The Cummings Foundation Artist Residency - Griffin Museum of Photography
Source: https://griffinmuseum.org/cummings_2327
Archived: 2026-04-23 17:21
The Cummings Foundation Artist Residency - Griffin Museum of Photography
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In 2023 The Griffin Museum of Photography announced that it was awarded a generous grant from the
Cummings Foundation
. This grant enabled the museum to offer outstanding opportunities to emerging and established photographers from diverse backgrounds. The Griffin is one of 150 local nonprofits selected to share in $30 million through Cummings Foundation’s major annual grants program. This grant allows The Griffin Museum of Photography to support various photographers’ creative endeavors and to encourage engagement with the local community in Winchester.
This extraordinary program was funded for three years from 2023 – 2026. The artists selected are exhibiting through 2027. We are grateful to the Cummings Foundation for their support of the arts, and of the Griffin. Thank you to the remarkable artists who work with us to create the outstanding projects we are honored to show at the museum.
Airut
Ville Kansanen
New Land 241
Rodrigo Valenzuela
Queen Mary (The Queen)
Alanna Airitam
Where a Forest Once Grew (View 3)
Lua Kobayahi
You Mean Everything to Me / Happy Together
Jean Shon
Two Trees Marigram
Margaret LeJeune
The Cummings Residency Program
selected visual artists from a national and international search, artists of differing backgrounds, including but not limited to ethnicity, age, social, financial and cultural backgrounds to come to Winchester and engage with our local community. Using their specific skill set, the artist worked to create a photographically based exhibition and installation, which can include sculpture, video or other physical installation possibilities as a result of their connection to the Griffin Museum, Winchester and surrounding areas, while engaging in critical dialogues about art and culture with both the youth and adult community they inhabit.
Introducing the 2026-2028 Awardees.
Lua Kobayashi
Where a Forest Once Grew (View 3)
Lua Kobayahi
Untitled
Lua Kobayashi
Untitled
Lua Kobayashi
Untitled
Lua Kobayashi
Where a Forest Once Grew
Lua Kobayashi
Because of You
(
Okagesama
)—an immersive, community-centered project exploring Japanese-American identity in Winchester and the greater Boston area. The project draws its name and spirit from okagesama, a common expression of gratitude meaning “because of you.” It honors all the visible and invisible forces that come together to shape our lives and experiences.
This project was inspired by Kobayashi’s own family. After her grandmother passed away, she began uncovering her story through the belongings her grandmother left behind—her lipstick, her jewelry, her coats. These simple, everyday items became powerful evidence of her life as a Nisei. Every object helped piece together her portrait. Her story, in turn, has allowed Kobayashi to learn more about herself and the stories she carries, to honor those who came before her, and to acknowledge the lasting influence they continue to have on future generations.
The next chapter of this project unfolds in Winchester and Boston, to delve into the stories of the people
and communities that shape these places today. Like many Japanese-American families, Kobayashi’s was incarcerated during WWII at Heart Mountain. After the war, they lived briefly in Chicago before
returning to the West Coast. She has often wondered what life might have looked like if they had stayed in the Midwest or moved elsewhere—what different paths and stories might have emerged. That curiosity fuels her desire to understand the lives of Japanese-Americans who chose to remain or settle in other parts of the U.S., and how those individual histories continue to shape local culture today.
Lua Kobayashi is a California-based artist and UCLA graduate. Her work typically takes its form in photo, video, and installation – often combining all three.
As an artist of Japanese-American and Uruguayan descent, she explores the narratives embedded within objects, places, and people, particularly focusing on the stories individuals leave behind. Growing up in a predominantly white suburbia, she felt like an outsider, prompting her to delve into why this was. It led her to uncover the hidden stories behind seemingly perfect facades, as everything was not as perfect as it seemed. This exploration, along with investigating her heritage and understanding her place within the community, significantly shaped her approach to creating artwork.
Her practice is dedicated to unraveling these kinds of intricate stories within communities, recently she has had a particular emphasis on Japanese-Americans and familial lineages. Fueled by a profound curiosity about history, culture, and her own heritage, she strives to understand both herself and the stories of her ancestors.
Jean Shon
You Mean Everything to Me / Happy Together
Jean Shon
Date Unknown (Back)
Jean Shon
The Journey
Jean Shon
A Different Life: What Cost
Jean Shon
Jean Shon often employs family and community artifacts as immediate vessels to the intimate and familiar. Through subtle manipulation and regeneration, the work is pared down to its essence, asking the viewers to redefine their relationships to a being, a space, a notion, a thing. Shon, in turn, is creating a new archive—a speculative one based upon her evolving relationship with the material. Rather than being reduced to static archival relics, Shon’s work opens up space to reconstruct memory in perpetuity.
