The Paula Tognarelli Collection

April 5 - May 25, 2024

3 COLLECTORS AND 2 ARTISTS: FRIDAY, APRIL 19, 5-8 PM

NEXT TALK: FRIDAY, MAY 17, 5-8PM

REVIEW BY MAX WIENER FOR MUSEE, VANGUARD OF PHOTOGRAPHY CULTURE

IRENE KLENCH (PAULA TOGNARELLI) IN CAR, (IMAGE BY ASIA KEPKA) AND LYNN DOWLING FROM THE BOOK, HORACE AND AGNES: A LOVE STORY

IRENE KLENCH

Peering over her steering wheel, Irene Klench surveys the neighborhood. “Ohh, Mr. Freeman, you shouldn’t be watering your lawn during the shortage,” she says to herself as she jots down the infraction in her little black book. Irene heads out early in the mornings with a thermos full of Chock full o’Nuts and an old pair of binoculars. There is no stopping Irene when she’s on her fifth cup. Once she tried to make a citizen’s arrest on Horace when he was crossing the street. “It’s called jaywalking!” Irene shouts from her car window. “It’s called a crosswalk, Ms. Klench!” Horace shouts back as he hurries across the street. “Oh, sorry, Horace,” Irene says, slightly embarrassed. “I didn’t recognize you in your new jacket. I will call and get this crosswalk freshly painted tomorrow. It’s barely visible,” she admits before lurching off in her old car. Irene takes the neighborhood watch very seriously. Nobody is above the law. Not even her. (The story of Horace and Agnes (and their friends) is a story about unconditional love, life, acceptance, and friendship.)

Personal art collections are always a form of self portraiture and our new exhibition, The Paula Tognarelli collection is no exception.  It’s prodigious; about wonder, wit, moments, connections to individual artists, and they all have a dreamy and whimsical perspective. The romanticism of the collector shines through.  The images also speak about the process of making art and the breadth or modes of expression in contemporary photography. The viewer will notice that there is an optimism throughout the compilation that makes spending time with these photographs delightful.  It speaks to Tognarelli’s heart and eye.  We appreciate the opportunity to share this exhibit with you and our investigations into collectors and collections. 

This exhibition is the beginning of our 2024 season. We’ve decided to start each new season with a collector’s collection.  We want to celebrate the individuals who keep us making, exhibiting and responding to our ideas. These connoisseurs think enough of our process and its outcome to want to take home our creative product. We as viewers get to peek at the piles of works that were stashed, hoarded, acquired intuitively or incredibly decisively- ultimately representing the journey and the intent of the collector. The money these things cost, and their value over time is of interest. How do they store their works and what will they do with all this accumulation? What makes a collector and why do institutions collect in a post digital age? We will have talks and a new program, Print Night  on the first Wednesday of every month to investigate these topics. — Denise Froehlich, Director of MMPA

Biography

In 2021 Paula Tognarelli retired as executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography a position she held since 2007. During her tenure she was responsible for the curation of 54 exhibitions annually. Paula holds a MS degree in Arts Administration for Boston University, a BA from Regis College and is a graduate of the New England School of Photography. Since her retirement she has been immersed in collaborative projects and engrossed in Firestarters, a 30 year old nonprofit that helps artists jumpstart their careers and work projects.

Her early career path began in the printing industry in 1976. She first worked for Color Picture Publishes until 1978 after which she joined United Lithograph in Somerville Massachusetts as a film assembly craft person. She worked herself up the ladder and became Director of Technology in 1991, a position she held until 1999, at which point she became Vice President of Operations (1991 to 2001)  While attending the Boston University Art Administration’s Graduate Program she started her internship at the Griffin, where, from 2001 to 2007 she went from intern to Deputy Director. She was executive Director from 2007 until her retirement in 2021.

Paula was a panelist and speaker at many photography events including MacWorld and Color Connections. She was a juror of over 100 exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. She taught classes at numerous locations, including the Griffin Museum as well as the Maine Media Workshops.  MMPA has recently welcomed Paula to our advisory board. 

Jan Pieter van Voorst van Beest interviews Paula Tognarelli about collecting

Jan Pieter:  During your life and specifically during your tenure at the Griffin you have been living among photographic images. What made you want to collect and how did you start your collection?

