Gloucester Daily Times
Lifestyle –Thursday, May 19, 2006
http://www.gloucestertimes.com/

'Piecing together fragments of memory'

By Seeing seARTS
Nadine Boughton

Growing up in a Kodak family in Rochester, N.Y., I had early access to, and interest in, cameras. My photographs are a visual memoir covering street life, road trips and the "cultural landscape," as well as the interior spaces of family, home and self portraiture.

When photographing myself, I am exploring identity and the flow of time. Most recently, I compose digital collages using vintage materials to explore the past.

My work has been exhibited at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Photographic Resource Center in Boston; Bromfield Gallery in Boston, artSpace Gallery in Malden, Panopticon Gallery in Boston, and Hess Gallery at Pine Manor Junior College, to name a few.

Professional work includes a digital collage portrait business called Babies in Blossom. I am also a published writer and poet, and coach others exploring writing, voice and image.

Fifty years of photography

Next Wednesday, I will show photographs from my journey with the camera over five decades, beginning with when I was 12 years old using a Brownie up to my present work with digital technology. I will illustrate the various cultural trends in photography's history and the ways they have influenced my own personal vision, which today focuses on a project called "The Pleasures of Modernity."

I have always been drawn to collage, its element of surprise and the new meanings that arise in bringing together diverse elements. As a girl, I cut up the weekly Life magazine, its advertisements and news photos to assemble my own pictures and stories.

My process still involves taking a scissors to magazines from the '40s and '50s. Cutting out images in an unconscious way puts me in touch with that early experience of "making."

Now, drawing from a number of sources, including vintage materials and my own photographs, I scan and compose digital collages. This technology gives me many more possibilities.

I feel I am piecing together fragments of memory, that I am "remembering" myself. My interest is in the cultural milieu that shaped me, how views of women, homemaking, gender, beauty, food and the "pleasures of modernity" were portrayed.

My work is often a parody of the false, comfortable world of advertising. There is nostalgia for an imagined time as well as a search for the dark underside.

I am influenced by the feminist work of Laurie Simmons and Sandy Skoglund, the collages of John O'Reilly, the entire pop art period, and Walt Disney's cartoons.

"Seeing seARTS" is an occasional Times feature featuring the work of seARTS members or those who participate in seARTS events. The Society for the Encouragement of the Arts is a non-profit organization whose mission is to re-establish Cape Ann as a world-class center for working artists in balance with the unique character of Cape Ann as a maritime community.

Nadine Boughton

Age: 62

Hometown: Medford

Art: Photographer, muralist

Other experience with her art: Lecture for seARTS, "Voices of Women, Unitarian Church, Cambridge; creative and writing coach, coaching artists and writers on creative process issues; contributor to Spirit of Change magazine, The Complete Guide to Mental Health for Women, Open Mind, an anthology of women's writing; teaching at Lesley University in Cambridge, Bentley College, Boston College, Arts Lexington; muralist for MBTA project, Boston Arts & Humanities competition, 1990, Cambridge River Festival, Cambridge Arts Council

Connection to seARTS: Lecturer for seARTS' "Community-Visitor Education Series: Artists on Artists".