This work aims to show the complex exchanges between ideas & words, thought & speech, concept & writing. Shon is interested in examining alternative ways of communication, using personal experience as the basis of her research. In October 2015, Shon’s father was suddenly diagnosed with brain cancer. After he had surgery, doctors diagnosed him with aphasia, a language disability that affects a person’s ability to communicate. This rewiring of the brain necessitated the adoption of other means to express his needs.
Shon interprets loss as a reframing method to preserve connection, toggling between the ambiguous or defined, personal or communal, concrete or intangible. Shon’s work lingers between the thresholds of legibility & illegibility, rupture & relation, and fact & fiction in order to sustain connection through loss. Embracing the unresolved, Shon consciously seeks to be attuned with loss rather than attempting to move past it. Through intersections of the autobiographical and history of the space, Shon’s work transforms artifacts and remnants from the past by re-presenting them to both reveal and reimagine the history it holds.
Jean Shon is a visual artist and educator working at the intersection of images, text, installation, and photography.
As a second-generation daughter, designated memorykeeper, family link—Shon is constantly negotiating the burden of debt, guilt, obligation with her kin. Her work is a testament to this struggle: piecing together fragments in order to understand, honor, and carry forward who and what came before us. Recent solo exhibitions include Lawndale Art Center, Sawyer Yards, and Box 13 in Houston, TX. She has exhibited at Phase Gallery and PRJCT in Los Angeles, as well as solo and group shows nationwide. Jean has been awarded residencies at Ragdale, Lighthouse Works, James Castle House, and Galveston Artist Residency, among others. She earned her Master of Fine Arts from the University of California-Irvine and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is an Assistant Professor of Art at Florida State University.
Margaret LeJeune
Map Lines
Margaret LeJeune
Absence of Knowing
Margaret LeJeune
Two Trees Marigram
Margaret LeJeune
Logging Map Mobile
Margaret LeJeune
Thirteen Hours to Fall
examines the climate crisis through investigations of contemporary and future ghost forests on the mid-Atlantic coast. Ghost forests, large areas of dead and dying trees, are visible manifestations of intruding saltwater. In this project, I consider how colonial capitalists, the ensuing extraction economy, and rising sea levels have dramatically changed this landscape over the last 400 years. This interdisciplinary and intersectional project is informed by environmental history, including the marginalization of indigenous peoples and appropriation of their lands, as well as the imprint of slavery and white supremacy in this region. Colonial timber industries, plantation farming, and climate change have extensively altered this region. Results of this shifting landscape include massive tree deaths, diminished carbon storage and biodiversity, and critical impacts on local communities.
As the United States faces the real threat of authoritarian power and the systematic stripping away of federal agencies’ abilities to protect land and water, and the world continues to experience rising sea levels and temperatures, I am more compelled than ever to share this work.
Margaret LeJeune’s creative practice explores the relationship between art, science, and environmental studies. As a lens-based creator, she produces works that probe shifting landscapes, symbiotic relationships, and the nature of the photographic medium. In 2023, she was named the Woman Science Photographer of the Year by the Royal Photographic Society.
Her photographs, installations, and video works have appeared in over 150 solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. She has been an artist-in-residence at several programs that promote collaboration between the arts and sciences, including the Changing Climate Residency at Santa Fe Art Institute, University of Wisconsin – Madison Trout Lake Research Station, University of Notre Dame Environmental Research Center, Ives Lake Field Station at Huron Mountain Wildlife Foundation, and the Global Nomadic Art Project.
LeJeune’s work can be found in the permanent collection of Nevada Museum of Art Center for Art+Environment, Central Michigan University Galleries, Radford University Art Museum, Nazareth University, and many private collections. She is the recipient of the Cummings Residency Prize at the Griffin Museum of Photography (2025-26), two Puffin Foundation Visual Artist Grants (2014/2022), and a Community Arts Foundation Grant (2018). Her work has been published in Slate, Lenscratch, Oxford American, Urbanautica, Tatter Journal, and books from art.earth press including
Culture, Community, and Climate: conversations and emergent praxis
and
Evolving the Forest
.
LeJeune received her MFA from Visual Studies Workshop and was a Full Professor at Bradley University. She has recently held visiting scholar positions at Rochester Institute of Technology, Central Michigan University, and Radford University.
She is a founding member of the
Women’s Environmental Photography Collective
and is the current Vice-Chair of the
Society for Photographic Education
(SPE).
