Press Release: Clint Baclawski “Departure”

Clint Baclawski: Departure

September 2 - October 16, 2022
Opening Reception: Friday, September 2 from 6:00 - 8:30 PM

Three years after the presentation of Fringe, Clint Baclawski returns to Abigail Ogilvy Gallery with his second solo exhibition of work - influenced by his travels during the pandemic. In the summer of 2021, Baclawski and his family set off on a cross country road trip, equipped with a large format camera. The resulting imagery works its way into this exhibition in a format that is entirely new for the artist.

Entering the exhibition, you are immediately confronted with awe inspiring imagery of Grand Teton National Park displayed on an impressive scale: divided into 5 sections, the image itself measures 8 feet tall by 25 feet long. This was the feeling Baclawski had when he came upon the staggering landscape in real time. “We were driving in - you round a bend and the image is right there, an iconic viewpoint.” The stunning mountains proved a natural transition from his past bodies of work, all revolving around mirrored imagery. Growing up as an identical twin, Baclawski has always had this concept of mirroring at the forefront of his mind, and it has always found itself central to his work.

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Clint Baclawski, Departure, 2022. Scrolling lightbox kits, electronic ballasts, Latex prints, 2’ LED bulbs, speaker wires, power cords, Stinger cable power supply, matte black wall. 270" w x 108" h x 4.5” d

This new body of work leans heavily into this concept of likeness, as his chosen image depicts a mountain and its reflection in the clear stillness of a river. But unlike anything Baclawski has presented before, this time, instead of a single static image portrayed through lightbulbs, the image itself moves. The five sections, comprising one image, are divided and presented on a scrolling mechanism that the artist has mounted directly onto the gallery wall. As the image scrolls, it morphs from a seemingly idyllic landscape picture to the negative in an almost apocalyptic red at the end. The scroll waves slightly, mimicking the bend and movement of Snake River, which winds through the National Park for 50 miles.

Baclawski reflects, “what struck me about the rotating image is the reflection and how uniquely, perfectly symmetrical the water reflected the mountains. This has been a thread in my work for 14 years: the mirroring of an image.” 

Baclawski’s sublime scene is reminiscent of the art historical greats who have long grappled with the awe and sanctity of the natural world. Just as Thomas Cole imbued his landscapes with moral, spiritual and political meaning, so too does Baclawski’s work explore nature as a conduit for meaning-making and symbolism. Similar to Cole’s resistance to the capitalization of land, Baclawski spins his own connection to advertising photography, which he studied at Rochester Institute of Technology. His ability to capture and disseminate without disrupting the earth, means that he is able to transverse a very specific site and experience across state lines and into our Boston gallery. Baclawski’s work has always explored these elements of advertising, inspired by his days in school when everything was shot on film and critiques took place on lightboxes. It was there that Baclawski fell in love with the backlit image and the sharpness of the large format camera. In this way, Baclawski has become well-known for capturing awe inspiring landscapes.

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Clint Baclawski (b. 1981, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania) is a contemporary artist working with photography, technology, light, and space. His solo exhibition locations include San Luis Obispo, California; St. Louis, Missouri; Boston, Massachusetts; Edinburgh, Scotland; and group shows at the Chelsea Art Museum, Danforth Museum, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, San Diego Art Institute, The Jen Bekman Gallery, and the University College Falmouth in England. His work is included in private and institutional collections. Baclawski has been featured in FRAME magazine, The Boston Globe, The Creator’s Project, Boston Home magazine, Designboom, and The Collector’s Guide to New Art Photography Volume II. Clint’s studio is located in Boston’s South End. 

