Gravedigger’s Daughter closes their 2024 season with “We Three See,” a three-person exhibition for Veterans Awareness Month. Wayne Myers, Jan Griesenbrock, and Vincent Albanese are each using technical aspects from their prior careers in the service in their current artistic practice. Each of these artists explore their relationship to the natural world and human connections through their use of narrative.

Wayne Myers has been working with fibers for more than 60 years. He has a background in treating hypothermic, oxygen deprived premature babies. In the Army, he was assigned to field test arctic infantry clothing and equipment in the Yukon. Dr. Myers retired to Waldoboro in 2000 to raise endangered breeds of sheep. He began working with the nuno felting technique as a way to deal with the excess wool from his farm. Each unique item incorporates an heirloom fabric and the results are striking tapestries or wearable shawls.

Vincent Albanese, was a Naval engineer during the Iraq War, is trained as a metal fabricator, holds a degree in business administration, and is now pursuing a BFA in Photography. His composed black and white photographs are a chance for him to explore the dualities of the world. After traveling across 30 countries in seven years, he has settled in Ashburnham, Massachusetts.

Jan Griesenbrock has been a photographer for more than 50 years. He retired from the Army after working in Artillery, Public Affairs, Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), Counter Drug Operations, and Recruitment. Col. Griesenbrock has worked as a newspaper photographer, in an aerial photo lab, and instructed university level photography classes. He is exhibiting a series of aerials for We Three See. Griesenbrock has been a Waldoboro resident for more than 20 years. 

Gravedigger’s Daughter is operated by Jen Barrows. Barrows’s father, Ralph, was a combat-decorated Vietnam veteran, a former Gravedigger at the Maine Veteran’s Cemetery in Augusta, and spent his life in service to others. For We Three See, the Gallery will take no commission from the artists, and will donate an equivalent commission on purchases at the gallery to Fisher House Foundation to help families stay near loved ones pursuing treatment at VA Hospitals.

The gallery is hosting extended hours for this exhibition. November 2-3 and November 8-10 from 10 am-1 pm. Please join us for a reception on Veterans Day, November 11 from 2-4 pm. For more information or a private appointment, please reach out to Jen Barrows at office@gravediggersdaughter.org.

A burial is used in various cultures to signify a transition from the living to the afterlife.  With extreme care and love, bodies are adorned and prepared to transition to a new world, which can signify better places, reincarnations, but most notably a place of happiness and bliss. 

Sean M. Johnson uses rituals and metaphors to create burials of LGBTQIA+ individuals to explore their fantasy or idealized world they would like to be in.  As a community that is marginalized in many cultures, societies, and religions, the artist seeks to create a dialog that explores ideologies of desire, loss, and hope through fantasy.  These burials are portraits and care-focused collaborations of the model’s idealized worlds, their hopes, and worlds they could be in without the stigmas that are placed on them.     

Gravedigger’s Daughter invites you to meet Rockland's wych elm press on August 30 from 4-8 pm. Jake Benzinger and Tabitha Barnard will be in the gallery discussing their new zine, THE WOODS GLOW PAST MIDNIGHT. the zine explores ritual, witches, the occult, and the new england landscape as a set for story telling.

notes from a body inverted features a selection of silver gelatin prints in bespoke wooden frames that seek to reveal the similarities between botanical taxonomy and the construct of the feminine body.

Las Calles de Oaxaca features a selection of works by emerging and established artists of Oaxaca, México. The group exhibit features large-scale linocut prints from an underground artist collective, known as Subterráneos, whose work is often mural-sized, profoundly political, and seen wheat-pasted on buildings throughout Oaxaca’s historic center. Working collaboratively with Master Printmaker Mario Guzman, the collective is primarily comprised of young Oaxacan artists who are interested in creating meaningful work that directly impacts the lives of native Oaxacans. The exhibit underscores the importance of remembering the often-tragic historical events have that shaped cultures, while also embracing the possibility that artists' voices are catalysts for change.

The exhibition is guest curated by Andrew Mroczek.

Tynan Byrne is a photographer in Somerville, MA. His series center around intimate and honest aspects of his life as a gay man–harkening back to childhood in Maine, his interpersonal relationships, literature, and love for the history and methodologies of photography itself. The work in his current series challenges the notion that male nudity is too often reserved for and confined to sexual settings; that when gay men occupy such an intimate space with straight men it is done so as an act of exploitation. His photographs exemplify fraternity evolving, quelling dormant anxieties of unworthiness and disavowing fears of inequality.

about the photographs:

Much of [Jere’s] studio time for the past few years has been spent photographing collections of objects. Bottle caps, pencils, matchbooks, wishbones, hotdogs —each subject presents a unique problem of representation. In 2018, results of this work were exhibited at UMA’s Danforth Gallery in Augusta.

Fatal Attractions is a continuation of this project. The lures are made by David Engel, who has been making fishing lures for many years. In order to present the lures from the vantage point of a fish, each was floated in a tank with the camera located below the surface. The procedure requires a lot of patience waiting for the water to be still enough for the required long exposure.