December 2, 2010–February 28, 2011
William Morris Hunt Library
300 Massachusetts Avenue
Boston, MA 02115

This eleventh exhibition in collaboration with the William Morris Hunt Library features student work from:

Laura Ahking
Chris Ford
Joanna Tam
Cindy Tsai
Amanda Bonaiuto
Joo Lee Kang
Anthony Montuori
Amelia Smith
Alaina Gurdak
Jesse Collins
Allison Hale
John Gonzalez
Scott Winter 

SMFA Room B311

Rose Lowder, French filmmaker of painterly single frames. In some ways, Rose Lowder's kinetic, color-saturated, Vincent Van Gogh-esque structural films could just as easily have fit Jean-Luc Godard's description of "blind, trembling pans" as interior representations of the artist's psychological state (as Godard once described Alain Resnais' Van Gogh). In this case, composed of frame by frame stationary shots of a lush field of sunflowers in full bloom near Bédarrides, Vaucluse where the focus of each successive image varies according to prescribed subject patterns - the fluttering of petals, the (sideways) bending of the wind, the cross-pollination of bees, the casting shadows by passing clouds - the apparent movement in the film results from the individual frame changes in the depth of field. Rather than simply capturing the diurnal, two-dimensional, to and fro motion of sunflowers swaying in the breeze, the focal modulation results in a momentary (single frame) displacement perpendicular to the plane of the film frame, causing the resulting image to appear to pulse. Expounding on the ideas presented in her first film, Roulement, Rouerie, Aubage, Lowder's trompe l'oeil "still life" composition is similarly rooted in the mechanism of the mind-eye's registration of images, where the placement of the frames of an image within the continuity of a film strip itself alters its apparent behavior. Creating an increasingly animated portrait of the verdant sunflower field as the natural movement of the sunflowers seemingly triggers a corresponding, proportional change in the camera's alternating focal length, the resulting image becomes a dynamic reflection of the subject itself in its rustic beauty and irresistible vibrancy.

February 23–March 3, 2011
Mission Hill Building, 130 St. Alphonsus St., Boston