Blondeau was born in Detroit in 1938. Originally trained as a painter, she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1961. Under the direction of Aaron Siskind and Joseph Jachna at the Institute of Design, she earned her Master’s degree. Concepts such as transparency, repetition, patterning, and the narrative emerged during graduate school. These concepts would reappear throughout her career.

While still earning her degree, Blondeau began teaching at St. Mary’s College in 1966. Her first solo show was there in 1967. Blondeau finished her Master’s degree in 1968 and moved to Philadelphia to teach at the Moore College of Art. She taught there until she was appointed Chair of the Photography and Film Department at the Philadelphia College of Art in 1971.

Although Blondeau only had two solo exhibitions during her short career, her work was included in twenty-five group shows, eleven after her death. Time-Life Books highlighted her pictures in two of their publications, Frontiers of Photography and The Print. Her work was also published in the magazines Camera, Popular Photography Annual, Afterimage, and Camera Arts. She was part of the group exhibitions Vision and Expression and The Multiple Image, which both resulted in exhibition catalogues. Her photographs are held in the permanent collections of The National Gallery of Canada, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Rhode Island School of Design, and Colgate University.

On Christmas Eve, 1974, Blondeau’s life was cut short by cancer, which she had fought for four years. Since her death, there have been several exhibitions of her work. Colleagues at the Philadelphia College of Art held a memorial exhibition in 1976, and a traveling exhibition followed. The same year, Visual Studies Workshop published the catalogue Barbara Blondeau 1938-1974, featuring works from the exhibition and an essay. In 1984 her strip prints were on display at the Laurence Miller Gallery in New York, and the same gallery presented an exhibition of her work entitled Permutations in 2010. Blondeau’s archive is held at the Visual Studies Workshop

-Laura Minor

The frame was further challenged in her series of life-sized photograms. The paper is not large enough to hold the entire imprint of the figure; the subject has no choice to break free and exist beyond the edge of the paper. Several works in this exhibition illustrate Blondeau’s desire to abstract the human figure. She used multiple exposures, multiple printing, negative collage, and unrealistic color to achieve these reinterpretations of the body.

In Blondeau’s large orthochromatic film prints, her strong sense of narrative comes through. The street photography style brings a heightened sense of reality to the images. Blondeau then counteracts this effect by adding paint and colored paper to the back of the film. Through this process, she creates her own narrative separate from the existing one.

At the time of Blondeau’s premature death in 1974, she had worked professionally for fewer than ten years. In this short period, she created an extensive and diverse body of work, exploring many different concepts. Unfortunately, she was unable to fully investigate her ideas. Through the care of her former colleagues at the Philadelphia College of Art, her archive found a home at the Visual Studies Workshop.

-Laura Minor

Blondeau Holdings

Blondeau Bibliography

Fichter was born in Fort Myers, Florida. Fichter graduated with a BFA from the University of Florida, Gainesville, in Painting and Printmaking, and received his MFA from Indiana University, Bloomington, in Photography and Printmaking in 1966.

Following his completion of the MFA program at Indiana University, Fichter became assistant curator of exhibitions at George Eastman House in Rochester, NY, and held this position until 1968, when he left to teach at the University California at Los Angeles with Robert Heinecken and Todd Walker until 1970. In 1971 Fichter returned to Florida and accepted a position at Florida State University, where he taught in the department of art until his retirement in 2006. He received the Honored Photo Educator award at the Southeastern Regional Meeting of the Society for Photographic Education in 1999. 

For his own photographs, Fichter received a Florida Fine Arts Fellowship in 1981, as well as an NEA Fellowships in 1979 and 1984. Fichter has had more than forty solo exhibitions and has participated in numerous group shows. His first one-man show, Robert Fichter’s Trips, was mounted at George Eastman House in 1968. This resume of one-man shows also includes a major retrospective titled Robert Fichter: Photography and Other Questions which opened at George Eastman House in 1982 and traveled to six other venues. Fichter has also been a part of several notable group shows including the 1981 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and two more shows at George Eastman House, including Images of Excellence in 1984 and Street Engagements: Social Landscape Photography of the Sixties in 1990. 

