Shellburne Thurber

E Shellburne Thurber

Looking for Saint-Gaudens

July 11 – August 27, 2015 The Trustees of the Saint-Gaudens Memorial are proud to present Park Anniversary Fellow Shellburne Thurber’s exhibition Looking for Saint-Gaudens, at the Saint-Gaudens Picture Gallery. The exhibition consists entirely of photographs made from large format negatives taken at the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site. This type of photography yields beautifully rendered images that lend themselves to careful, deliberate consideration; a fitting process for Thurber’s bodies of work, which largely examine various physical spaces and what we can gather of the humanity inherently found in them. Thurber approached Looking for Saint-Gaudens in much the same way that she approaches other physical spaces she has photographed, however she quickly found that she needed to engage with this space more actively; rather than being fixed, the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site is constantly being interpreted, cared for, and visited by a wide range of people, as it is a preservation of and homage to one of America’s greatest sculptors and his home in Cornish, New Hampshire. The photographs truly are a search, as Thurber looked to artifacts, architecture, the people who work at the Site, and the landscape to understand Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s life and work in New Hampshire. What she produced is a humble and engaging body of photographs that reveal a unique and intuitive look at an important historical space. Shellburne Thurber lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and has taught as a visiting faculty member at both the Massachusetts College of Art and Tufts University. She has been the recipient of numerous grants, awards, and residencies, and has been the subject of 23 solo exhibitions. Thurber is represented by the Barbara Krakow Gallery in Boston, MA.