UnBound14! Artist Features: III
JANE WAGGONER DESCHNER • MATT EICH • JILL ENFIELD • FRANCINE FLEISCHER • MAX GAVRICH • DANIEL GEORGE
UNBOUND14!
June 27 – August 9
Join us for a breakdown of our annual juried + invitational photography exhibition. Throughout the exhibition, we’ll share information about our artists and the processes behind their featured pieces.
SUPPORT THE EXHIBITION:
UnBound! is our annual juried photography show which directly supports artists in the exhibition through sales and fundraising efforts. Works in the show are available for purchase (like a normal exhibition), but friends can also give to the UnBound! Fund, which will be used by the gallery to acquire select works for the growing Candela Collection. One day, this collection will be donated to the permanent collection of a notable arts institution. This year, Candela excited to offer an honorarium + 2026 exhibition to 1-2 UnBound14! artists with funds raised over the course of the exhibition.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 2ND, 7-11PM:
THE ANNUAL FUNDRAISING GALA.
This year’s theme is A Midsummer Night’s Fever Dream, which you can learn more about here.
JANE WAGGONER DESCHNER | BILLINGS, MT
from the memoji mori series (grim family), 2025
Hand-embroidered archival pigment print,
17 x 24 inches framed.
Unique.
$850 framed.
Deschner finds disappointing experiences and unmet expectations of “happy family” have zigzagged through her life. The artist’s mother’s parents didn’t raise her. She doesn’t know why. When she was 13, the artist’s mother died after a three-year-long illness — no one told me that was going to happen. She divorced before reaching forty, necessitating shared custody of two young children and causing an overall upheaval in the assumptions she realized she had held about her life.
All this led to Deschner’s fascination with early and mid-twentieth century vernacular photographs; the found family photo became my medium in 2002. Nan Goldin wrote, “The snapshot (is) the form of photography that is most defined by love. People take them out of love, and they take them to remember — people, places, and times. They’re about creating a history by recording a history.”
Deschner has spent many years “making friends with death” because she learned at a young age that it can happen any time to any one. In my “memento mori series” she hand-embroidered a skeleton hand into a vernacular photo. The hand's gestures are familiar because they are found in emojis and they allow the viewer create an alteration of the photo’s original intent. The wonderful Dia de los Muertos has inspired me for many years.
The photos are either vintage or scanned, cleaned up, enlarged digital prints. Thread is primarily cotton with metallic and rayon occasionally added. All are stitched by hand—an intimate and meditative practice.
When she collaborates with another’s photo, she teases out a common humanity not confined by time, place or circumstance. She explores our shared human condition to better understand my own.
Montana-based Jane Waggoner Deschner has been an exhibiting artist for over forty years; for twenty years her medium has been the found family photograph. Her work has been shown in numerous venues including Robert Mann Gallery, NYC; University of Michigan–Dearborn; Missoula Art Museum, MT; Churchill Arts, Fallon, NV; and other regional galleries and museums. Her immersive installation, “Remember me. a collective narrative in found words and photographs,” premiered at the Yellowstone Art Museum, closing in January, 2023. It traveled through MAGDA to the Gallery of Fine Arts, University of Montana, and WaterWorks Museum in Miles City. Just closed at the Museum of Art | Fort Collins, CO. Recently her work has been juried into all three Kris Graves Projects photo books (“Solace,” “On Death” and “Of Covid: Collective Trauma”) and selected for online photography exhibits by Humble Arts Foundation, Lenscratch, Midwest Nice Art, The Curated Fridge, Photo Trouvée and others. The Montana Arts Council chose her for an Artist Innovation Award in 2019–20 and an ARPA grant in 2022.
She has participated in numerous residencies across the US and in Canada, including Anderson Ranch Arts Center, CO; Ucross Foundation, WY; The Banff Centre, CA; Atlantic Center for the Arts, FL; Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, VA; and Santa Fe Art Institute, AZ. Time spent working in these unique places forms an important part of her practice.
She earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2002. After growing up in Kansas, she moved to Montana in 1977. In addition to being a mixed media artist, she works as an exhibition installer, graphic designer, photographer, curator, instructor and picture framer.
MATT EICH | CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA
The Invisible Yoke, Limited Edition Slipcase. 2025.
Contains four first-edition monographs + four A5-sized work prints.
$1,500.
The Invisible Yoke Boxed Set is a rayon-covered foil-stamped limited-edition custom slipcase handmade by Eliot Dudik Studios in Richmond, Virginia. It is a container for four monographs released between 2016-2024 by photographer Matt Eich and Swiss atelier, Sturm & Drang. This collector’s item features First Editions of following volumes:
The Invisible Yoke, Volume I: Carry Me Ohio (Sturm & Drang, 2016)
The Invisible Yoke, Volume II: Sin & Salvation in Baptist Town (Sturm & Drang, 2018)
The Invisible Yoke, Volume III: The Seven Cities (Sturm & Drang, 2020)
The Invisible Yoke, Volume IV: We, the Free (Sturm & Drang, 2024)
The box sets include four (4) A5-sized work prints (one from each volume) signed and stamped en verso.
