Category: Exhibitions

My Ranching Life at the Ildiko Butler Gallery ?>

My Ranching Life at the Ildiko Butler Gallery

My Ranching Life
Featuring works by: Jean Laughton

Curator: Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock

Exhibition dates: May 22–September 30, 2015
Reception: Wednesday, September 23, 6–8 p.m.

The Ildiko Butler Gallery
Fordham University at Lincoln Center MAP
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023
The gallery is open from 9am to 9pm everyday except on university holidays
fordhamuniversitygalleries.com

Image caption: Riding Drag on the Brunsch Ranch, 2012

This day we were ‘neighboring’ on the Brunsch family ranch and working with a crew of about twenty other neighboring ranchers. We do this in the fall and spring to help each other out. Just at sunrise, we gathered over four hundred pairs and trailed them a few miles into the corrals at the headquarters of the ranch for shipping day. This was when I first started cowboying, so I was appropriately riding drag, in the back. – Jean Laughton

My Ranching Life by Jean Laughton brings together eighteen black and white prints made from negatives shot between 2002 and 2011. A native Iowan, photographer Jean Laughton moved from New York City after sixteen years of residence to the Badlands of South Dakota in 2002 to pursue her projects. What was initially intended to be a brief photographic opportunity turned into thirteen years, with Jean working her way up from ranch hand novice to ranch manager at Lyle O’Bryan’s Quarter Circle XL Ranch.

The photographs in My Ranching Life are a small sample selected from hundreds of images made by Laughton over an extended time period; nevertheless, they represent a thoughtful depiction of a ranching community from the perspective of a participant, as opposed to that of an outside observer. Her photographs document the realities of the vocation—all panoramas are shot from horseback while working—and give shape to a depiction of American ranching life shorn of gloss and stereotype. The following statement by Laughton captures the essence of her endeavor succinctly:

I feel lucky to work in an area of ranches where things are done the old way—in the day of herding cattle on 4 wheelers I am happy to say we do it all on horseback. And we also brand with a wood fire and drag the calves in on horseback. There are many here who take pride in their cowboying—keeping the traditions and the spirit of individualism alive.

I would like to offer a very special thanks to Jean Laughton for her decision to leave New York City back in 2002. We would not have her timeless landscapes and lovely testimonial on display in Fordham University’s Ildiko Butler Gallery had she not decided to radically change her life by leaving behind the big city and beginning her new ranching life. For more information about My Ranching Life, Jean’s story, as well as her other related projects, Go West, and Americana, please visit her website.

Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, 2015

For more information contact: Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock
For the Visual Arts Department Blog: click here
For the Visual Arts Department Website: click here 

Faculty Spotlight 2015 ?>

Faculty Spotlight 2015

Faculty Spotlight 2015

The Ildiko Butler Gallery
Fordham University at Lincoln Center MAP
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023
ildikobutlergallery.com

Featuring works by:
Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock
Richard Kalina
Anibal Pella-Woo

The current display of works in Fordham University’s Ildiko Butler Gallery is the 2015 installment of the annual Faculty Spotlight Exhibition. Each year in the fall three members from the Department of Theater and Visual Art are asked to share a sampling of their production with the Fordham community. Richard Kalina represents painting this year and photography is represented by both Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock and Anibal Pella-Woo. Despite the differences in their mediums and approaches, their works generate a lively dialogue regarding content and representational methods.

Dates: February 3, 2015 – March 10, 2015
Reception: Tuesday, February 3, 2015, 6 – 8 p.m.
WEB:

For more information please contact: apicellahit@fordham.edu

Living Los Sures: Selections ?>

Living Los Sures: Selections

LIVING LOS SURES: SELECTIONS
Curator: UnionDocs
Exhibition dates: July 25 – October 25, 2014
The Ildiko Butler Gallery
Fordham University at Lincoln Center MAP
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023

The six works in this show are part of the larger project Living Los Sures, a collaborative documentary about the Southside of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, produced by UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art.

From 2010 through 2014, UnionDocs is producing a collaborative web documentary about the Southside neighborhood in Williamsburg, Brooklyn where the organization has been situated for nearly a decade. Part omnibus film, part media archeology, part deep-map and city symphony, the project uses Los Sures, a brilliant work of cinema verite directed by Diego Echeverría in 1984, as a starting point for the investigations of more than forty artists over the course of four years. Collectively, their projects tell the story of a longstanding Latino community that is defeating displacement and surviving the growth machine. Living Los Sures is a multi-part project that restores a lost film, remixes local histories, reinvestigates Williamsburg’s Southside today, and hopes to reunite a neighborhood around a sustainable future.