-Brian Murphy

The images presented here also just start to look at Fichter’s experimentation with the gelatin silver print. During a time when a finely printed gelatin silver image with a full tonal scale was placed in high regard, Fichter, having the knowledge and craftsmanship to produce such a print, chose to experiment further by using his background as a printmaker in etching and lithography. Fichter remarks, “It is clear to everyone today that, as I have been saying for the last thirty years, photography is just another mark-making method. This frequently allows lower costs per unit of production than say, Painting. When you put photos through untraditional processes, then you get new traditions.” These experiments in mark making vary from the use of multiple in-camera exposures to the application of color in various materials such as paint, crayons, rubber stamps, and children’s stickers.

-Brian Murphy

Fichter Holdings

In New York, Frampton briefly roomed with painter Frank Stella and sculptor Carl Andre, whom he had met at Phillips Academy. He found work as a photography assistant and then a technician in dye imbibition color processes. He made his first film in 1962 and began to write about art critically. After completing twenty-two films, many experimental in nature, he was hired as an assistant professor of photography at Hunter College in 1969 and received a grant from Friends of New Cinema. 

Frampton continued to make experimental films that abandoned the traditional narrative structure, often approaching film as a metaphor of consciousness. Around this time he began to explore video synthesis and Xerography. In 1970 his work Zorns Lemma (16mm, 60 min., color, sound) received critical acclaim after its screening at the New York Film Festival. He soon began teaching at the School of Visual Arts and Cooper Union. In 1973 he met photographer Marion Faller, who would be his partner until his death. That same year, a retrospective of his work was held at MoMA, and he began teaching at State University of New York at Buffalo, formally affiliated at the time with Visual Studies Workshop. 

At the Workshop, Frampton published a limited edition artist’s book called Poetic Justice: A Film by Hollis Frampton, which is detailed in this exhibition. In 1975 Frampton had a solo exhibition of his Vegetable Locomotion series (with Faller) at the Visual Studies Workshop Gallery, and in the same year, he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and began his Straits of Magellan project, which would become one of his most ambitious works. 

Frampton continued working in 16mm film but also returned to Xerography in 1979, printing the series By Any Other Name at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY. His portfolio of photographs, ADSVMVS ABSVMVS, was also produced in Syracuse at Light Work and was exhibited at Visual Studies Workshop Gallery in 1982. In 1983, Visual Studies Workshop Press published Circles of Confusion, a 200-page book assembling eleven articles in which Frampton discusses the very nature of the media in which he works. Frampton continued to teach at SUNY Buffalo through the early eighties and worked extensively on the development of the Digital Arts Laboratory. This project sought to create computer hardware and software for use in various creative processes such as sound editing and was at the forefront of working with computers as an artistic tool. 

By the time of his death in 1984 at age 48, Frampton had completed over forty films. Many had been influenced by his photographic work, which had stemmed from his interest in linguistics. He often approached his media simply as catalysts and has sometimes been associated with Post-Modernism because of it. His disposition was often one of humor, which offset the often-complicated concepts of his art.  

–Sarah Weeden

Xerography was yet another way for Frampton to remove the signifier from the signified. He created a series in the last few years of his life entitled By Any Other Name, of which the Workshop holds one in an edition of twelve, which varied from printing to printing. These Xerographs are also all of “specimens” of culture, specifically labels from food products. Each has a somewhat nonsensical reference to something other than what it is, acting as a mascot in order to sell the product, such as “Lotus Sake.” “Poetic Justice:” A Film By Hollis Frampton is a book published by the Visual Studies Workshop Press, and explores a narrative structure using the pages of a manuscript that detail the scenes from the film of the same name.

These examples of Frampton’s work are representative of how the artist worked flexibly between media, and exist as a valuable contribution to the art world as an example of how philosophy, semantics, and art can exist together as a single entity.

