics, the government is selling weed, winter is getting warmer while summer's heat is killing the elderly. The eternal flame now burns in the Amazon, California, and British Columbia. Lethal flooding is common around the world. But climate change is fake news. Change is coming but the super-rich resist, rebelling against the science, profiting on the laziness of humans, putting their faith in the dollars they've stashed on the islands. Like pirates, they stash their stolen bounty, while their workers visit food banks. The children skip school on Fridays, you won't find them at the mall though. They’re in the streets. They're at the legislatures. They're trying to teach science to the clueless politicians who only listen to the super-rich pirates that need bailout money in a "crisis." Little do they know, not even the super-rich will survive the end of the human era. These child scientists, these activists/rebels/protesters/watchers, are the only true visionaries of our future. Their intentions are pure. Their future is unwritten.
View Lori Quick's Video (Youtube)
Lori Patricia Quick grew up on the picturesque island of Grand Manan and began her journey in the arts by studying photography at the New Brunswick College of Craft & Design in 2000. She then added a Bachelor of Applied Arts from the University of New Brunswick in 2004, which helped her land her job at the UNB Art Centre in 2005 where she still happily works as Exhibitions and Communications Coordinator; helping artists display their work, managing the UNB Permanent Collection, facilitating ArtZone (the student art collective), and doing all sorts of other creative things. She has also been lucky enough to be a member of the SilverFish Photography Collective since 2005 and has participated in numerous group exhibitions with other fine fishy folks. Her work has been featured in Canadian publications and she also has work in the UNB Permanent Collection. She lives in New Maryland, NB, with her husband, son, daughter, and two cats.
After having a brain injury in July 2020, that developed into Post-Concussion Syndrome, I was faced with the fear that my creativity was lost forever. My life was completely unplugged. Everyday things seemed impossible to grasp. Anxiety around not getting back the creative spark I had before the injury was crippling. For the first part of my recovery, my sensitivity to light made it so all of the curtains had to be closed. Day after day, I laid on the couch wondering if I would be able to endure opening them ever again. Bit by bit, I was slowly able to increase the gap between the curtains, letting in more light. It was then that I started to notice the beauty of the shadows dancing on the walls. I remember the overwhelming gratitude I felt when I was inspired to pick up my phone and take a photo. Creativity is something I had always taken for granted until it was so unexpectedly taken away from me. These dancing shadows were the turning point that brought my hope back and helped me discover a new light from within that started to shine again.
View Rob Blanchard's Video (Youtube)
Rob Blanchard is a photographer based in Fredericton, NB. He graduated with a diploma in Fine Craft from the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design and for the past 30 years has been working as a professional photographer. He is a long-standing member of SilverFish Photography Collective with which he is an artsnb award recipient.
Rob lives with his amazing wife Betty and together are very proud parents of their two children Dara and Noah.
A show about vision gave me an opportunity to share how my vision was altered after an eye injury in 2008. I was photographing a hockey game and was hit in the eye by a puck cleared by a defenceman. Along with some great photos I got 30 stitches, two eye surgeries, and vision that went slowly from blurry to black.
In this show I wanted to demonstrate a time in the transition when I still had hope that things would improve. Unfortunately, they did not and I lost vision in my left eye completely. I created these images with an unfocused lens and made a panoramic, consisting of three images, that represented my left to right vision. I used photoshop to darken the images and make them closer to what I really saw at the time.
Originally from Burton, NB, Jeff Crawford hails from the live theatre and film industry, where he worked as a lighting designer. Jeff owns and operates his own business, Photography by Jeff Crawford, and joined the SilverFish Photography Collective in 2011. In 2013, Jeff was published by PhotoLife Magazine, as one of Canada’s Top Emerging Photographers.
This work explores the uniqueness of how relationships evolve through stages of energy. Matches, paralleling people, seemingly all appear to be similar, but upon closer inspection each reacts to being sparked and influenced by their surroundings. Forming them with hot and cold, light and shadow, ultimately influencing how they interact with each other.
View Peter Bjerkelund's Video (Youtube)
Peter earned a BFA from Mount Allison in photography, drawing and sculpture. His career as a designer/illustrator/photographer spanned over thirty-three years promoting the environment, silviculture, aviation and public education. He is now in the business of property investments and management with his wife, and SilverFish alumni, Tone Meeg. Peter enjoys new adventures, being immersed in nature on land or water, and has been fortunate to travel to many countries on three continents. He plays the bass to keep the rhythms of life flowing. He continues to expand his horizons in new directions by combining photography with his passions in motorcycle-touring, journalism, snorkelling inland water ways, and flying in light aircraft as an 'air-tripod' over the landscape.