In the late seventies and early eighties, the Southside of Williamsburg was one of the poorest neighborhoods in New York City. In fact, it had been called the worst ghetto in America. Los Sures, a documentary from 1984 by Diego Echeverría, skillfully represents the challenges of this time; drugs, gang violence, crime, abandoned real estate, racial tension, single parent homes, and inadequate local resources. Yet, Echeverría’s portrait also celebrates the vitality of this largely Puerto Rican community, showing the strength of their culture, their creativity and their determination to overcome a desperate situation.

UnionDocs has partnered with Echeverría to develop Living Los Sures, revisiting his powerful film to pursue four primary goals. RESTORE: Bring the original film back to life and make it accessible online for the first time, working with the local community to update, annotate, and challenge the narrative through a participatory platform. REMIX: Expand the experience of the original through deeply interactive audio/visual experiments. REUNITE: Activate the community to engage vital civic issues for a more sustainable future. REINVESTIGATE: Create new short documentaries to illustrate the issues the community faces today.

To date, over thirty such reinvestigations have been created by members of the UnionDocs Collaborative Studio. Each year since 2010, UnionDocs has hosted twelve Collaborative artist-fellows who work together to produce short documentary projects about the Southside today. These projects cover a wide range of topics and forms — from short videos to soundworks, audio walks, installations and interactive media. The works in this show represent the variety of form and subject matter, as well as the common concerns, that characterize the Living Los Sures project.

For more information please contact: Toby Lee or Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock

From the Archives ?>

From the Archives

BUTLER_GALLERY_FROM_THE_ARCHIVES
From the Archives: Photographs by William Fox from the Fordham University Archives and Special Collections
Curator: Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock
Exhibition dates: June 6 – July 18, 2014
The Ildiko Butler Gallery
Fordham University at Lincoln Center MAP
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023
From the Archives: Photographs by William Fox from the Fordham University Archives and Special Collections brings together seventeen contemporary digital prints made from the original negatives housed in the Archives at the Rose Hill campus’ Walsh Family Library. William Fox was a professional photographer who worked for Fordham University on a freelance basis for upwards of twenty years generating photographs that span a range of topics from commencements, to classrooms, and from campus architecture, to student life. The varied images presented in this exhibition were all created between the years of 1940 and 1941.
Fox’s negatives were all made to the exacting standards of the time with a large format, tripod mounted camera and provided an impressive level of fidelity – a task requiring considerable craft. The fact that the negative emulsion has separated, cracked, and deteriorated is not due to their care, as archival standards in archives only developed in the 1980s, but due to the instability of the materials themselves. That we have them at all is a small miracle and testament to the good care provided by those that have worked at the Fordham University Archives and Special Collections over the years.

The images in From the Archives are a small sample selected from thousands of negatives made by William Fox and represent the beginnings of Fordham University’s self-awareness, from a publicity and photographic point of view. His photographs documented the growth of Fordham University over an extended period and gave shape to aspects that the university valued up to and through the tumultuous times of World War two.
It should be emphasized that not all of William Fox’s negatives evidence deterioration. The curatorial choices here intentionally highlight the flaws of the analog process for their mystery and visual beauty, in contrast to our digital age of precision and perfection. Special thanks to Patrice Kane, Head of Archives and Special Collections at Fordham University for her expertise and continued assistance.
Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, 2014
For more information please contact: apicellahit@fordham.edu

Selections from the Fordham University Charles Francis | Graphic Design Archives ?>

Selections from the Fordham University Charles Francis | Graphic Design Archives

Selections
from the Fordham University
Charles Francis | Graphic Design Archives

The Lipani Gallery
Fordham University at Lincoln Center MAP
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023
http://lipanigallery.com/

Curators: Curated by Abby Goldstein with Lucy Sutton and Sally Thurer
On view: February 3 through March 28, 2014
Reception: Opening reception: Thursday February 27, 5:30 to 7pm

This exhibition highlights just a small portion of a rich and unique collection that has been acquired by Fordham University Lincoln Center for our Graphic Design Archives. The material spans a period of 100 years, showing the history of the advertising, printing, paper, and typesetting industries. Many items in this collection are limited-edition printed samples of design and typography, books on typography, paper and printing techniques, typographic specimens, and books on printing and design. Charles Francis (1846–1936), who was one of the preeminent American publishers of the twentieth century and considered the “dean of the American printing industry,” began to assemble the collection in the 1880s. Mr. Francis wrote several books on printing and founded the Printers’ League of America in 1906. He dedicated his life to promoting the industry and to teaching publishing, and this extraordinary collection is a testimony to his commitment and zeal. The collection continued to grow under the stewardship of the Allied Printing Union, which was housed in the New York High School of Printing for many years.

The work on display in the Lipani Gallery is a mélange of type and printing examples that illustrates the inventiveness and advancement in the advertising, design, and typesetting industry during the first half of the twentieth century. Highlighted in the exhibition are the inventive and groundbreaking magazines Upper and Lower Case (U&lc) and Westvaco Inspirations.