Matt Eich is a photographic essayist working on long-form projects related to memory, family, community, and the American condition. He is the author of five monographs of photography and his work is widely exhibited and held in public collections including the Chrysler Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Portland Art Museum and others. Matt’s projects have received support from an Aaron Siskind Fellowship, two Getty Images Grants, two VMFA Professional Fellowships and an Aperture/Google Creators Lab Photo Fund Grant. He was an artist in residence at Light Work in 2013 and at a Robert Rauschenberg Residency in 2019. Eich teaches at Corcoran School of the Arts & Design at the George Washington University, makes books under the imprint Little Oak.PRESS and resides in Virginia with his family.
JILL ENFIELD | CHICAGO, IL
Bannerman Island, Photographed 2017 - Printed 2024.
Smart phone to ambrotype to palladium print on Arches Platinum Rag paper,
20 x 24 inches, 24 x 30 inches framed.
Edition #1 of 5.
$2,500
“The Way Home” is a series of landscape photographs documenting the history of the Hudson River and the river towns along its shores. The Hudson River, known by Native Americans as Muh-he-kumne-tuk, or “the river that flows two ways,” is a life sustaining gift which dates back thousands of years, yet we have largely failed to acknowledge the civilizations and ecosystems that thrived there before European colonization. The photographs, created using historical techniques, evoke the feeling of life along the river before Dutch settlement, while simultaneously addressing current issues - from rising water levels and pollution to abandoned buildings being destroyed while others are re-purposed. Enfield intend for these photographs to inspire a deeper appreciation for the river and its surroundings, and more importantly, to provoke a sense of responsibility to protect it.
Broadly, the subject of her work is emotion; she uses century-old techniques to push the boundaries of photography and to channel emotions beyond the reality that the camera captures. These photographs were first taken on my smart phone. Then, she make a positive transparency, which is used to make a contact print on glass, called an ambrotype. An ambrotype is a positive on glass that needs to be backed with black in order to see the image clearly, and it’s one of the ways to make an image using the wet plate collodion process. By beginning with digital photography and then transitioning to alternative processes, she bridges the gap between the modern and the historical, transforming captured moments from static reality into dynamic expressions of movement and the passage of time.
By using these kinds of techniques, she expresses that the landscapes in “The Way Home” have stories to tell that aren’t limited to the moment she takes a picture. Everything she sees is filtered through her memory, allowing her to express emotions associated with finding, losing, and transforming connections with the external world. By modifying my images in the darkroom, she reintroduces the magic of first encounters and underscore the ephemeral nature of life.
“The Way Home” began as an exploration of a commute along a river and has evolved into a much larger conversation about the state of the river towns and the history and health of the river more generally. Rivers have always been a source of life, places where civilizations began and thrived. They have served as a connector, a means for both commerce and energy. As she began to commute up and down, she started to realize what can happen when certain variables become unsustainable. We’re at a point in our civilization where we are beginning to really understand how vulnerable this land we live on truly is.
Jill Enfield is a distinguished figure in the realms of fine art photography, education, and curation. Her expertise lies in historical techniques and alternative processes, a passion she shares through annual workshops and lectures conducted worldwide.
Author of three acclaimed books, including "Photo Imaging: A Complete Guide To Alternative Processes" published by Amphoto, and "Jill Enfield’s Guide to Alternative Processes: Popular Historical and Contemporary Techniques," in both its 1st and 2nd Editions published by Focal Press. These works have earned recognition and are utilized as educational resources in institutions globally.
Jill's photographic artistry extends beyond books, gracing the covers of various publications and websites. Her work, exhibited extensively throughout the USA and Europe, has found a place on book covers and in prestigious museums and private collections.
A sought-after educator, Enfield has been a faculty member at Parsons The New School of Design since the late 1980s, offering her expertise not only in academia but also through numerous international workshops.
Keynote speaker at the Finnish Darkroom Association in March 2022 and an advisor to the Lishui International Handmade Photography Center in China since November 2020, Jill Enfield's influence transcends borders. Enfield was mentioned by Christina Anderson in Analog Forever Magazine as one of the top 20 Alternative Process Photographers to watch in 2023.
Among her notable series is a poignant exploration of immigration, initially displayed on Ellis Island in 2017. Comprising portraits and "The Glasshouse of Immigrants" featuring portraits as well as images taken on Ellis Island, the Glasshouse has traveled around the USA and can be seen at The Dorsky Museum in New Paltz, NY and The Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Massachusetts in 2025.
Her latest endeavor, "The Way Home," is a series capturing the landscapes along the Hudson River. Enfield's commitment to this project is underscored by the support received through the Arts Mid-Hudson Grant and a Parsons Faculty Development Grant, enabling her to create 20 x 24” palladium prints.