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Clint Baclawski, Departure, 2022. Scrolling lightbox kits, electronic ballasts, Latex prints, 2’ LED bulbs, speaker wires, power cords, Stinger cable power supply, matte black wall. 270" w x 108" h x 4.5” d

Press Release: Back Together

BACK TOGETHER

June 10 – July 18, 2021

Installation photo, Back Together

Featuring: Clint Baclawski, Teddy Benfield, Mishael Coggeshall-Burr, Austin Eddy, Marlon Forrester, Holly Harrison, Lavaughan Jenkins, Katelyn Ledford, Kristina McComb, Susan Murie, Wilhelm Neusser, Haley Wood, Natalia Wróbel

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is proud to present Back Together, a group exhibition curated to showcase strong, new pieces by our represented artists, as well as introduce high quality works by emerging artists. Featuring primarily local artists, Back Together seeks to open dialogue with the Boston arts community, focusing on work that presents an interesting process or concept. It also serves as a celebration of reconnection after the pandemic. The artists featured represent many different mediums, disciplines, and ideas, and come together to form a full picture of the rich variety in contemporary art today.

Clint Baclawski (b. 1981, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania) is a contemporary artist working with photography, technology, light, and space.
His solo exhibition locations include San Luis Obispo, California; St. Louis, Missouri; Boston, Massachusetts; Edinburgh, Scotland; and group shows at the Chelsea Art Museum, Danforth Museum, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, San Diego Art Institute, The Jen Bekman Gallery, and the University College Falmouth in England. His work is included in private and institutional collections. Baclawski has been featured in FRAME magazine, The Boston Globe, The Creator’s Project, Boston Home magazine, Designboom, and The Collector’s Guide to New Art Photography Volume II. Clint’s studio is located in Boston’s South End.

Teddy Benfield works primarily as a painter, screen printer and photographer. His works consist of a mixture of the three mediums to create a dialogue between traditional still life genre painting and the relationships individuals have with marketplace and consumerism through the internet culture of today. 

Signage combines the modern product with interior space yet has the ability to transform the modern pedestrian back in time. Representational imagery introduces the past to the present and pays homage to hand painted signs as well as the comments of class and value in traditional still life painting while room for abstraction is absorbed within traditional advertisement qualities.

Teddy Benfield is a Boston based artist from Connecticut (b. 1992). He received his MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (2018) and his BFA in Visual arts from Union College (2015) as well as a certificate in Sneaker Design from Fashion Institute of Technology (2019).

Mishael Coggeshall-Burr, High Line IV.

Mishael Coggeshall-Burr integrates the art of photography and oil painting to create novel and compelling images on canvas.  Taking blurred shots with a 35mm camera, the artist searches for peripheral scenes with cinematic color and tone.  He translates selected images into abstract-realist paintings with convincing color, formal structure, and subtle references to art history.  Through his actions Mishael questions both the truth of photography and the fiction of painting: we enter a liquid, cinematic space, capturing the magic moment when Alice seems to step through the looking glass.  The photorealistic image melts away, the prosaic merges with poetry.

“We live in a mostly blurry world. Our eyes only actually focus on a tenth of our field of vision at any one time. Our viewpoint, emotions, and context blur our memories. The landscapes I paint are in some way our genuine environment: the backgrounds to our lives, always present and often out of focus.”

Mishael studied painting at Middlebury College, The Glasgow School of Art, and the Art Student's League in New York.  His artistic adventures have led him to many countries and continents, with many images from his travels featured in his art exhibitions. He lives, works and paints in Montague, MA with his wife and four children.

Austin Eddy, Every Duck In Its Place While Moving From Here To There Forgetting Nothing

Austin Eddy was born in Boston, MA (USA) in 1986 and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received a BFA in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Select recent exhibitions include: Fresh Windows Gallery in Brooklyn, NY (2018), SetUp 2018 Art Fair, Cellar Contemporary (Italy), Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston, MA (2018), Ampersand Gallery in Portland, OR (2018), David Shelton Gallery, Houston, TX (2017), Dallas Art Fair (2017), Code Art Fair, Bendixen Contemporary Art. Copenhagen, DK. (2016), Agnes B. Gallerie, Paris, FR (2016), and Left Field Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2015). He recently completed the Liquitex International Residency in London, England (2018). Austin Eddy is the founder and curator of EDDYSROOM, a nomadic curatorial project launched in 2015. 

Marlon Forrester, born in Guyana, South America, is an artist and educator raised in Boston, MA. Forrester is a graduate of School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, B.A 2008 and Yale School of Art, M.F.A. 2010. He is a resident artist at African-American Masters Artist Residency Program (AAMARP) adjunct to the Department of African-American Studies in association with Northeastern University. He has shown both internationally and nationally, concerned with the corporate use of the black body, or the body as logo, Forrester’s paintings, drawings, sculptures, and multimedia works reflect meditations on the exploitation implicit in the simultaneous apotheosis and fear of the muscular black figure in America.

