Curtain Raiser: Louise Mason

With Speaker NANCY ORI

Beyond the Buttons: How Women Photographers Can Use AI as a Creative and Professional Tool.

Photographer, Instructor and Event Producer for New Jersey Media Center LLC in Berkeley Heights

Nancy J. Ori is respected internationally for over 35 years as a photographer and video producer for Ciba-Geigy and Novartis Pharmaceuticals in East Hanover, NJ and is now the owner of New Jersey Media Center, LLC in Berkeley Heights, NJ. She also enjoys teaching photography and mixed media workshops each year internationally.  Nancy studied with Ansel Adams and was a teaching assistant for many years with the Ansel Adams Workshop in California. Since then, she has taught at numerous art centers and museums throughout New Jersey.   In 1990, she established The New Jersey Heritage Workshops for Photography and Painting, which she holds each spring in Cape May, New Jersey.  And in 1994 she established the NJ Photography Forum, a group of professional and serious amateur photographers that meet regularly to discuss their work as well as exhibit within the state.  Under Nancy’s direction, The Forum has grown to be the largest group of exhibiting fine art photographers in the state. A spin-off group has now evolved called the Digital Arts Group at the Visual Art Center of NJ in Summit.

Photographing in the West Coast tradition of her long-time mentor, Ansel Adams, Nancy expresses her own interpretation of the landscape and architecture.  Her photographs reveal a love of light, shadow, and form in natural and man-made settings.  They are powerful documentations of the land, expressing its vulnerability and endurance. “As I look at my work, I am aware of the major role that Nature plays in the way that I see and make photographs.  Nature has a way of peeling away decay to reveal something new.  This same process has become a way of seeing, thinking, and documenting for me.  I do not want my photographs to show decomposition but instead vulnerability, not the ravages of time but endurance.”

Ori’s work has been widely published and exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States and Europe since 1995.  She has also been chosen several times to participate in New Jersey’s most celebrated exhibits and received numerous grants and awards including the 2004 Woman of Excellence Award in Arts and Humanities from the Union County Freeholders.

Since 1995, she has been featured in over 200 solo exhibits.  Some of the many exhibits include:  American Cyanamid Company, Princeton; Merrill Lynch, Princeton; Educational Testing Service, Princeton; Palmer Museum, Springfield; Westminster Art Gallery, Bloomfield; Paper Mill Playhouse Gallery, Millburn; Simon Gallery, Morristown; Trenton City Museum, Trenton; Newark Museum, Newark; Monmouth Museum, Monmouth; Bergen Museum of Art and Science, Paramus; Chubb Corp., Warren; Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY; Salmagundi, NYC; Hilltop Gallery, Windham, NY; Catskill Gallery, Catskill, NY;  Southern Light Gallery, Amarillo, TX;  Photo Gallery 2D, Chicago Heights, Ill.;  Sacramento Valley Photographic Art Center, Sacramento, CA.; Viewpoint Gallery, Sacramento, CA;  Liberty Science Center, Jersey City.

In permanent art collections at: Novartis Corporation, East Hanover; Ilford Photo Corp., England; Bergen Museum of Art and Science, Paramus; Noyes Museum, Oceanville; Newark Museum, Newark; Merrill Lynch, Princeton, NJ; Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; American Cyanamid Company, Princeton; and the Museum of Modern Art, NYC.  Numerous international private collections.

www.nancyoriworkshops.com.