-Sarah Weeden

Frampton Holdings

Nettles was born in Gainesville, Florida, and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Florida in June 1968, concentrating in painting and graphics. She was first introduced to photography at the beginning of her senior year. She was encouraged by Robert Fichter to continue pursuing photography and after completing just one quarter in the medium was invited to become Jerry Uelsmann’s assistant. She has been exhibiting her photographs since 1967 and throughout her active career has had over fifty solo exhibitions. The venues for these exhibitions include the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, and Light Gallery and Witkin Gallery in New York City. Her works have also been shown nationally and internationally in major group exhibitions. 

Nettles’s background in painting and printmaking is evident in her non-traditional approaches to the photographic medium. Some of her primary concerns and modes of experimentation include printing multiple negatives, collage, hand coloring, sewing, cyanotypes, silkscreens, and Kwik Proofs. Also, the autobiographical nature of her images lends itself to utilizing the book as a medium. Some of her first artist’s books in the early 1970s were printed at the Visual Studies Workshop. 

In The Woman’s Eye by Anne Tucker (1973), Nettles writes, “In my images, I am attempting to make fantasies visible. Through them, I am investigating and sharing myself, my life, and the landscape that is around and within me. Family ties, twenty years spent in the green growth of Florida, and dreams that I remember in the morning are elements in my work.” It is evident by looking at the timeline of her work that Nettles has been experimenting and innovating from the beginning and the subjects and themes she speaks of continually appear in new and different ways in the media she explores. Nettles actively continues to exhibit her work, give lectures, and teach book arts workshops. She resides in Urbana, Illinois with her husband Lionel Suntop.

-Megan Sullivan

Nettles taught at the Visual Studies Workshop between the years of 1974 and 1977, both as a summer workshop instructor and as a visiting artist, and also taught at Nazareth and RIT, offering instruction in the areas of historic processes as well as book arts. Not only was Nettles exploring the possibilities of the photograph and book forms for herself, but she was also giving others the means for their experimentation.

Nettles’s work is often autobiographical and features women in strong roles. Memories, dreams, and family are also reoccurring themes in her photography and book works. The images in the collection represent a wide range of her early processes and techniques. Her use of the snapshot, screen-printing, sewing, offset printing, collage and the written word give a strong overview of the characteristics being explored in her work.

This exhibition highlights Nettles’s early bookworks that have set a foundation for a continued exploration of similar themes and methods throughout her remarkable career.

-Megan Sullivan

Nettles Holdings

Nettles Bibliography

Bart Parker was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa. He completed his BA in English Literature in 1956 and went on to join the Army. He served for two years and in 1959 he began a career in photojournalism. As the chief photographer for the State Times in Jackson, Mississippi, he covered local news and photographed throughout the South as a freelance photojournalist until 1969. During this time he took the opportunity to study independently from 1964 to1967 with Larry Colwell, a portrait photographer and member of the group f/64, in Jacksonville, Florida.

With his experience as a photojournalist and a course of independent study under his belt, Parker decided to move north to pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). There he studied with Harry Callahan and completed his MFA degree in 1969. He began teaching immediately and continued to do so for twenty-five years. He continued a career as an artist as well but did not rely on it specifically for income. In his 1969 artist’s statement, Parker explained, “Photography provokes mistrust in the viewer when used for purposes other than profit, vanity or information, and this makes it necessary that I earn my living as a teacher, which is an excellent thing.” He started as a professor of art at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign but did not settle there, moving around a lot instead, first back to Rhode Island, then to San Francisco, Los Angeles, and finally back to Rhode Island in 1971. 

Throughout his teaching career, he continued to travel and spent time as a visiting artist, lecturer, and faculty member at institutions nationwide including the University of California Los Angeles and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1987 he was named the Louis K. Beaumont Distinguished Professor at Washington University’s St. Louis School of Art, and in 2002 he was given the distinction of Honored Educator of the Year by the Society for Photographic Education (SPE). Parker retired from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1996.

-Juliana Muniz

When viewing images like the ones in this exhibition from The Visitor series, it is important to understand the use of multiple negatives and the incorporation of multiple images in one photograph. It would not have been unusual to find Parker in the darkroom working with several negatives and enlargers at once in the production of one image. Using his intuitive powers, Parker would search through his stacks of negatives seeking relationships that could be exposed in his imagery. 