Holly Harrison lives and works in Concord, MA. She received an MA in creative writing from The City College of New York and a BA from Wesleyan University. Her artwork has been featured at galleries and museums throughout the country and is held in private and corporate collections nationally and internationally. Additionally, she has curated two well-received shows at the Concord Center for the Visual Arts, where she was subsequently invited to join the Board of Trustees.   

Lavaughan Jenkins, Skin I’m In

Lavaughan Jenkins is a painter, printmaker, and sculptor. He was raised in Pensacola, Florida and currently creates his work in Boston, MA. He received a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2005. Since that time, Jenkins has become a recipient of the 2019 James and Audrey Foster Prize awarded annually by the Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston. In 2016, he was named Emerging Artist of the year at Kingston Gallery in Boston, MA, Jenkins is a recipient of the 2015 Blanche E. Colman Award and in 2002 received the Rob Moore Grant in Painting. He has exhibited his work most recently at venues such as Abigail Ogilvy Gallery (Boston), The Painting Center (NY), Suffolk University Gallery (Boston), and Oasis Gallery (Beijing). Jenkins donates annually to the Massachusetts College of Art and Design Auction which supports student scholarships.

Katelyn Ledford is an artist living and working in Boston, Massachusetts, but born and bred in the American South. She received her MFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2019. Ledford’s work is a consideration of the role of images in shaping the curated portrait of women at large and individually while also reflecting on the complex and often painful reality of what it means to be a woman and artist. She uses appropriated images sourced from historical paintings, television shows, social media, and Google fever dreams while contrasting them against improvisational symbols and shapes in order to create deconstructed portraits. The tone across her work lies in a mix of cynicism, humor, and absurdist logic— like the feeling of sucking on a sour candy, you smile through the pain and pleasure.

Ledford was featured in SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2020 in a two-person booth, “The Person- Less Portrait,” curated by Abigail Ogilvy Gallery. She has been featured in exhibitions internationally with select group exhibitions at Monya Rowe Gallery, New York, NY; Public Gallery, London, UK; Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston, MA; and Plan X Art Gallery, Milan, IT.

Kristina McComb's practice focuses on the intersection of photography and sculpture. Through layering images and light, McComb examines the passing of time, merging past, present, and future in a haunting composition. Present is one in a three-part series of lightbox sculptures. Printed on acetate and suspended in backlit steel structures, McComb’s photographs drift and overlap, appearing fragile and untethered. She arranges selected fragments from a range of different shots into one coherent image, defined by their relationships with each other. The foreground is sharp and clear, while the background layers blur into ghosts of the original image. This subtle play of light, line, and texture creates a delicate exploration of transience versus permanence.

Kristina McComb is an interdisciplinary artist from Western Mass. She graduated with Distinction from Greenfield Community College, receiving her Associates of Science in Visual Art with a concentration in Photography. McComb also holds a BFA from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Her work has been exhibited since 2014, most notably at the Brattleboro Museum and Arts Center in Brattleboro, VT and the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts.

Susan Murie is a New England-based artist. She most recently exhibited at the Members Prize Show, Cambridge Art Association, 2021 and was awarded Artist of the Year by juror Ben Sloat, Director of the MFA in Visual Arts program at Lesley Art + Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Susan was also awarded a CAA Artist of the Year, Members Prize Show, 2020, by juror Jessica Roscio, Curator, Danforth Art Museum at Framingham State University. Her artwork was published in the London-based INKQ, Inky Leaves Publishing, Issue 9, Spring 2020 as well as featured in The Hand Magazine, Issue #26 in the Fall of 2019. Her work was juried into and sold at the MassArt Auction in 2020 and 2019 and is juried into the 2021 auction as well. Murie’s work has been featured on The Curated Fridge, Autumn 2018 Show (Somerville, MA) curated by Kat Kiernan Editor-in-Chief of the photography magazine Don’t Take Pictures, and The Curated Fridge, Spring 2018 Show curated by Francine Weiss Senior Curator, Newport Art Museum. In addition to private collections, Murie’s work is in the permanent collection of Fidelity and the City of Somerville.