Paula: Even as a child I responded best to pictural sentences rather than the spoken or written word. In pictures I’ve always understood the essence of a visual statement almost immediately. Reading or speaking for me requires too many internal interpolations for me to get quickly to meaning. I’m sure it’s some kind of undiagnosed deficiency but it’s all water under the bridge now. In my lifetime I’ve found my own work arounds for whatever the issue is/was.

In my whole life I’ve surrounded myself by visual sentences whether they were cut from magazines or made as artwork. How lucky I was to have found professions that I could use my innate skills.

I’ve always been a collector of things. I collected chestnuts in a sock that I stored under the cellar bulkhead of our childhood home. I would pull the chestnuts out occasionally to admire the smoothness of their shells and their remarkable color. I’ve collected snails in a shoe box to admire their mysterious markings on the sides of their cardboard homes. My mineral collection rivaled the rock collections of any MIT scientist. And books have been my obsession for many moons. I joke that the books are the answers to any question I may have in life, right at my fingertips.

I collected art more after working in the arts. I found that artists provided such personal gifts to the viewer in their visual narratives. Often, I would sit in the galleries with the artwork after everyone went home. I found that work I didn’t at first like, grew on me. Time brought understanding. I often felt I needed to recover each time exhibitions closed. And that is how I began to collect on a larger level.

There is a great comfort surrounding oneself with artwork. The artwork itself contains the artist’s essence. The meanings for the collector mature too with the passage of time.

Jan Pieter: First, when browsing through the 300 images that you sent to us and then looking more intensely through the 70 + images Denise finally picked, I was often struck by the questions the photographs in this collection asked rather than the answers they provided. Do you think a good image asks questions rather than provide answers?

Paula: I don’t think it is a question of artwork being good or bad imagery.  I have often not liked work upon first encountering it. As I spend time with an art piece, I grow to appreciate it more when I spent time with it as one can do when hosting an exhibition. I never listen to my first thoughts on artwork as it proves me wrong over and over. Also everyone’s aesthetic is different. I also think that curating imagery brings out the strength of images. It is like building a symphony. Each image contributes to the final strength of the string of images. I supplied the images alpha by first name of artist. I did not curate them.  As a body of work. By supplying a string of images that works together one strengthens the weaker image but the strength and unity of the imagery is in the whole and not in one standout piece. I guess orchestration of imagery is the best way to describe it.

I also like to look at images without reading artists statements. I like to discern my own meaning. Sometimes when I find something out about a piece that I didn’t know it changes everything. Like for instance in the work provided by me there are two images by Bill Chapman supplied. One is an image of someone holding baseballs and another of two shoes sitting on the ground in a baseball stadium. What the viewer doesn’t know is that Ernest Withers is holding those baseballs and those shoes standing alone on the ground of the stadium are Ernest Withers’ shoes. Making good and bad judgements quickly is lazy. And I have been guilty of much of that in my past. Also I have a very broad aesthetic.

Jan Pieter: I found some clear narrative running though many of the chosen images. Of course some of that narrative might have come out of the curation by Denise but there was a fun one running through pictures by Jaye Philips (Rhythm of the Bones), Jennifer Shaw ( Bird/ Bunny), Meg Birnbaum ( Birds) and some of Rhonda Lashly Lopez’ work. I found other interesting connections between the work of Melissa Berger, Marcy Palmer and Karin Rosenthal. These images all seemed to allow new discoveries after an extended investigation. So when collecting, do you feel the building in the collection narrative is intuitive or is it by design?

Paula: I have been a curator for so many years that I believe it is now intuitive. That does not mean that I can’t branch out. At my age I think now about what I have currently to augment or what do I want to live with. Two very different ways of collecting. I also have much more work I own that you do not even see in what I provided. There’s only so much I could do to share some of my collection with you.

Jan Pieter: How do you feel the collection reflects on you? 

Paula: I believe it reflects very much on me and my experiences in life and the things that have shaped me. No one can predict what will appeal to me.

Jan Pieter: How would you describe your collection and the process?

Paula: My collection is eclectic but I find unity in it by how I hang it in my home. I am very possessive about my collection and will probably part with it only at my passing. I will however have prepared in advance for its distribution.

Jan Pieter: How do you live with the collection? What do you display in your house, how often do you swap work around?