Upper and Lower Case was created and produced by Herb Lubalin, a highly regarded iconoclastic advertising art director, type designer and publication designer for the International Typeface Corporation (ITC). The “newspaper style” publication was targeted toward the design community. There were over 120 issues produced between 1970 and 1999. The publication promoted the latest typefaces from ITC, which was the first type foundry to exploit new photo typesetting techniques and not use traditional metal foundry type.

Lubalin served as art director to U&lc for 11 years, until his death in 1981. The publication focused on showing experimental typographic compositions and was hugely successful within the design community as it shepherded in a period of new and expressive typography.

Westvaco Inspirations was a graphic-arts publication issued by the Westvaco Corporation, originally called the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company. The objective of the magazine was to demonstrate what the printing processes and its papers could produce by utilizing a variety of cutting-edge and traditional printing methods, including letterpress and offset lithography. Originally published in 1925, Westvaco Inspirations was a leading corporate contributor to the graphic-arts profession until its discontinuation in 1962. It remains unsurpassed as an example of promotional graphics, an anthology of advertising and commercial art, and, more importantly, a chronicle of a period of time in American history.

Between 1939 and 1962, Bradbury Thompson designed more than sixty Westvaco Inspirations. Thompson was highly regarded for his design direction, impeccable taste and his ability to blend modernist typographic layouts with classic typefaces and historic illustrations.

*Runaway Train, 1985, was based on an original screenplay by Akira Kurosawa. It is an action thriller staring Jon Voight, Eric Roberts, Rebecca De Mornay and John P. Ryan.

Sponsored by the Visual Arts Department, Fordham University Lincoln Center

For more information please contact: Abby Goldstein, Associate Professor of Art, Fordham University, abgoldstein@fordham.edu
Visual Arts Department Blog: click here
Visual Arts Department Website: click here

Gary Metz: Quaking Aspen: A Lyric Complaint ?>

Gary Metz: Quaking Aspen: A Lyric Complaint

Gary Metz: Quaking Aspen: A Lyric Complaint

The Ildiko Butler Gallery
Fordham University at Lincoln Center MAP
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023
http://ildikobutlergallery.com/

Curators: Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock & Joseph Lawton
Essay: Edward Earle
Dates: January 20, 2014 – March 20, 2014
Reception: Tuesday, January 21, 6 – 8 p.m.
Gallery Talk: Wednesday, January 22, 6PM: Edward Earle, Curator, Collections, International Center of Photography

Fordham University, winter 2014
Rhode Island School of Design, fall 2014
Spéos International Photography School Paris/London, winter 2015
Syracuse University, spring 2015
Southeast Museum of Photography, fall 2015

In the 1970’s, the late photographer and educator Gary Metz generated a significant body of work that was very much in the spirit of the times. Metz’s Quaking Aspen: a Lyric Complaint challenged the first 100 years of landscape photography, which had placed a major emphasis on depicting nature as sublime, heroic, and unspoiled. Unlike previous photographers who glorified nature, Metz and his contemporaries wrenched photography out of the national parks and replaced the scenic with the vernacular of the American landscape.

A number of Metz’s colleagues received wide recognition for their similar investigations culminating in the seminal 1975 exhibition, The New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape at the Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House. Gary Metz never received the same level of acknowledgement. Now, 40 years later, his Quaking Aspen: a Lyric Complaint is as powerful and relevant as ever, resonating with current interest in ecology and the everyday landscape.

Quaking Aspen: a Lyric Complaint is a long overdue exhibition of our former teacher’s photographs. We hope that you enjoy the intelligence, formal rigor, and humor found in each of these images. –Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock & Joseph Lawton, Professors, Fordham University

This exhibition is generously supported by Fordham University Art Collections & funded in part from a Fordham University Faculty Challenge Grant. For more information please contact: apicellahit@fordham.edu

The 21 black & white gelatin silver prints were printed in 2013/2014 by Sergio Purtell and the staff of Black and White on White

Faculty Spotlight 2013 ?>

Faculty Spotlight 2013

Faculty Spotlight 2013

The Ildiko Butler Gallery
Fordham University at Lincoln Center MAP
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023
http://ildikobutlergallery.com/

Featuring works by:

William Conlon
Sandra McKee
Ross McLaren

The current display of works in Fordham University’s Ildiko Butler Gallery is the 2013 installment of the annual Faculty Spotlight Exhibition. Each year in the fall three members from different disciplines within the Department of Theater and Visual Art are asked to share a sampling of their production with the Fordham community. This year, painting is represented by William Conlon, architecture by Sandra McKee, and film/video by Ross McLaren. Despite the clear differences in their mediums and approaches, their works generate a lively dialogue about interpretations of space and representational methods.

Dates: November 4, 2013 – January 17, 2014
Reception: Wednesday, November 6, 6 – 8 p.m.

WEB:

For more information please contact: apicellahit@fordham.edu