Throughout the late sixties and seventies, Parker was included in exhibitions curated by Nathan Lyons such as Vision and Expression (1969, George Eastman House), and The Extended Frame (1977, Visual Studies Workshop). Parker was also represented at the Visual Studies Workshop Gallery and published the book A Close Brush with Reality: Photographs and Writings 1972-1981 through the Visual Studies Workshop Press in 1981 with assistance from Joan Lyons. These accomplishments, as well as his many years devoted to teaching, are important in solidifying Parker’s role in the history of photography and his legacy at the Visual Studies Workshop. 

-Juliana Muniz

Parker Holdings

Parker Bibliography

Bern Porter was born in Porter Settlement, Maine, and grew up in relative seclusion and poverty. Porter claims to have started making artist’s books at the age of nine and continued to make books throughout his lifetime. He attended Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and went on to get his Master’s degree in physics from Brown University in 1932. Porter felt that science and the arts were inextricably linked and was frustrated at the clear division between the two in academia. Porter moved to New York City in 1935 to work for the Acheson Colloid Corporation helping the development of the cathode-ray tube soon to be found in televisions. While in NYC he frequented museums and was exposed to Surrealism and the practice of using found imagery. In 1940 he was recruited by the United States government to work on a secret project in conjunction with, but separate from, many other scientists. When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 Porter realized that his work in the Manhattan Project was partly responsible for the creation of the bomb and he quickly and quietly removed himself from the work.

In his autobiography/manifesto I’ve Left, first published in 1963, he writes, “I transformed the world and in doing so found myself.” His disappointment with what his scientific work had brought turned his focus to his artistic pursuits. Porter founded and ran Bern Porter Books, which published works by Anais Nin, Antonin Artaud, and Henry Miller among many others. As he traveled extensively as a physicist, the press operated out of Berkeley and Sausalito, CA, Guam, Hunstville, AL, and Belfast, ME. In the 1960s Porter worked for NASA on the Saturn V rocket while continuing to publish. Porter claims to have invented Mail Art and although that claim has been challenged, he did actively participate in the exchange of adorned letters and packages with fellow artists. There is a Bern Porter Mail Art archive at the Getty Research Institute. Porter’s work can be found in the collections of Colby College and Bowdoin College. A Bern Porter retrospective was curated by Charles Stanley and Judd Tully at the Franklin Furnace in New York City in December of 1979. The Museum of Modern Art holds a great deal of his work, particularly many one-of-a-kind artist’s books, and showcased them in the exhibition Lost and Found: The Work of Bern Porter from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art Library in the summer of 2010. Porter left for good in 2004 at the age of 93.

-Dan Varenka

The ten examples in Radiate are representative of Porter’s work and give a glimpse into some of his bookworks created over three decades. Three of the ten selections are from his Record of Production, made during an artist’s residency at the Visual Studies Workshop in November 1986, and show his continuation with collage and “founds.” Many of the collages in the Record of Production are full-page compositions with tears and swaths cut out and differ from the older assemblages in his books. The last image presents a poem, written in 1980, printed at VSW in poster form during his residency at VSW in 1986. The two earliest works included in Radiate deal with photographic images more than text. 

Porter’s critique of popular printed culture and experiments with language are akin to the spirit of Radiate. Prompted by the Surrealists, he migrated from the natural laws of science into a creative realm where reality could be constructed and provide a different kind of truth. Porter lived in both spheres, transporting the ideas of each back and forth, forging, and testing the results over the course of his lifetime.

-Dan Varenka

Porter Holdings

Sheridan was born in Newark, Ohio, and spent most of her childhood in New York City. She received an AB degree in 1945 from Hunter College in New York City and in 1961 earned her MFA from California College of the Arts and Crafts in San Francisco. Other educational institutions she attended include Columbia University, University of Illinois, and San Jose State College. Sheridan also studied and taught in Taiwan from 1957-1960. Beginning in 1961 Sheridan began her long professorship at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago that ended in her retirement. During her time at SAIC, Sheridan taught many different classes including drawing, 2D design, and printmaking. In 1970 Sheridan founded and became head of the Generative Systems Department at SAIC. 

