Bio:
Aaron Blum is an eighth-generation West Virginian, and creates art deeply linked to his home. Most of his work centers around a single question, what does it mean to be Appalachian? Through this question he address many different artistic concepts from idealized memory vs. stereotypes to ideas of folk taxonomy and identity. His creation process is a diversified approach of image-based media to create a glimpse into his own concepts of self, and the social fabric of a very large and misrepresented people and place within Appalachia. He pays close attention to the quality of light and the landscape as well as cultural markers to produce a unique version of life in the hills. After graduating with degrees in photography from West Virginia University and Syracuse University Aaron relocated to Pittsburgh where he is now a Professor in the CFA Photography Department at Carnegie Mellon University.

Statement:

The Prevailing Winds of Hills and Heritage

Appalachia pulls at me like a haunted memory. There is an ineffable force that compels me to suspend reality and embrace superstition and myth. It is a longing to hold on to my culture and history in spite of the modern world. The nebulous forests, enveloping moss and dark corners seem to tell a purer truth.

Storytelling in Appalachia has a long-standing tradition, and it infuses the region with mystery. Using lore, pseudo-scientific study, and personal experiences as a compass I see this place through idealized eyes of wonder, and these images become my personal folklore. They bring to life the fantasies and memories I carry with me. This is a place where you can wash away sin in cool stream waters, where corpse birds come to ferry away souls to the next life, rocks burn and kudzu conceals. This is the place where the prevailing winds whisper old stories to those who know how to listen.

With Elizabeth Avedon Curating

September/October 2026

Bio:

I am an abstract painter and also an accomplished photographer. It may be that this immersion in dual mediums influences my unusual approach to both. Due to my unique vantage point when photographing everyday objects, each is imbued with significance as standalone contributors to the natural world, but my paintings further transform them, envisioning how they might manifest in a different dimension once given color and alternative form. While this might suggest an association with abstract art, it is my ability to see objects differently and create a unique representation of each which is the hallmark of my work. The palettes, which I mix myself, consist of color combinations rarely utilized by others. While Initially an Intentional signature, this approach Is now deeply permeating within my dynamic style of painting.  My influences are as varied as life Itself which creates a deeply personal aspect to my art.

Statement: I am an abstract painter and also a photographer. I work in both mediums at the same time which keeps my art fresh.

Bio:

Tiffany Bolk (b.1975) is a Minnesota based artist who specializes in narrative photography. She has shown her photos in multiple states as well as out of the country and has won several awards for her work. She has an MFA in photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and her BFA in photography from The Minneapolis College of Art and Design in Minnesota.

Artist Statement:

Many of the ideas behind my photographs revolve around nostalgia, innocence and girlhood on the brink of womanhood. The girls in these photos are innocent in their nightgowns, but they are venturing out alone in an eerie landscape that represents the unknown and the possible danger that the future may hold.

Bio:

Judy Brown follows a career as Professor of Physics at Wellesley College and Research Scientist at the MIT Media Lab by combining her long-time passions for animals and photography. She loves spending time with farm animals, getting to know them and their individual behavioral quirks.  Her photographs have been shown in solo shows in Griffin Museum of Photography satellite galleries, MIT Architecture Department Tele-exhibit, as well as several local libraries.  Selections from her “Antique Skin”, “Elliott”, “Weatherbury Farm”, and “Unity Farm Sanctuary” portfolios have been selected for over four dozen juried exhibitions.  Her book “Weatherbury Farm” received an honorable mention by Elizabeth Avedon in her list of Best Photography Books of 2020: Round-up Part II.   She is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and a 2019 Critical Mass 200 Finalist.

Bio:

Maureen Ruddy Burkhart is an award-winning and internationally exhibited artist. She received her BFA in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1976 and went on to work in film, documentary photography, and always came back to her first love—fine art photography.

Burkhart’s work has been shown in Paris, London, China, Barcelona, New York, Denver, The Center for Photographic Art…and outer space—courtesy of the British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Humanity in Space. Her work has been featured in The Photo Review, Black and White Magazine, The Guardian, All-About-Photo, Slate, Edge of Humanity, & Feature Shoot. Her photographs are in collections in the International Museum of Dance, the MIT Libraries/Collections on Islamic Architecture, The Asia Society Museum in NY, and Art Photo Index.

Statement: From the series Aerosol Suspensions 

If a collector is interested, I am currently exploring doing an edition of (3.) I have a local artisan that will create a new version of the wood triptych using the frame sample attached. The Title of the work will be etched and sandblasted on glass as in the original. However, I do not have a total cost for that yet, but the original sold for $5,000.

Statement:

SPECULUM – THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS I view this body of work as a confluence of many life lessons. The diverse references, subjects and materials in the Speculum series are all part of a historic, cultural and spiritual journey. Beyond a mere reaction to external stimuli, I see each image as the voice and expression of the man I am today.

Bio:

Fernando Delgado was born in 1957, in Santiago de Cuba. In 1969, at the age of twelve, he and his family came to live in the United States—They settled in Newark, New Jersey where Delgado graduated from Arts High School. He attended The Cooper Union School of Art and Parsons School of Design in New York where he studied with Louise Nevelson, Milton Glaser, Henry Wolf and Herb Lubalin. In 1981, Delgado embarked on a successful advertising career in New York. While working with the best talent in the industry, he honed his skills as a creative professional with Macy’s, Avon, Bloomingdale’s, Bonwit Teller and Young & Rubicam Advertising. After more than twenty-five years promoting, scrutinizing and working with thousands of images, stepping behind the camera seemed only natural for Delgado. In 2005, he moved to the high desert of New Mexico, where he currently lives and works. His work has been exhibited and published nationally and is part of many public and private collections. Delgado is also a published author and popular speaker; he conducts workshops, public talks and works with various groups in the public and private sector.

Bio:

Diane Fenster is a fine art photographer and digital artist based in Pacifica, California. A pioneer of digital imaging, she was the first artist inducted into the Photoshop Hall of Fame in 2001. Her work explores memory, mortality, myth, and the inner life, drawing on Jungian depth psychology, alchemy, and the natural world. Her work has been exhibited at the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, CA, and PH21 Gallery in Budapest and Barcelona, and recognized three times by Photolucida’s Critical Mass Top 200 photographers.

Statement:

Rappaccini’s Daughter Transformed

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” Beatrice is raised within her father’s poison garden until she herself becomes venomous — beautiful, untouchable, and finally destroyed by the antidote meant to save her. Three men shape her fate: the father who made her, the lover who feared her, the doctor who poisoned her with a cure. She dies at their hands, an innocent casualty of male science and male desire.

Rappaccini’s Daughter Transformed refuses that ending.

Here, Beatrice lives. She survives the antidote, survives the men, survives the story itself. She grows old inside the garden walls, and what her father intended as a prison becomes her dominion. The poisons that marked her as monstrous become her pharmacopoeia. Season by season she deepens into what the world calls a witch: mistress of spells and tinctures, keeper of plants that heal and plants that kill, a woman who understands that these are often the same plant, differing only in the dose and the hand that administers it.

These photographs imagine Beatrice transformed — the crone the nineteenth century could not permit her to become. She is no longer anyone’s daughter. The garden answers to her now.