Paula: I live with it in every room of my home including the bathroom. I hang it Atelier style. I look for unity in its hanging. I have a studio offsite that I hang work in as well. And for the work I haven’t hung yet I have storage facilities. I’ve been working to have it all on the walls or in a semblance of order that I understand. I don’t swap it out. Once I build the relationships of the imagery, I like to keep them that way. Sometime a piece may be inserted here and there and require slight rearrangements.

The Paula Tognarelli Collection

Jennifer Shaw

Jennifer Shaw, Swallow, Original chine colle photogravure, 2022, 4 x 4 inches Both purchased from the artist.
Jennifer Shaw, Hare and Hound, Original chine colle photogravure, 2022, 4 x 4 inches

Aline Smithson

Carl Bower

Toni Pepe

Diane Hemingway

Adrienne Sloane

Tiziana Rosso

Lou Jones

Edie Bresler

Ruth Orkin

Betsy Schneider

Meg Birnbaum

Kay Kenny

James Mahoney

Rich Turk

Catherine Wilcox- Titus

Allison Plass

Aline Smithson

Jane Fulton alt

Holly Roberts

Wendi Schneider

Amani Willett

Amanda Boe

Karin Rosenthal

Jaye R. Phillips

David Whitney

Diana Nicolette Jeon

Sarah Hadley

Anne Piessens

Eva Timothy

Karen Klindlinst

Becky Behar

Charles Maniaci

Sunjoo Lee

Jennifer Georgescu

Astrid Reischwitz

Yorgos Efthymiadis

Carol Golemboski

Vicki Stromee

John Chervinsky

John Chervinsky, Studio Physics, Oranges, Box and Painting on door, Ed. 15, 2011, Pigment print, 15.25 x 19.625, Gift of the deceased artist’s wife, 2024
John Chervinsky, Time Machine, Frames of reference from CaC03, 2/10, 2005, Pigment print, 20.5 x16.5 inches, Special edition purchase from PRC Member print program

Susan Goldstein

Granville Carroll

Tobia Makover

Joanne Dugan

Stefanie Timmerman

Marcy Juran

Gayle Stevens

Gayle Stevens, Untitled, 2014, Collodion tintypes, This is a series of pieces from 12 x 12 inches to 1.5 x 1.5 inches (scroll left to right on the second image above). Purchased from the artist

Susan Murie

Rhonda Lashley Lopez

Rhonda Lashley Lopez, Storm Clouds, Denver, 2/8, 2021, Pigment on Gampi, Gold/palladium leaf, 10. 5 x 10 inches, All purchased from the Griffin Museum during the exhibition
Rhonda Lashley Lopez, Flying in the rain, 4/8, 2021, Pigment print, 10.75 x 10.5 inches
Rhonda Lashley Lopez, Transcendence, 2/3, 2016, Pigment on Gampi with 24k gold leaf, 14.5 x 15 inches
Rhonda Lashley Lopez, Looking Back, 2/8, 2021, Pigment on Gampi with gold/palladium leaf, 9.5 x 7.5 inches

Darcie Sternenberg

Asia Kepka

John Willis

Eleonora Ronconi

Valerie Burke

Marcy Palmer, Extended Grasp, AP, 2018, Pigment print, 11.75 x 15 inches, Both gift of the artist

Marcy Palmer, Night Garden, 2/10, 2019, 24k Gold leaf on vellum with varnish and wax, 10 x 10 inches

Judy Haberl

Diane Yudelson

Rebecca Sexton Larson

Nic Nicosia

Sally Chapman

Richard Alan Cohen

Susan Lirakis

RJ Kern

Ellen Harasimowicz

Nancy A. Nichols

Heidi Kirkpatrick

Heidi Kirkpatrick, Storyteller + Monocle, 2/5, 2013, Film positives layered over anatomical drawing, paint, glue, graphite, resin, housed in a metal tin finessed with fire, 2.25 x 2.25 x .625 + 3.375 x 1 inch

Roxanne Darling

Cathy Cone

Rick Colson

Elaine Duigenan

Khristine hopkins

Kate Breakey

Rebecca Clark

Cole Caswell

Robert Dash

Patricia Scialo

Susan Burnstine

John Rizzo

Melissa Breyer

Kris Sanford

Theo Anderson

Sarah Malakoff