Both the immigration and "The Way Home" series were originally photographed using the wet plate collodion process, resulting in ambrotypes that add a distinctive touch to her body of work.
FRANCINE FLEISCHER | SAG HARBOR, NY
The Water in Between, 2016.
Archival pigment print,
13 x 19 inches framed.
Edition #2 of 10.
$2,200 framed.
This series The Water in Between was photographed in a subterranean swimming hole that had been used by an ancient civilization for human sacrifice. Today, ironically, it is used by swimmers for recreational swim. The contradiction of purposes is a curious one. Fleischer has been returning to this spot to photograph and explore this irony and the ever-changing scenarios in this consistent pool.
The waters are deep below the earth’s surface and lit from above by a hole in the ground revealing sky and sunlight. When she looks down on these beautiful swimmers in these inky waters, it is like looking down the rabbit hole into another world. Sometimes it is an allegorical scene illustrating subterranean dreams, other times she is a voyeur, capturing the counter play of light and dark, levity and gravity, reality and reverie, tribulations and joy.
Each time she returns here, she is drawn in by these contradictions, the human conversations, the painterly light and the random choreography below, each time noting the change in body politics and social interaction between the ever changing cast of characters. The water also being a metaphor for the collective space that we are all navigating, what better place than water to explore this fascinating evolution and willing vulnerability.
Francine Fleischer was born (b.1960) and raised in New York City, spending most summers with family in France. Her exposure to the arts started as a child when she studied ballet with the New York City Ballet and the American Ballet Theater, As a young adult, she pivoted her focus to the Visual Arts studying painting and design. She received a BFA in Painting and Photography from SUNY at Purchase, and a certificate in Media Production from NYU. After graduating, Francine worked as a first assistant and printer to Annie Leibovitz, Kelly Klein and Michel Comte, which prepared her for a career in photography that has taken her around the world and allowed her to pursue her artistic endeavors.
Her personal work which explores the intersection of humans and nature, has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, and featured in publications such as Vanity Fair, NY TImes, Italian Vogue,The Telegraph, M Magazine du Monde and Conde Nast Traveler. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums including the Haggerty Museum, Milwaukee, Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY, Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY, and Portland Art Museum, OR. Her work is collected in numerous private, corporate and museum collections. A lifelong city girl, she moved to the seaside with her family several years ago where she has been inspired by and in the water, continuing her artistic practice observing the natural world around her.
MAX GAVRICH | MEXICO CITY, MX
Il Pugno (The Fist), Forli, Italy (2024)
Archival pigment print in custom frame,
9.5 x 6.3 inches; 15 x 12 inches framed.
Edition #2 of 3 + 2AP.
$1,450 framed.
During a two-month stay in Emilia-Romagna, Gavrich discovered the 18th century Bologna-born physiologist Luigi Galvani. During an experiment involving a dead frog, a piece of metal, and a lightning storm, Galvani accidentally discovered a phenomenon that he dubbed “animal electricity.” He posited that there existed a fluid within the body that flowed in a state of disequilibrium. This liquid, he misguidedly thought, was the force that animated all living things.
Galvani’s theory operated in the murky space between scientific research and metaphysical supposition. And Gavrich held to Galvani’s notion of a world composed of interrelated energies, potentialities and unknowns. In following this liquid thread, these photographs exist as fragments, shards of larger constellations of losses, uncertainties, discoveries, each frame a container within which to play with notions of fluidity, form, and energy.
Max Gavrich (b. San Francisco) is an artist and educator currently based in Mexico City. His work often explores the the tactile and fluid ways images, objects, and bodies interact. Previous exhibitions include U.P. Gallery Taiwan, Lishui Photo Festival, Casemore Gallery, Marlborough Gallery, the Vermont Center for Photography, the Museo San Rocco, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, among others. He holds an MFA from Yale University and has taught as an adjunct professor at California College of the Arts.
DANIEL GEORGE | VINEYARD, UT
Testimony #1, 2024.
Archival pigment print,
32 x 24 inches, framed.
Edition of 5.
$625 framed.
George’s photographic work explores the ways in which cultural forces shaped by religious, political, and social ideologies affect the identity of place, communities, and individuals. Through his images, he highlight the idiosyncrasies of human activity as a mode of inquiry—attempting to understand how defining characteristics of place are informed by history, belief systems, customs, and traditions. He uses his camera as a mechanism to decode these attributes, often focusing on the quotidian as a shared, common language. In his most recent work, he has centered his attention on the southwestern area of the United States referred to as the “Mormon Culture Region.” As a transplant to this part of the country, he is interested in giving consideration to a place and culture shaped by predominant religious influence.
Daniel George is a photographic artist who is originally from Omaha, NE and currently lives and works in Utah. He received an MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2011, and is a photography professor at Brigham Young University. His work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across the United States, and has been published internationally in both print and online publications. Daniel also serves as the Submissions and Content Editor for Lenscratch, an online platform dedicated to supporting and celebrating the photographic arts and photographic artists through exposure, discussion, community collaboration, and education.