Past Recipients
André Ramos-Woodard
© Andre Ramos Woodard
© Andre Ramos Woodard
© Andre Ramos Woodard
© Andre Ramos Woodard
© Andre Ramos Woodard
Anti-Blackness seems inescapably mixed into whatever context I place it into; literature, science, government, health, art… look into any “field” and see for yourself. My people have had to cry, scream, and fight for respect for centuries, and we still have not gained what we deserve. To move past the damage this has done to our society, we can’t simply deny our history—we must recognize it. We must acknowledge the many ways in which this country has perpetuated a racial hierarchy since these lands were first colonized and stripped from indigenous peoples, and Black people were stolen from their native land and brought to America.
In
BLACK SNAFU
(Situation Niggas: All Fucked Up)
, I appropriate various depictions of Black people that I find throughout the history of cartooning and juxtapose them with photographs that celebrate and line up more authentically with my Black experience. The photographs I create vary in subject matter; I seek to include celebratory portraits, didactic still lives, and representational documentations of places rich in their relation to Black community, allowing me to fight back against the history of the racist caricature that I reclaim in my work. By combining these ambivalent visual languages, I intend to expose to viewers America’s deplorable connection to anti-Black tropes through pop culture while simultaneously celebrating the reality of what it means to be Black.
Raised in the Southern states of Tennessee and Texas, André Ramos-Woodard (he/they) is a photo-based artist who uses their work to emphasize the experiences of marginalized communities while accenting the repercussions of contemporary and historical discrimination.
His art conveys ideas of communal and personal identity, influenced by their direct experience with life as a queer African American. Focusing on Black liberation, queer justice, and the reality of mental health, he aspires for his art to help bring power to the people.
Selected for Foam Museum’s Foam TALENT Award in 2024 and a two-time top-50 Finalist for Photolucida’s Critical Mass (in 2020 and 2023), Ramos-Woodard has shown their work at various institutions across the United States a beyond, including the Foam Museum–The Netherlands, Amsterdam, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston–Houston, Texas, Leon Gallery–Denver, Colorado, and FILTER Photo–Chicago, Illinois. He received his BFA from Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, and his MFA at The University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Rodrigo Valenzuela
New Land 241
Rodrigo Valenzuela
New Land 245
Rodrigo Valenzuela
New Land 221
Rodrigo Valenzuela
New Land 240
Rodrigo Valenzuela
New Land 230
Rodrigo Valenzuela
Rodrigo Valenzuela works in the fields of photography, video, and installation. His artistic vision is based on the tension between documentary and fiction. In his new exhibition,
New Land
, Valenzuela showcases a series of desert images on canvas. These images delve into the intersecting themes of home, man-made borders, and dystopia, questioning what ghosts lie in the
supposedly
empty desert and what histories have been lost in the sublime landscape that our minds cannot begin to visualize. Valenzuela uses bold lines to fragment these desert landscapes, inviting the viewer to lean into the sublimity and consider the past and future stories that are often lost in an inconceivably large area of land.
Rodrigo Valenzuela (b.Santiago, Chile 1982) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, where he is the Associate Professor and Head of the Photography Department at UCLA.
Valenzuela has been awarded the 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography and Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship; Joan Mitchell award for painters and sculptors; Art Matters Foundation grant; and Artist Trust Innovators Award. Recent solo exhibitions include: New Museum, NY; Lisa Kandlhofer Galerie, Vienna, AU; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene; Orange County Museum; Portland Art Museum; Frye Art Museum, Seattle. Recent residencies include: Core Fellowship at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; MacDowell Colony; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; Lightwork; and the Center for Photography at Woodstock.
Alanna Airitam
Queen Mary (The Queen)
Alanna Airitam
Saint Minton
Alanna Airitam
Saint Monroe
Alanna Airitam
Saint Strivers
Alanna Airitam
Saint Lenox
Alanna Airitam
Saint Nicholas
Alanna Airitam
Saint Abyssinian
Alanna Airitam
Challenging the norms of portraiture, Alanna Airitam (b. 1971) weaves historical references and contemporary themes into her captivating compositions. In this series,
The Golden Age
(2017), Airitam illuminates marginalized faces and untold stories, using familiar imagery from the Dutch Golden Age to ask larger questions. Many of the works’ titles refer to the places and players of the Harlem Renaissance. Against opulent backgrounds and adorned in regal attire, her subjects radiate an unwavering majesty, confronting biases and addressing racial gaps in traditional art-historical representation. Through light and shadow, Airitam accentuates the multifaceted nature of her subjects, revealing emotional and psychological depths. They declare their agency and resilience, shining a light on stories that have been obscured for far too long.
Alanna Airitam is a photo-based conceptual artist based in Tucson, Arizona.
Airitam pushes the traditional boundaries of photography by incorporating materials such as metal, resin, varnish, and gold into her work. Her work is inspired by the lighting of 17h century Renaissance paintings, early Black studio photography, and historic and contemporary narratives.