The Generative Systems Department started as a single course and moved on to become both an undergraduate and graduate program. The program is based on the concept of art, science, and technology as interrelated vehicles for visual thought. This theme is not only prominent in her ideas of education, but also in the production of her personal art. Sheridan’s work in the VSW collection exhibits the use of many varieties of media, from simple to intensely complicated processes. The objects in the archive show her open mind toward experimentation in many different advanced technological processes that were very new to the field at their time. Sheridan obtained extensive knowledge and experience with the new technologies as an artist-in-residence at 3M’s Color Research and Central Research Labs in 1970, 1976, 1981, and 1983. 

Sheridan has received many high honors in her career as both an artist and an educator, including being awarded a Guggenheim fellowship for “Experiments in the creative use of high-speed copiers” in 1974, and has been the recipient of three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work is part of many permanent collections around the world including The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, The Art Institute of Chicago, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, The National Gallery of Canada, and George Eastman House. Sheridan currently resides in Hanover, New Hampshire.

–Sarah Cox

Sheridan’s processes range from simple to extremely complicated, monochromatic to intensely colorful, showing her multifaceted approach to media. Her primary means of image production in the collection involves the use of the Thermofax and the Color-in-Color I and II copiers. She was drawn to these machines by their ability to produce and reproduce information so quickly. The Color-in-Color copier used heat to transfer the dyes onto the surface by means of three individual layered sheets colored cyan, magenta, and yellow to make a complete image. Sheridan made use of this process by separating the individual sheets and manipulating them into the desired image using intermediary processes such as folding and mixing the use of Thermofax and Color-in-Color papers. Other processes include the use of voice-activated Telecopier sound waves to stretch images.

Alongside many of her contemporaries, Sheridan paved a new path, setting the scene for the introduction of new technology into the field of imagemaking by way of state-of-the-art technologies.

-Sarah Cox

Sheridan Holdings

Sheridan Bibliography

Smith received his Master of Arts degree in Photography from the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago in 1968 after earning his Bachelor’s degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1967. Smith first met Nathan Lyons, founder of Visual Studies Workshop, in 1965 when Lyons was still curator of photography at George Eastman House. After visiting the School of the Art Institute of Chicago that year, Lyons exhibited Smith’s work in two shows at Eastman House, Seeing Photographically in 1965 and Vision and Expression in 1969.

Since then, Smith has established himself as a pioneer in contemporary art and a master of book arts. Over his nearly five-decade career, he has made 275 books, the first 199 of which are thoroughly documented in Smith’s 200^th book, 200 Books: An Annotated Bibliography, self-published in the year 2000. Out of the fifty-four self-published books he has made over the years, twelve titles reside in the collection at Visual Studies Workshop. Smith’s work is often autobiographical, largely dealing with gay identity. According to Smith, he creates because he has to. In 200 Books Smith states, “As I would finish making a book, an emptiness would fill me with depression until I started the next” (14).

Throughout his career, Smith has collaborated with other artists in creating both exhibitions and books. From 1972 to 1973 he was in a group show, Unique/Multiple: Sculpture/Photographs, with Bea Nettles in the Penthouse Restaurant of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A year later, in 1974, Smith returned to MoMA to collaborate with Sonia Sheridan on a series of male nudes on cloth as part of the Projects series. Smith also collaborated with Sheridan on three books, Smithsonian, Unfolding, Volume I, and Unfolding, Volume II in 1973, all three of which are available at the Research Center at Visual Studies Workshop. In 1983, Smith collaborated with poet Jonathan Williams on the book Lexington Nocturne, Smith’s ninety-third book and favorite to date. Smith interpreted the words of Williams in a visual form. This book was printed through the VSW Press.         

Smith has been awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships (1972 and 1980 in photography), a National Endowment for the Arts grant (1978 in photography), a New York Foundation for the Arts grant (1985), and a Pollock/Krasner Foundation Pilot Fine Art Still Photography grant (2002). Smith’s work can be found in many major public collections, including George Eastman House, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Library of Congress, The National Gallery of Canada, and Bibliothèque Nationale.

