JANELLE LYNCH: PRESENCE

BURCHFIELD PENNEY ART CENTER PRESENTS
JANELLE LYNCH: PRESENCE
JUNE 13 – NOVEMBER 30, 2014
Presence 10 (TB)
“Presence celebrates my kinship with Charles Burchfield, which is based on a reverence for and anthropomorphic vision
of the natural world, an appreciation for solitude as well as close relationships, and a commitment to creative freedom.”
— Janelle Lynch, photographer and 2013 Artist-in-Residence at Burchfield Penney Art Center
From January through December, 2013, American large-format landscape photographer and Jamestown, New York native
Janelle Lynch was the first Artist-in-Residence at the Burchfield Penney Art Center at SUNY Buffalo State, the only museum
dedicated to the artists of Western New York, including the famed watercolorist Charles E. Burchfield. Lynch made eight weeklong
visits from New York City to Buffalo to further her own work inspired by Burchfield. A selection from the seventeen works that she
made during her residency will be shown in an exhibition at The Center entitled Janelle Lynch: Presence on view from June 13
through November 30, 2014. The show will focus on Lynch’s tree portraits, including those featured in this press announcement:
Presence 10 (TB), Presence 1 (TJ), and Presence 14 (JNC). The accompanying catalog includes an essay by Nancy Weekly, Head of
Collections and the Charles Cary Rumsey Curator at Burchfield Penney.
Lynch’s work is a visceral and emotional response to a subject, place, and time, which together with the artist’s personal history and
literary references, converge to make her transcendent images of the natural world. With each quietly passionate body of work, she
makes new discoveries about the landscape, the world, photography, and herself.
Dr. Anthony Bannon, The Center’s director, and former director of George Eastman House from 1996 to 2012, writes: “What a
pleasure - and honor - to facilitate excellence, to make possible inquiry, and to see realized an expression that has the modesty to
acknowledge the shoulders upon which it stands and at the same time is possessed of the vision to extend Charles Burchfield's legacy
to an utterly new and revealing appreciation of all that it might mean, through words and images, to be alive and in the midst of a still
embracing nature. Janelle Lynch's work gives renewing purpose to Charles Burchfield's archive at the Burchfield Penney Art Center.
We could not have anticipated a more perfect fulfillment of The Center's new endowment for research and art, created by Peter and
Joan Andrews in honor of Dr. Edna Lindemann, the founding director of The Center.”
Lynch was first drawn to Burchfield’s work in 2006 due to a shared capacity to imagine human-like characteristics in nature; hence,
she anthropomorphizes her subjects. Lynch, like Burchfield, was inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s nature writings and
transcendental philosophy, which suggests the natural world is formed and informed by spirits, and that its elements are symbols of a
great spirituality. Lynch’s work reflects a recent shift among artists away from secular concerns towards a renewed interest in the
metaphysical in art.
Presence 4 (DP) and Presence 6 (SP)
Presence emerged from Lynch’s exploration of two landscapes: across the street from Charles Burchfield’s former home in
Gardenville, New York, now a nature preserve, and the backyard of her home in the Catskill Mountains. She photographed circular
and entwined wild grape vines, coinciding fallen branches, trees coupled like lovers, and a rock enveloped by common wood ferns
like a baby nestled in a blanket. Her innate ability to capture the visceral experience of entering the woods at different times of day,
and sensing the atmosphere pulsating around her, open us up to a visionary experience of place.
For Lynch, each found still life and tree portrait conveys the presence of influences and supporters of her project. To mark this, each
image includes a reference number and initials that represent names of those who were important to or inspired Lynch during her
residency. For example, Presence 7 (AD) is named after the Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Dillard, who, like Burchfield, was
inspired by Thoreau. Presence 2 (NW) stands for Nancy Weekly. Weekly’s enthusiasm and support for Lynch’s work was
instrumental in the development of this body of work. The “[Burchfield Penney] community’s presence became the foundation for my
work,” Lynch writes.
Presence 1 (TJ) and Presence 14 (JNC)
About Janelle Lynch
Lynch’s work is in international private and public collections, including George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y.; Brooklyn Museum,
Brooklyn, N.Y.; New York Public Library, New York, N.Y.; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, Calif.; Fundación AMYC,
Madrid, Spain; and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Salta, Argentina. She received her MFA in Photography from the School of
Visual Arts, and among her many honors are three grants from Kodak. She writes about photography for photo-eye, The Photo Review,
Loupe, and Afterimage, and was a 2012-2013 Fellow at The Writers' Institute, CUNY Graduate Center.
Her latest monograph, Barcelona, published last fall by Radius Book, presents photographs Lynch made of the fallow landscape
outside the city of Barcelona along the banks of Catalonia’s historic Llobregat River. The site of devastating floods, and a brutal civil
war, Lynch’s images of this neglected place serve as a metaphor for absence and presence, mourning and remembrance, at a time
when the artist was mourning the death of her grandmother.
Los Jardines de México (Radius Books, 2011), Lynch’s first monograph, which includes photographs of abandoned playgrounds and
a century old common grave in Mexico City, was named to PDN’s Notable Books of 2011 list. Mark Feeney, art critic at the Boston
Globe, reviewed an accompanying exhibition of the work at the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University. He wrote:
"Lynch clearly delights in defeating expectations … The images are delicate, precise, and rather enchanting." Photographs from Los
Jardines de México, along with her River series, were shown at Robert Morat Galerie in Berlin, Germany, last fall. Lynch’s River
work was also included in the George Eastman House biennial show in 2007 curated by Dr. Alison Nordström, and is currently on
view in the Major Contemporary Galleries of the Newark Museum in Newark, N.J., which acquired the complete series in 2010.
About the Burchfield Penney Art Center at SUNY Buffalo State:
Founded in 1966 on the campus of SUNY Buffalo State, the Burchfield Penney Art Center is dedicated to the art and vision of
renowned American watercolorist Charles E. Burchfield (1893–1967) and the distinguished artists of Western New York State. In
2008, the Burchfield Penney expanded from its location in Rockwell Hall to a new $36 million freestanding facility in the heart of
Buffalo’s Museum District. Designed by Gwathmey Siegel and Associates Architects, the museum includes more than 84,000 square
feet dedicated primarily to galleries, as well as education and program space. It is home to the world’s largest collection of artwork
and ephemera by Burchfield and a collection of more than 8,000 works by over 850 artists. The Burchfield Penney was the first LEED
certified art museum in New York State and was featured by travel editors of the New York Times as one of the “44 Places to Go in
2009.” For more information, visit http://www.burchfieldpenney.org.
Event Details:
Janelle Lynch: Presence Exhibition
Burchfield Penney Art Center
Charles E. Burchfield Rotunda
On View: Friday, June 13 through Sunday, November 30, 2014
Opening Reception with the Artist:
Friday, June 13, 5:30-7:30pm
1300 Elmwood Avenue
Buffalo, New York
For more information, go here.
Janelle Lynch Publications:
Barcelona Book Details:
12.75 x 10 inches
112 pages; 39 color and 11 duotone illustrations
Hardcover; $55
ISBN: 978-1-93445-68-7
Los Jardines de Mexico Book Details:
11 x 14 inches
64 pages; 37 color illustrations
Hardbound; $50.00
ISBN: 978-1-93443-53-11
Media Contact:
Andrea Smith; 646-220-5950; andreasmith202@gmail.com