Wilhelm Neusser’s artwork has been widely exhibited and he has received numerous awards and fellowships. His recent museum exhibitions include the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam, 2019), the Fruitlands Museum (Harvard, MA, 2019), and MASS MoCa (North Adams, MA, 2018). In 2020 he was honored with a finalist grant in Painting from the Mass Cultural Council. Additional awards and recognition include the MASS MoCA Studio Program (2017), Vermont Studio Center (2013), Finalist, Wilhelm-Morgner-Prize, Soest (2010), International Artist in Residence, Boots Contemporary Art Space (St. Louis, MO, 2009), ZVAB Phönix Art Prize (2007). Neusser’s work has been included in notable publications, including The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, Artscope Magazine, Boston.com, and Big Red & Shiny.

Wilhelm Neusser was born in Cologne, Germany. He relocated to the United States in 2011, and currently lives and works in Somerville, MA.

Haley Wood, WOAD, Page 1

Haley Wood is a fiber artist, surface designer, and musician living in Boston, MA. She has recently received her BFA in Fibers at Massachusetts College of Art & Design. Haley is influenced by 1960’s and 70’s folk horror films, illuminated manuscripts, mid century home decor, and her Omi. She also plays guitar and violin for the Croaks.

Natalia Wróbel is an artist based in Encinitas, CA after spending time in New York City, Boston, Amsterdam, and Berlin. Wrobel studied Studio Art and Art History at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. She furthered her study at the Lorenzo de'Medici Institute in Florence and then the New York Studio School (NYSS). She received the NYSS Mercedes Matter Fellowship in 2012, and the Murray Art Prize in 2015. In 2017, Wrobel completed a painting residency at the Berlin Art Institute. Her work has been featured at international art fairs including Art Basel: Miami, Texas Contemporary, and Art SouthHampton and has been an official selection at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and MassArt Auction. Her paintings have been featured in publications in the US and Europe, in coursework at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and are included in public and private collections around the United States, Europe, South America, Asia, and Australia. Wrobel's work is represented by Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in Boston, MA.

Artist Spotlight: Clint Baclawski

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is thrilled to officially represent the artwork of Clint Baclawski, a Boston-based artist working with photography, technology, light, and space. Working out of 35 Wareham Street studio, Clint transforms his landscape photographs into 3D light installations. He separates his photographs into sections which he wraps around LED light tubes and sets vertically across plexiglass sheets. The result is an interactive and compelling illuminated landscape whose dialogue with the viewer renews and refreshes as the viewer moves along the composition. We recently sat down with Clint to ask him questions about his background, process, and recent work. Check out our interview below:

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Photograph of Clint Baclawski by Tony Luong

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery: How has your upbringing influenced your work? What was the original spark that drew you to study photography?

Clint Baclawski: Growing up, I was a Montessori student so, even from a very young age, I’ve always been encouraged to explore my creative interests in the greatest way possible. My older sister, also an artist, attended MICA, originally for photography before switching to painting. She was a constant source of inspiration for me to pursue a creative path. However, it was really my father, a veteran and former state police officer, who inspired me to pick up my first camera at 12 years old. He was a photography hobbyist and invited me to join him for one of the photography darkroom classes he was attending. Since that day, I’ve essentially not put my camera down for the last 25 years.

AOG: Fast-forward several years later, and you’ve graduated with a degree in advertising photography. Why the shift towards fine art? What lessons from advertising have you held onto?

CB: The impetus to major in advertising photography was simply my desire to learn everything I possibly could about cameras and lighting. However, it was never my intention to go into the field of advertising or editorial work as I’ve always been drawn more towards fine art. Despite the early rise of digital photography, I was fortunate enough to be attending an institution, Rochester Institute of Technology, that had such a strong connection to The Eastman Kodak Company and film. The school instilled in me a great love of positive E-6 film, which is the basis of why I continue to shoot exclusively with a large-format camera. My early fascination with light, without my conscious knowledge, was developed during critiques. Instead of presenting images on the wall, we presented our film transparencies on a light table, in order to better develop exposure, technicality, and knowledge.