Airitam’s work has garnered recognition with features in notable publications such as the Chicago Tribune, BBC News, Artdoc Photography Magazine, and Lenscratch. Her work has been exhibited and collected at esteemed institutions including the Center for Creative Photography, New Orleans Museum of Art, the Fidelity Collection, Virginia Museum of Fine Art, and Rhode Island School of Design Museum.
She was awarded the 2020 San Diego Art Prize, the 2020 Michael Reichman Project Grant Award, 2020 Critical Mass Finalist, 2021 Silver List, and 2023 Project Mesquite: New Works Grant from the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona.
Driven by a commitment to empowering emerging artists of color, Airitam serves as a valuable board member for Medium Photo and Oakwood Arts, organizations dedicated to fostering opportunities for underrepresented creatives. She co-founded the Southwest Black Artists Collective, a platform that champions the voices and contributions of Black artists within the Southwest region. Additionally, she promotes the work of undergrad and grad students through the MFA Homecoming Program and mentors emerging artists from low economic backgrounds to use their voice and to help open doorways in the art world.
Ville Kansanen
Salting the Earth
Ville Kansanen
Mojave Portals
Ville Kansanen
Airut
Ville Kansanen
Mojave Portals
Ville Kansanen
Through photo-based projects and installations, including
Mojave Portals,
Airut
, and
Salting the Earth
, Kansanen questions the lifespan of bodies of water. He considers the permanence and power of water. Specifically,
Mohave Portals
comments on the eventual depletion and demise of Earth’s bodies of water;
Airut
portrays the gradual death of lakes; and
Salting the Earth
simulates the effects of saltwater intrusion and desertification on coastal lands.
Ville Kansanen (b.1984) is a Finnish multidisciplinary artist based in California. He works with photography, video, installation, and land art.
The central theme of his work is to conceive of the photograph as a unique metaphysical space with idiosyncratic properties of gravity, time, mass, and motion. Employing the traditions and techniques of photography, land, and installation art, Ville creates sculptural work that exists and functions within photographic space.
Ville is an autodidact whose work has been featured in several print and online publications, such as American Photo Magazine, GUP Magazine, SFAQ, and Diffusion Magazine. Ville’s awards include a Hopper Prize and a Lucie Award. His first monograph was released by Datz Press in 2022. He has exhibited internationally with non-profit and private galleries.
About the Cummings Foundation
Woburn-based Cummings Foundation, Inc. was established in 1986 by Joyce and Bill Cummings of Winchester, MA, and has grown to be one of the largest private foundations in New England. The Foundation directly operates its own charitable subsidiaries, including New Horizons retirement communities in Marlborough and Woburn, and Cummings Health Sciences, LLC. Additional information is available at
www.CummingsFoundation.org
.
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Welcome we are excited to have you and your creativity seen by so many.
1: Log into your membership account
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supporter or above
otherwise you will not see the add a profile button.
3: You can find the Griffin Salon on the Members Drop down in our Main Navigation on the home page or by starting here –
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( the button launches the form
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Amy Rindskopf's Terra Novus
At the market, I pick each one up, pulled in by the shapes as they sit together, waiting. I feel its heft in my hand, enjoy the textures of the skin or peel, and begin to look closer and closer. The patterns on each individual surface marks them as distinct. I push further still, discovering territory unseen by the casual observer, a new land. I am like a satellite orbiting a distant planet, taking the first-ever images of this newly envisioned place.
This project started as an homage to Edward Weston’s Pepper No. 30 (I am, ironically, allergic to peppers). As I looked for my subject matter at the market, I found that I wasn’t drawn to just one single fruit or vegetable. There were so many choices, appealing to both hand and eye. I decided to print in black and white to help make the images visually more about the shapes, and not about guessing which fruit is smoothest, which vegetable is greenest.
Artistic Purpose/Intent
Artistic Purpose/Intent
Tricia Gahagan
Photography has been paramount in my personal path of healing from disease and
connecting with consciousness. The intention of my work is to overcome the limits of the
mind and engage the spirit. Like a Zen koan, my images are paradoxes hidden in plain
sight. They are intended to be sat with meditatively, eventually revealing greater truths
about the world and about one’s self.
John Chervinsky’s photography is a testament to pensive work without simple answers;
it connects by encouraging discovery and altering perspectives. I see this scholarship
as a potential to continue his legacy and evolve the boundaries of how photography can
explore the human condition.
Growing my artistic skill and voice as an emerging photographer is critical, I see this as
a rare opportunity to strengthen my foundation and transition towards an established
and influential future. I am thirsty to engage viewers and provide a transformative
experience through my work. I have been honing my current project and building a plan
for its complete execution. The incredible Griffin community of mentors and the
generous funds would be instrumental for its development. I deeply recognize the
hallmark moment this could be for the introduction of the work. Thank you for providing
this incredible opportunity for budding visions and artists that know they have something
greater to share with the world.