He has been a member of the SilverFish Photography Collective since 2001. Peter lives with a wonderful wife and son along the Wolastoq River.
My photography will always be about the small stories I happen upon. Interpreting and recording the offshoots of my experiences. I am no longer intentionally creative as I was in a previous, long career. High resolution is not always possible in these 'spurs of the moment,' and in certain contexts, the moment captured is the most important to me.
The 'clockwork and gearing' of situations intrigues and engages me. Intuition tells me something is going on, although I may not immediately put together the details of the relationships until afterward. I attempt to relate elements so the image can tell a 'story' - either lyrical or narrative.
The added title intends to give a reference point for the situation in the image, and if someone makes a different conclusion, that's fine as well. Art creates dialogue. The afterimage is what my photograph has to say about these found objects.
View Karen Ruet's Video (Youtube)
Karen Ruet studied photography at Ryerson Polytechnic University before enrolling in the photography program at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design. Using her knowledge of photography and a BA from Acadia University, she started working for the New Brunswick Telegraph Journal, shooting sports before taking up art writing for the New Brunswick Reader. Creating profiles of New Brunswick artists quickly became a passion and Karen was asked to write and shoot for Salon, the Saturday arts section of that publication. Soon after, she became the Coordinator of Fredericton's Artist-Run Centre, Gallery Connexion. Soon after, she began teaching a darkroom class at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design where she now works full time as an instructor in the photography studio and as the Coordinator of the George Fry Gallery. In 2015, Karen co-curated Phantom Presence: Contemporary Photography in New Brunswick with Terry Graff and was an artist in that exhibition. She is a founding member of the SilverFish photography collective.
Home Sweet Home is a photographic, mixed media, and audio installation that asks the question, "What does home mean to you?"
This project was inspired by my father who always said, "We’re going up home," whenever we travelled to the Siegas. It was further inspired by my aunt Claudette, his younger sister, who inscribed the words "Home Sweet Home" in white on the black pages of one of her photo albums.
The photographs show our family farm in Siegas, Madawaska Co., NB where my father was born, and which still exists today. These images are copies of archival family photographs arranged according to different time periods and feature family members, places, and things associated with life on the farm, as well as, portraits and photographs taken in 2020 and 2021 reflecting life today.
The visual component will be complemented by an audio recording that features interviews with family members, allowing the listener to tap into a conversation already in progress. There is a sense of nostalgia as the family members go back in time and talk about their memories of the farm and its impact on their lives. For those who are no longer with us, the absence of their voices and their memories reveals the fleeting nature of life, and the urgency of collecting stories that still exist.
This project investigates how place can be both a trigger and a repository for specific memories, it can also provide a pathway back in time.
View Burton Glendenning's Video (Youtube)
Burton Glendenning is a photographer and archivist living in Fredericton, NB. He studied mechanical technology at the New Brunswick Institute of Technology and History at Loyola College, Concordia, and UNB. During a career which encompassed aspects of both of these disciplines, he developed his photographic art at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, at several workshops with Freeman Patterson in New Brunswick and South Africa, and during an internship at the National Gallery of Canada. Burton was one of the founding members of SilverFish Photography Collective and has taken part in all 36 Silverfish exhibitions. Theoretically he has retired, but he continues to work in archives, and as an orchardist.
Being an orchardist provides an up close and personal concept of how fast the stages of life go by. You blink and one day the snow on the branches gives way to the first sighting of a bud. Turn around, and there is a blossom. The apple symbolizes the waiting that life entails. Days of pruning, cultivating, and tending the fruit is not seen by those who only eat the apple. They are constantly waiting for the fruit of our labour, never thinking that if the careful tending of the trees didn't take place, the enjoyment of the apple would never exist in the first place.;
View Denise Rowe's Video (Youtube)
Denise Rowe lives in a heavenly part of NB, with her husband Randy and large, hairy golden retriever. A life built off the grid, powered by sunshine and lake breezes, keeps her creativity blooming. Following graduation from the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, she has run a small, successful photography business since 2002. Denise has been a SilverFish member since 2011.
This body of work is about love, memories, family, & cancer - what it takes away, and what it leaves. Life is delicate and temporary, yet there are many levels of memories that one leaves to those left behind. The love for this gentleman was a beautiful thing. His love for his family was also so beautiful and true. His family cherished every minute...did he know they did? That's what we wonder isn't it? When someone we love is taken away, we want to believe that they knew.