AOG: What is your creative process like? How do you start a piece? Do you have a vision of the end result?

CB: When I’m conceptualizing my next work, sometimes I start a piece with the photograph, and, other times I will start a piece by considering how I’d like it presented, then hunt for an image which will best align with that vision.

Even with the rise of digital photography during my undergraduate years, I’ve always been drawn to film photography and these days my large format camera is often mistaken for a video camera when it’s on the tripod. The most unique aspect of my process is that I typically only shoot one frame. I either capture the image or I don’t.

I am interested in making each piece uniquely different from the previous one. I’ve enjoyed playing with multiple sizes of lightbulbs, spacing between the bulbs, and the pattern of those bulbs. Also, I’m very loyal to my camera. Everything I’ve shot in the past 15 years has been with the same Horseman camera with a standard 150 lens.

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Clint Baclawski, Oasis, 2017. Glossy red Plexiglas and red mirrored Plexiglas on Dibond, archival pigment backlight prints, clear polycarbonate tubes, 2′ LED bulbs 44 x 80 x 3 in.

AOG: You’ve previously spoken about the serendipitous moment of a piece of film draping over a blub and inspiring this new exploration. How do light bulbs differ from your light boxes? What does this medium offer you?

CB: Yes, I entered graduate school in 2006 at MassArt, presenting rather traditional 2-D work. Then, for a few years, inspired by Canadian artist Jeff Wall, I presented my work in custom-built lightboxes. One night, in my studio a piece of discarded photograph fell onto a light table, setting off a figuratively lightbulb in my head, which lead me to begin wrapping my images around them.

On the most basic level, my current light bulb pieces are a deconstruction of the light boxes. As a medium, the lightbulb offers me endless of options of size and scale, which is a departure to the more confined nature of the lightboxes.

AOG: Much of your current photography explores landscapes and architecture, whether it be a houseboat, wind turbines, or a home. Why this theme? What kinds of subject matter are you drawn to?

CB: In the last few years, I’m drawn to photographing places that are generally solitary in nature and were often inhabited but may no longer be. I then use the lightbulbs as a representative symbol of former advertising displays. More recently, after living here for almost 13 years, I’ve finally turned my camera to capture subject matter in New England. Previously, most of the imagery I exhibited was far outside of New England.

2017, ©Clint Baclawski

AOG: Last fall, you showed Zephyr, an immersive installation in a shipping container for Boston’s HUB week (and recently sold, woohoo congrats). How has this harmony between technology and art, electricity and film, defined your work?

CB: I wouldn’t exactly say defined it but when HUBweek asked me to propose artwork for the shipping container I was intrigued by the concept and felt confident that I already had an image, Zephyr, that strongly represented their theme. Zephyr at HUBweek was really about viewer engagement. The scale allowed the piece to be viewed from different angles, producing a different viewer experience for each person. Some HUBweek viewers preferred the upclose nature of the work, which produces an abstract image, but most prefer to walk along the image until it comes together as one. And, quite honestly, the children who viewed the piece simply loved the lights. As a father, I took particular delight in young people interacting with the work.

AOG: What types of pieces are you working on currently? Do you have any goals or experiments you’re eager to try?

CB: Lately, I’ve been working on a few large-scale site-related proposals and one I am particularly excited about is entitled Fringe. The installation includes new materials and a slight departure from my other image concepts and I look forward to presenting it in the gallery as part of a solo exhibition opening on Friday, September 6, 2019.

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Clint Baclawski’s solo exhibition locations include San Luis Obispo, California; St. Louis, Missouri; Boston, Massachusetts; Edinburgh, Scotland; and group shows at the Chelsea Art Museum, Danforth Museum, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, San Diego Art Institute, and others. His work has been featured in: FRAME magazine, The Boston Globe, The Creator’s Project, Boston Home magazine, Designboom, Take Magazine, and The Collector’s Guide to New Art Photography Volume II. When not in his studio or behind a camera, Clint is a staff member, and teaches Installation Art to graduate students at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.