Fran Forman RSVP
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In 2023 The Griffin Museum of Photography announced that it was awarded a generous grant from the
Cummings Foundation
. This grant enabled the museum to offer outstanding opportunities to emerging and established photographers from diverse backgrounds. The Griffin is one of 150 local nonprofits selected to share in $30 million through Cummings Foundation’s major annual grants program. This grant allows The Griffin Museum of Photography to support various photographers’ creative endeavors and to encourage engagement with the local community in Winchester.
This extraordinary program was funded for three years from 2023 – 2026. The artists selected are exhibiting through 2027. We are grateful to the Cummings Foundation for their support of the arts, and of the Griffin. Thank you to the remarkable artists who work with us to create the outstanding projects we are honored to show at the museum.
Airut
Ville Kansanen
New Land 241
Rodrigo Valenzuela
Queen Mary (The Queen)
Alanna Airitam
Where a Forest Once Grew (View 3)
Lua Kobayahi
You Mean Everything to Me / Happy Together
Jean Shon
Two Trees Marigram
Margaret LeJeune
The Cummings Residency Program
selected visual artists from a national and international search, artists of differing backgrounds, including but not limited to ethnicity, age, social, financial and cultural backgrounds to come to Winchester and engage with our local community. Using their specific skill set, the artist worked to create a photographically based exhibition and installation, which can include sculpture, video or other physical installation possibilities as a result of their connection to the Griffin Museum, Winchester and surrounding areas, while engaging in critical dialogues about art and culture with both the youth and adult community they inhabit.
Introducing the 2026-2028 Awardees.
Lua Kobayashi
Where a Forest Once Grew (View 3)
Lua Kobayahi
Untitled
Lua Kobayashi
Untitled
Lua Kobayashi
Untitled
Lua Kobayashi
Where a Forest Once Grew
Lua Kobayashi
Because of You
(
Okagesama
)—an immersive, community-centered project exploring Japanese-American identity in Winchester and the greater Boston area. The project draws its name and spirit from okagesama, a common expression of gratitude meaning “because of you.” It honors all the visible and invisible forces that come together to shape our lives and experiences.
This project was inspired by Kobayashi’s own family. After her grandmother passed away, she began uncovering her story through the belongings her grandmother left behind—her lipstick, her jewelry, her coats. These simple, everyday items became powerful evidence of her life as a Nisei. Every object helped piece together her portrait. Her story, in turn, has allowed Kobayashi to learn more about herself and the stories she carries, to honor those who came before her, and to acknowledge the lasting influence they continue to have on future generations.
The next chapter of this project unfolds in Winchester and Boston, to delve into the stories of the people
and communities that shape these places today. Like many Japanese-American families, Kobayashi’s was incarcerated during WWII at Heart Mountain. After the war, they lived briefly in Chicago before
returning to the West Coast. She has often wondered what life might have looked like if they had stayed in the Midwest or moved elsewhere—what different paths and stories might have emerged. That curiosity fuels her desire to understand the lives of Japanese-Americans who chose to remain or settle in other parts of the U.S., and how those individual histories continue to shape local culture today.
Lua Kobayashi is a California-based artist and UCLA graduate. Her work typically takes its form in photo, video, and installation – often combining all three.
As an artist of Japanese-American and Uruguayan descent, she explores the narratives embedded within objects, places, and people, particularly focusing on the stories individuals leave behind. Growing up in a predominantly white suburbia, she felt like an outsider, prompting her to delve into why this was. It led her to uncover the hidden stories behind seemingly perfect facades, as everything was not as perfect as it seemed. This exploration, along with investigating her heritage and understanding her place within the community, significantly shaped her approach to creating artwork.
Her practice is dedicated to unraveling these kinds of intricate stories within communities, recently she has had a particular emphasis on Japanese-Americans and familial lineages. Fueled by a profound curiosity about history, culture, and her own heritage, she strives to understand both herself and the stories of her ancestors.
Jean Shon
You Mean Everything to Me / Happy Together
Jean Shon
Date Unknown (Back)
Jean Shon
The Journey
Jean Shon
A Different Life: What Cost
Jean Shon
Jean Shon often employs family and community artifacts as immediate vessels to the intimate and familiar. Through subtle manipulation and regeneration, the work is pared down to its essence, asking the viewers to redefine their relationships to a being, a space, a notion, a thing. Shon, in turn, is creating a new archive—a speculative one based upon her evolving relationship with the material. Rather than being reduced to static archival relics, Shon’s work opens up space to reconstruct memory in perpetuity.