-Megan Charland

Smith’s mastery of book arts is apparent in his skillful construction, bringing attention to the form and function of each book. This is evident in the books Stitches and Book 102, both included in this exhibition. These books stray from his characteristic subject matter, yet are indicative of his fluid process and attention to detail. In 200 Books Smith states, 

Continuity is not necessarily more of the same thing. Certainly, creativity is not. The train of thought from one book to the next might be suggested. Often, it does not exist. My thoughts go in many directions simultaneously as well as from book to book. I diverge. I am not a serial worker but a sequential one—back and forth by cause and effect, rather than a steady linkage forward, one to the next to the next. It is only over a long period of time that the separate threads tend to spiral into a single cord which is the body of my work (12). 

The nine works included in Radiate: Experimental Works from the Visual Studies Workshop Collection were selected as examples of prints and books Smith created that concern themes of identity, or of his exploration of experimental processes of the time. 

-Megan Charland

Smith Holdings

Wood completed an industrial drafting program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked for a short time as a draftsman before joining the United States Air Force at the age of nineteen. This experience proved to have a significant influence on his later career as a professional teaching artist. He has indicated that participating in and teaching aircraft maneuvers helped him to expand the way he perceived visual information and to escape from a static one-point perspective.

Following his service in the Air Force, Wood began a photography business with a colleague, to sell commercial prints of aerial photographs. During this time, Wood began his investigation of contemporary art and experimental photography. In 1950 Wood began his study at The Institute of Design in Chicago with the intention of training as a visual designer. As a student, he explored a variety of media and initiated the crossing over of typography, printmaking, painting, and drawing in his own work. After teaching a visual fundamentals course at ID in his fourth year, he was offered a teaching position at Alfred University where he would continue to teach for 34 years and retired in 1989. This position allowed him to provide both students and colleagues there with experiences and ideas that promoted an exploration of process and experimentation. This type of forward-thinking opened doors between media and allowed for collaboration that led many to a more informed perspective on elements of the working process.

Wood worked closely with Nathan Lyons at Alfred University during the 1950s, as Lyons’s instructor and mentor. The two became leading masters in their field and established a significant professional relationship. Wood’s connection to Lyons brought him to VSW during its formative years and he went on to play an important role in the development of the institution as an artist-run educational center. He participated as an artist in residence, as well as an adjunct professor. Wood encouraged students to expand their working process with a focus on experimental and mixed media. His time at the Workshop included interdisciplinary study and collaborative workshops along with his production of artist books, mixed media prints, collages, and a portfolio of offset photolithographs. He maintained his connection to VSW as an instructor until 1990.

As a professional teaching artist, Wood continued to produce work throughout his career and exhibited in galleries across the nation. His recent retrospective exhibition John Wood: On The Edge of Clear Meaning, curated by Nathan Lyons, displays a diverse array of prints, drawings, collages, and books, demonstrating Wood’s dynamic approach and its significance in the history of the field. 

–Hope Taylor-Austin

Many of these works are concerned with ways of accomplishing complex imagery with an innovative approach in layering free-handed mark-making, printing, and various transfer techniques. With an acute concern with the portrayal of personal and poetic views of his surroundings, abstracting the visual narrative gives the viewer space to construct meaning within each composition. In his artist’s statement for the 1977 exhibition John Wood: Photographs, Collages, Drawings, Wood states, “I would like my pictures to be abstract and poetic visual images of friends and the world. No storytelling. Sometimes slight propaganda and quiet protest on the edge of clear meaning.”

In 1969, John Wood took a sabbatical from his position at Alfred University to serve as one of the first faculty members at the Visual Studies Workshop; as a visiting instructor, he continued to teach through various residencies and workshops throughout the 1970s and 80s. His work at VSW resulted in the production of artist’s books, offset lithographs, gelatin silver prints, and collages. Much of the work housed in the Workshop’s collection today was produced on-site, including A Portfolio of Offset Lithographs, four of which are featured in this exhibition. 

-Hope Taylor-Austin

Wood Holdings

Wood Bibliography