Pinhole Perspective, by Lisa Toto

Form Focus Figure, by Warda Geismar, Jackie Heitchue, and Brian Williams

July 29th - September 5th, 2021

 Lisa Toto explores her emotional response to the loss and isolation of the last year through a pinhole camera in her latest collection of work:

My feelings of struggle, sadness and fear of the COVID-19 pandemic are depicted in this series. With everyone in lockdown and schools forced to teach remotely, I decided that I needed a way to release my feelings so I didn’t spiral into an abyss of hopelessness. This was my form of journaling which is why you will see me featured in many of the images. Lockdown left me with no one else too photograph but myself. So I experimented with this 1850 technique in using 2021 digital equipment to capture what I wanted to say. … Patience and endurance is the key to getting the exposure and focus you want. Most of the time you have very little control over focus. The images have a blurred quality to them which is exactly how we felt during this extremely difficult time — a loss of control of our emotions and the numbers during the pandemic.

On the other side of the gallery, the three winners from the 2020 juried show I Am… come together to present work in the small group show, Form Focus Figure.

Warda Geismar’s work is generally about empathy — “exploring what is deemed taboo and turning that on its head by first imagining and then envisioning a world transpiring to inclusion.” In her latest, Geismar states: “This past year has reaffirmed the fact that we die.Two important souls in my world died. I turned to my art to make sense of my grief, and what I found was so much life! … Creating the artwork in this show enabled me to be with these special beings allowing them to live on through me. I came to understand that those who leave this world, live on through those that stay.”

Jackie Heitchue’s collection also explores the events of the last year through her personal lens: “My newest work reflects my evolving feelings as I navigate this extraordinary time and adjust to life in my newly-emptied nest. The subjects I photograph are gathered from my immediate surroundings … Individually, each image is a story. Taken as a whole, this work is a fable of motherhood, love, and the inevitability of loss.” And though deeply personal, Heitchue also “construct(s) each vignette to be allegorical.  …  I try to avoid specific references to our time or place. My subjects are commonplace, but I make them iconic through carefully balanced compositions. … Inevitably, each of these quiet moments will slip away, leaving the image as proof of an enduring narrative. Within families there are moments of intimacy and seclusion. The present is continually falling into the past. Love and loss are inextricably linked.”

While the other exhibiting artists use their media as a means of personal exploration, Brian Williams finds a home in abstraction and repetitive forms. Of his collection, Brian Williams states: "I create abstract minimalist geometric wood constructions. All of the wood components of my work are reclaimed. Creating work from materials that would otherwise be discarded has both an artistic sustainability factor and an economic appeal. My method of working is primarily one of experimentation. The revelatory learning experience of handling materials, invariably provides a direction to follow. I find that the simplicity and serenity of repetitive forms can have an appeal all of their own. Lighting plays a crucial role in my work by adding a dramatic and transformative element to each piece." And though perhaps not as overtly dealing with the difficult emotional landscape of this last year, in Williams’ repetitious forms, the artist almost offers a moment of pause, meditation, and an invitation to begin the healing process through art.

Warda Geismar states: “I have already lived a long life and dates elude me so . . . For as long as I can remember I have been making art. I am currently just making art. I worked as an artist’s model. I worked in an art supply store. I was a graphic designer. I designed, and manufactured modern children’s furniture. I taught art. I had art exhibits a long time ago and hope to have more now that I am a full time artist.”

Jackie Heitchue graduated with a BFA from the Corcoran School of Art. For several years, she was an award-winning photojournalist for a chain of newspapers in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.  From there, she worked as a freelancer, a master printer at the Library of Congress, and a public high school art teacher.  For the past decade Heitchue has been pursuing her own projects.  While her whimsical photographs are deeply personal, they are also allegories of domestic life, speaking to the universal themes of family and motherhood that connect one generation to the next.

Lisa Toto became a photojournalist in 1987. She landed a job at the Bridgeport Post/ Telegram after interning at the paper during her senior year in college. She collected quite a few state and national awards during her five year tenure as a staff photographer most notably a Pulitzer nomination in the category of feature picture story. Lisa moved from journalism to pursue a career in art which she has been doing for the last 25 years.  She is currently employed as an art teacher at Amity High School in Woodbridge, CT.  Her students have consistently placed in the Scholastic Art and Writing and in the Congressional competitions. She had a student win a National Gold Key in 1998 from Scholastics Art and Writing Awards, in which the teacher also earns a Scholastic recognition award. Lisa’s photography students show their work yearly at Main Street Gallery of Fine Arts and Photography in Ansonia CT. Lisa truly believes “Teach- ing is a lifetime of fulfillment” which was quoted from her state application at the Teacher of the Year State awards ceremony after being named the Ansonia Teacher of the Year in 2013. Lisa has shown her work on gallery walls, both nationally and internationally, at locations such as Hartford State Capitol, Sacred Heart University, University of Bridgeport, Georgetown University, and even Moscow, Russia for the past 30 years. Her work has also been published in newspapers across the country for the Orange County Register to Massachusetts and in between. She is now beginning to create whimsical unique mixed media work and enjoying the inspiration that comes from the artists with the Kehler Liddell Gallery artists.

Brian Williams was born September in 1950 in Essex, United Kingdom. Williams states: “In post World War II Britain, I had a rural childhood amid the joys of a family of five living in a four room terraced cottage with no running water and an outside toilet. The war had ended in 1945, food rationing in the UK was not to end until 1953 and the country was near bankrupt. The fabulous fifties welcomed me with open arms.”