This work aims to show the complex exchanges between ideas & words, thought & speech, concept & writing. Shon is interested in examining alternative ways of communication, using personal experience as the basis of her research. In October 2015, Shon’s father was suddenly diagnosed with brain cancer. After he had surgery, doctors diagnosed him with aphasia, a language disability that affects a person’s ability to communicate. This rewiring of the brain necessitated the adoption of other means to express his needs.
Shon interprets loss as a reframing method to preserve connection, toggling between the ambiguous or defined, personal or communal, concrete or intangible. Shon’s work lingers between the thresholds of legibility & illegibility, rupture & relation, and fact & fiction in order to sustain connection through loss. Embracing the unresolved, Shon consciously seeks to be attuned with loss rather than attempting to move past it. Through intersections of the autobiographical and history of the space, Shon’s work transforms artifacts and remnants from the past by re-presenting them to both reveal and reimagine the history it holds.
Jean Shon is a visual artist and educator working at the intersection of images, text, installation, and photography.
As a second-generation daughter, designated memorykeeper, family link—Shon is constantly negotiating the burden of debt, guilt, obligation with her kin. Her work is a testament to this struggle: piecing together fragments in order to understand, honor, and carry forward who and what came before us. Recent solo exhibitions include Lawndale Art Center, Sawyer Yards, and Box 13 in Houston, TX. She has exhibited at Phase Gallery and PRJCT in Los Angeles, as well as solo and group shows nationwide. Jean has been awarded residencies at Ragdale, Lighthouse Works, James Castle House, and Galveston Artist Residency, among others. She earned her Master of Fine Arts from the University of California-Irvine and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is an Assistant Professor of Art at Florida State University.
Margaret LeJeune
Map Lines
Margaret LeJeune
Absence of Knowing
Margaret LeJeune
Two Trees Marigram
Margaret LeJeune
Logging Map Mobile
Margaret LeJeune
Thirteen Hours to Fall
examines the climate crisis through investigations of contemporary and future ghost forests on the mid-Atlantic coast. Ghost forests, large areas of dead and dying trees, are visible manifestations of intruding saltwater. In this project, I consider how colonial capitalists, the ensuing extraction economy, and rising sea levels have dramatically changed this landscape over the last 400 years. This interdisciplinary and intersectional project is informed by environmental history, including the marginalization of indigenous peoples and appropriation of their lands, as well as the imprint of slavery and white supremacy in this region. Colonial timber industries, plantation farming, and climate change have extensively altered this region. Results of this shifting landscape include massive tree deaths, diminished carbon storage and biodiversity, and critical impacts on local communities.
As the United States faces the real threat of authoritarian power and the systematic stripping away of federal agencies’ abilities to protect land and water, and the world continues to experience rising sea levels and temperatures, I am more compelled than ever to share this work.
Margaret LeJeune’s creative practice explores the relationship between art, science, and environmental studies. As a lens-based creator, she produces works that probe shifting landscapes, symbiotic relationships, and the nature of the photographic medium. In 2023, she was named the Woman Science Photographer of the Year by the Royal Photographic Society.
Her photographs, installations, and video works have appeared in over 150 solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. She has been an artist-in-residence at several programs that promote collaboration between the arts and sciences, including the Changing Climate Residency at Santa Fe Art Institute, University of Wisconsin – Madison Trout Lake Research Station, University of Notre Dame Environmental Research Center, Ives Lake Field Station at Huron Mountain Wildlife Foundation, and the Global Nomadic Art Project.
LeJeune’s work can be found in the permanent collection of Nevada Museum of Art Center for Art+Environment, Central Michigan University Galleries, Radford University Art Museum, Nazareth University, and many private collections. She is the recipient of the Cummings Residency Prize at the Griffin Museum of Photography (2025-26), two Puffin Foundation Visual Artist Grants (2014/2022), and a Community Arts Foundation Grant (2018). Her work has been published in Slate, Lenscratch, Oxford American, Urbanautica, Tatter Journal, and books from art.earth press including
Culture, Community, and Climate: conversations and emergent praxis
and
Evolving the Forest
.
LeJeune received her MFA from Visual Studies Workshop and was a Full Professor at Bradley University. She has recently held visiting scholar positions at Rochester Institute of Technology, Central Michigan University, and Radford University.
She is a founding member of the
Women’s Environmental Photography Collective
and is the current Vice-Chair of the
Society for Photographic Education
(SPE).
