Edie Bresler
It’s a pleasure to feature the works of Edie Bresler. Edie is a Boston area photographic artist and educator. I recall the first time I got to know Edie was when I had the pleasure of sharing a portfolio review table with her as reviewers in the New England Portfolio Reviews at the Griffin Museum of Photography a few years back. What a great day we had viewing and discussing many artists works and bouncing ideas back and forth in all manner of perspectives on the art and artists. It was inspiring. I’m so glad we’re finally doing a feature. Edie is a is a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowship in Photography, a NY Foundation for the Arts grant, a Berkshire Taconic Artist Resource Grant, multiple Visual Artist Fellowships from the Somerville Arts Council and several Faculty Research grants from Simmons University, where Bresler has been a faculty member since 2000. Her works have been exhibited, in numerous museums and galleries and works are in the collections at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Danforth Museum of Art, and Polaroid Corporation. Bresler is represented by Gallery Kayafas in Boston . We are so pleased. Edie has a huge and varied body of work and we feel like we chose something that to me reminded me of her in a way that was sort of personal, tactile and joyous. And I can dig it.
- Steven Duede
Trading Gazes
Edie Bresler describes the images in Trading Gazes as a means to hold onto the passage of time, and these are works that cross years. They live in a present moment, recording the view immediately in front of one’s eye, yet also reflecting on the past and familial memories.
We have one of Bresler’s earlier works in the permanent collection at the Danforth Art Museum. Its focus is a convenience store, but the eye immediately goes to the expansive and colorful sky that dominates the view. The work is a part of the series We Sold A Winner, in which Bresler photographs the sites where winning lottery tickets were sold. She highlights the places and people behind the winnings, those who labor at the fringes of stories of instant wealth. Many of the images in the series are figural, but the work in our collection depicts the expansiveness of the landscape and the timelessness of the setting sun, while also referencing the moment in which a winning lottery ticket was sold and changed a life.
Trading Gazes is very different visually, but there is a thread that connects each series—a need to look back while also capturing a present moment. These works focus on the details—birds, chairs, and geometric forms emerge from window screens are patterned like quilts. Instead of looking through the window—beyond the glass or the screen—Bresler highlights the beauty in obstructions. She describes creating the pieces as “meditative interiority”—daydreaming and transforming interior thoughts into something tangible. Her use of handwork—cutting, pasting, sewing, making prints—creates visual layers that mimic memories.
Jessica Roscio, Ph.D.
Director and Curator, Danforth Art Museum
i use my mother's dictionary and the letter ‘M' to locate the imagery. I randomly find the word 'migration' and then move several pages backwards to find the word 'mates', then 'mazes' and finally alight on 'Milky Way'. The surrealists believed this kind of randomness helped reveal hidden thoughts and ideas.
Trading Gazes
Staring out a window we usually focus on the world outside and not the glass or the screen. For this project I fuse the two together. When an interior meditation or daydream is merged with the outside world, it results in an unexpected amalgamation of memory, place and time. Each photograph for this project was made with a 4x5 camera and a single sheet of film.
In NYC, I was inspired by the randomness of found objects. Day after day I collected objects such as discarded paper, wood, plastic and painted scraps. I then placed them directly onto the window panes in conversation with the buildings across the street.
When I moved to Somerville a few years later, I had window screens for the first time since I was a kid. As a new mother caring for my infant son, I spent a lot of time thinking of my own mother, who passed away from ALS when I was a teenager. By chance one day I noticed a similarity between the meshing of my window screens and her ubiquitous needlepoint meshing. As a way to engage her in conversation, I began cutting, quilting and sewing my window screens with the intention of photographing through the prepared screens to the world beyond.
I use my mother's dictionary and the letter ‘M' to locate the imagery. I randomly find the word 'migration' and then move several pages backwards to find the word 'mates', then 'mazes' and finally alight on 'Milky Way'. The surrealists believed this kind of randomness helped reveal hidden thoughts and ideas.
The female figures on the abandoned building across the way are neighbors and acquaintances. I am interested in the way a small figure placed deliberately within the landscape quietly elicits a self-reflexive connection, returning the gaze back inside.
To continue pushing the metaphoric possibilities of the original sewn screens, I also make photograms by placing them directly on top of papers hand coated with cyanotype and van dyke brown emulsions. Combining these new photographic traces with embroidery is akin to returning full circle to my mother sewing on the family couch.
Edie Bressler
Edie Bresler
Chance, serendipity and a fascination for the relational trace of a moment onto paper are at the heart of Edie Bresler's photography projects. In addition to gallery exhibitions from ongoing projects, Bresler is also keenly interested in collaboration and has produced several community art actions. Bresler is the recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowship in Photography, a NY Foundation for the Arts grant, a Berkshire Taconic Artist Resource Grant, multiple Visual Artist Fellowships from the Somerville Arts Council and several Faculty Research grants from Simmons University, where Bresler has been a faculty member since 2000.
For an artist residency at the Boston Center for the Arts, Bresler created a pop-up local economy based on photography , trust and ultimately, trade exchange. More recently, Bresler partnered with the Emerald Necklace Conservancy to create an on-site project honoring Frederick Olmstead's bicentennial. A spontaneous group of friends and passersby came together to create a portfolio of fifty five unique Cyanotypes at Jamaica Pond, one of the emeralds in Omstead's necklace of parks.
Their most recent studio project involves hand embroidering prints to inventively re- stage a day in the life of a vernacular, nineteenth century, anonymous nude. On the road, Bresler spent ten years following the trail of winning jackpot lottery tickets back to the mom and pop stores where the ticket was sold. Bresler's projects have been featured on Good Morning America, PBS Greater Boston, in Photograph Magazine, Lenscratch, Slate, Esquire, Photo District News, Business Insider, and many others.
Her photographs are in collections at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Danforth Museum of Art, and Polaroid Corporation. Bresler is represented by Gallery Kayafas in Boston and is proud to have raised an amazing son who now resides in Washington DC.
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