WebinART: Stephen Althouse "Objects of Uncertainty"

Join us Friday, 9 February 2024 at 11AM EST for a conversation with Pucker Gallery artist Stephen Althouse, Director Emeritus of the Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Roger Manley, Gallery Associate Dr. Carl Herbert, and Gallery Director Bernard Pucker.

We will share the intense and powerful images of Althouse with an attempt to share his approach to the basic questions of the fragility of the human condition. His large format images resonate deeply with our spirits. 

The exhibition Objects of Uncertainty will be on view at Pucker Gallery from 3 February through 17 March 2024.

Register here!

Stephen Althouse was born in 1948 and raised in a centuries-old farmhouse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture in 1970 from the University of Miami, and his Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture in 1976 from Virginia Commonwealth University. His extensive travels and varied experiences inspire his artwork’s unusual visual expressions of life. His time as Distinguished Professor of Fine Art at Barry University (Miami) allowed him the opportunity to work, reside, and create on three continents. Althouse approaches his photographs as he did his sculpture, assembling and intertwining tools, artifacts, fabric, clothing, and even weapons into a unique pictorial dialect that metaphorically depicts aspects of our species related to his own experiences and observations of humankind. Althouse’s powerful images appear ritualistic and meditative in nature, often cryptically blending mysteries of passage from his youth and adulthood, varied experiences, and emotional reactions to people, cultures, and events which have impacted his life. Amplifying mystery in his work and privately expressing his thoughts, Althouse subtly integrates written phrases into his images, often encrypted in Braille or in non-mainstream dialects that relate to his life experiences.

Before serving as director and curator of NC State University’s Gregg Museum of Art & Design from 2010 to 2023, Roger Manley worked as a photographer, folklorist, filmmaker, curator and writer. He has curated exhibitions for more than forty other institutions, including the first exhibitions of outsider art in the South and three exhibitions for the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, beginning with its inaugural show, Tree of Life. He has scripted videos and films for PBS and has produced exhibitions of his own photographs of Australian Aboriginals, Hispanic migrant farmworkers, Palestinian villagers, Gullah Sea Islanders, Native Americans, Arctic gold miners, and self-taught artists. His award-winning feature documentary, MANA—beyond belief, premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam and at New York’s Lincoln Center. His books and collaborations include Self-Made Worlds, Signs and Wonders, The End is Near!, Farfetched, Architecture of Hope: the Treasures of Intuit, books on St. EOM and Howard Finster, three books for the Weird USA series, dozens of museum catalogues, and Walks to the Paradise Garden, with Jonathan Williams and Guy Mendes, published in conjunction with the exhibition, “Way Out There: The Art of Southern Backroads” at the High Museum in Atlanta. Roger lives in Durham, NC, with his wife, writer/photographer Theadora Brack.

Dr. Carl Herbert is a fourth-generation physician whose career has been devoted to helping infertility patients overcome a wide spectrum of obstacles to create their families. Early in his career he participated in the founding of one of the first eIVF centers in the United States. For more than forty years, Dr. Herbert has contributed to the growth and development of assisted reproductive technologies, continually implementing the evolving techniques and optimizing their clinical applications for care. The ambiguity of a socially awkward accolade, “You got me pregnant!”, has become a recurrent reward, both humorous and joyful. By serendipity, Dr. Herbert walked into Pucker Gallery for the first time in 1985 when visiting Boston for a medical conference. From this point on, his nascent interest in art grew under the generous tutelage and encouragement of Bernie Pucker. A close personal friendship evolved as they visited artists and exhibitions around the world; exchanged thoughts on the experience and intrinsic value that art, in all its many forms, can provide individuals and society; and shared writings which illuminated these principles.

Bernard Pucker is the director of Pucker Gallery, which he founded with his wife, Sue, on Boston's historic Newbury Street in 1967. Pucker Gallery represents over fifty artists from around the world, presenting ­­­approximately ten exhibitions annually, often paired with artist talks, virtual “WebinARTs” and Gallery receptions. Bernie is currently a Board Member at the Japan Society, Boston, and the Jewish Publication Society. He also serves on the Leadership Council for Facing History and Ourselves as well as the Artistic Advisory Board for the Terezin Music Foundation. Previously, he has served as President of Solomon Schechter Day School, President of the Newbury Street League, and Board Member for the Friends of Copley Square and The Unity Project, among others. Bernie received his MA in Modern Jewish History from Brandeis University and his BA in History and English Literature from Columbia College.

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