Past Recipients
André Ramos-Woodard
© Andre Ramos Woodard
© Andre Ramos Woodard
© Andre Ramos Woodard
© Andre Ramos Woodard
© Andre Ramos Woodard
Anti-Blackness seems inescapably mixed into whatever context I place it into; literature, science, government, health, art… look into any “field” and see for yourself. My people have had to cry, scream, and fight for respect for centuries, and we still have not gained what we deserve. To move past the damage this has done to our society, we can’t simply deny our history—we must recognize it. We must acknowledge the many ways in which this country has perpetuated a racial hierarchy since these lands were first colonized and stripped from indigenous peoples, and Black people were stolen from their native land and brought to America.
In
BLACK SNAFU
(Situation Niggas: All Fucked Up)
, I appropriate various depictions of Black people that I find throughout the history of cartooning and juxtapose them with photographs that celebrate and line up more authentically with my Black experience. The photographs I create vary in subject matter; I seek to include celebratory portraits, didactic still lives, and representational documentations of places rich in their relation to Black community, allowing me to fight back against the history of the racist caricature that I reclaim in my work. By combining these ambivalent visual languages, I intend to expose to viewers America’s deplorable connection to anti-Black tropes through pop culture while simultaneously celebrating the reality of what it means to be Black.
Raised in the Southern states of Tennessee and Texas, André Ramos-Woodard (he/they) is a photo-based artist who uses their work to emphasize the experiences of marginalized communities while accenting the repercussions of contemporary and historical discrimination.
His art conveys ideas of communal and personal identity, influenced by their direct experience with life as a queer African American. Focusing on Black liberation, queer justice, and the reality of mental health, he aspires for his art to help bring power to the people.
Selected for Foam Museum’s Foam TALENT Award in 2024 and a two-time top-50 Finalist for Photolucida’s Critical Mass (in 2020 and 2023), Ramos-Woodard has shown their work at various institutions across the United States a beyond, including the Foam Museum–The Netherlands, Amsterdam, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston–Houston, Texas, Leon Gallery–Denver, Colorado, and FILTER Photo–Chicago, Illinois. He received his BFA from Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, and his MFA at The University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Rodrigo Valenzuela
New Land 241
Rodrigo Valenzuela
New Land 245
Rodrigo Valenzuela
New Land 221
Rodrigo Valenzuela
New Land 240
Rodrigo Valenzuela
New Land 230
Rodrigo Valenzuela
Rodrigo Valenzuela works in the fields of photography, video, and installation. His artistic vision is based on the tension between documentary and fiction. In his new exhibition,
New Land
, Valenzuela showcases a series of desert images on canvas. These images delve into the intersecting themes of home, man-made borders, and dystopia, questioning what ghosts lie in the
supposedly
empty desert and what histories have been lost in the sublime landscape that our minds cannot begin to visualize. Valenzuela uses bold lines to fragment these desert landscapes, inviting the viewer to lean into the sublimity and consider the past and future stories that are often lost in an inconceivably large area of land.
Rodrigo Valenzuela (b.Santiago, Chile 1982) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, where he is the Associate Professor and Head of the Photography Department at UCLA.
Valenzuela has been awarded the 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography and Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship; Joan Mitchell award for painters and sculptors; Art Matters Foundation grant; and Artist Trust Innovators Award. Recent solo exhibitions include: New Museum, NY; Lisa Kandlhofer Galerie, Vienna, AU; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene; Orange County Museum; Portland Art Museum; Frye Art Museum, Seattle. Recent residencies include: Core Fellowship at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; MacDowell Colony; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; Lightwork; and the Center for Photography at Woodstock.
Alanna Airitam
Queen Mary (The Queen)
Alanna Airitam
Saint Minton
Alanna Airitam
Saint Monroe
Alanna Airitam
Saint Strivers
Alanna Airitam
Saint Lenox
Alanna Airitam
Saint Nicholas
Alanna Airitam
Saint Abyssinian
Alanna Airitam
Challenging the norms of portraiture, Alanna Airitam (b. 1971) weaves historical references and contemporary themes into her captivating compositions. In this series,
The Golden Age
(2017), Airitam illuminates marginalized faces and untold stories, using familiar imagery from the Dutch Golden Age to ask larger questions. Many of the works’ titles refer to the places and players of the Harlem Renaissance. Against opulent backgrounds and adorned in regal attire, her subjects radiate an unwavering majesty, confronting biases and addressing racial gaps in traditional art-historical representation. Through light and shadow, Airitam accentuates the multifaceted nature of her subjects, revealing emotional and psychological depths. They declare their agency and resilience, shining a light on stories that have been obscured for far too long.
Alanna Airitam is a photo-based conceptual artist based in Tucson, Arizona.
Airitam pushes the traditional boundaries of photography by incorporating materials such as metal, resin, varnish, and gold into her work. Her work is inspired by the lighting of 17h century Renaissance paintings, early Black studio photography, and historic and contemporary narratives.
Airitam’s work has garnered recognition with features in notable publications such as the Chicago Tribune, BBC News, Artdoc Photography Magazine, and Lenscratch. Her work has been exhibited and collected at esteemed institutions including the Center for Creative Photography, New Orleans Museum of Art, the Fidelity Collection, Virginia Museum of Fine Art, and Rhode Island School of Design Museum.
She was awarded the 2020 San Diego Art Prize, the 2020 Michael Reichman Project Grant Award, 2020 Critical Mass Finalist, 2021 Silver List, and 2023 Project Mesquite: New Works Grant from the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona.
Driven by a commitment to empowering emerging artists of color, Airitam serves as a valuable board member for Medium Photo and Oakwood Arts, organizations dedicated to fostering opportunities for underrepresented creatives. She co-founded the Southwest Black Artists Collective, a platform that champions the voices and contributions of Black artists within the Southwest region. Additionally, she promotes the work of undergrad and grad students through the MFA Homecoming Program and mentors emerging artists from low economic backgrounds to use their voice and to help open doorways in the art world.
Ville Kansanen
Salting the Earth
Ville Kansanen
Mojave Portals
Ville Kansanen
Airut
Ville Kansanen
Mojave Portals
Ville Kansanen
Through photo-based projects and installations, including
Mojave Portals,
Airut
, and
Salting the Earth
, Kansanen questions the lifespan of bodies of water. He considers the permanence and power of water. Specifically,
Mohave Portals
comments on the eventual depletion and demise of Earth’s bodies of water;
Airut
portrays the gradual death of lakes; and
Salting the Earth
simulates the effects of saltwater intrusion and desertification on coastal lands.
Ville Kansanen (b.1984) is a Finnish multidisciplinary artist based in California. He works with photography, video, installation, and land art.
The central theme of his work is to conceive of the photograph as a unique metaphysical space with idiosyncratic properties of gravity, time, mass, and motion. Employing the traditions and techniques of photography, land, and installation art, Ville creates sculptural work that exists and functions within photographic space.
Ville is an autodidact whose work has been featured in several print and online publications, such as American Photo Magazine, GUP Magazine, SFAQ, and Diffusion Magazine. Ville’s awards include a Hopper Prize and a Lucie Award. His first monograph was released by Datz Press in 2022. He has exhibited internationally with non-profit and private galleries.
About the Cummings Foundation
Woburn-based Cummings Foundation, Inc. was established in 1986 by Joyce and Bill Cummings of Winchester, MA, and has grown to be one of the largest private foundations in New England. The Foundation directly operates its own charitable subsidiaries, including New Horizons retirement communities in Marlborough and Woburn, and Cummings Health Sciences, LLC. Additional information is available at
www.CummingsFoundation.org
.
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otherwise you will not see the add a profile button.
3: You can find the Griffin Salon on the Members Drop down in our Main Navigation on the home page or by starting here –
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Amy Rindskopf's Terra Novus
At the market, I pick each one up, pulled in by the shapes as they sit together, waiting. I feel its heft in my hand, enjoy the textures of the skin or peel, and begin to look closer and closer. The patterns on each individual surface marks them as distinct. I push further still, discovering territory unseen by the casual observer, a new land. I am like a satellite orbiting a distant planet, taking the first-ever images of this newly envisioned place.
This project started as an homage to Edward Weston’s Pepper No. 30 (I am, ironically, allergic to peppers). As I looked for my subject matter at the market, I found that I wasn’t drawn to just one single fruit or vegetable. There were so many choices, appealing to both hand and eye. I decided to print in black and white to help make the images visually more about the shapes, and not about guessing which fruit is smoothest, which vegetable is greenest.
Artistic Purpose/Intent
Artistic Purpose/Intent
Tricia Gahagan
Photography has been paramount in my personal path of healing from disease and
connecting with consciousness. The intention of my work is to overcome the limits of the
mind and engage the spirit. Like a Zen koan, my images are paradoxes hidden in plain
sight. They are intended to be sat with meditatively, eventually revealing greater truths
about the world and about one’s self.
John Chervinsky’s photography is a testament to pensive work without simple answers;
it connects by encouraging discovery and altering perspectives. I see this scholarship
as a potential to continue his legacy and evolve the boundaries of how photography can
explore the human condition.
Growing my artistic skill and voice as an emerging photographer is critical, I see this as
a rare opportunity to strengthen my foundation and transition towards an established
and influential future. I am thirsty to engage viewers and provide a transformative
experience through my work. I have been honing my current project and building a plan
for its complete execution. The incredible Griffin community of mentors and the
generous funds would be instrumental for its development. I deeply recognize the
hallmark moment this could be for the introduction of the work. Thank you for providing
this incredible opportunity for budding visions and artists that know they have something
greater to share with the world.
Fran Forman RSVP