Beyond The Frame – About the Photographers

Summer Art Show at The Meetinghouse – 2024

For the Summer we have a great show featuring the work of 3 Photographers – Bill Gore, Barbara Soares, and Jim Stasiak.

Here are their artist Bios:

Bill Gore

Bill Gore grew up in Louisiana and seemed always to have a special connection to the natural sciences, the environment, and photography.  He studied chemistry in college, received a Ph.D. from Syracuse University, and from there went on to work as a researcher in pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and imaging science. For a time, he led a research laboratory at Polaroid and contributed to the development of new photographic media. 

Bill studied photography with Sandi Haber Fifield and now lives and works in Connecticut. His photographic arts are grounded in the American landscape and search for ways to rethink the possibilities for visual expression as more than representation.  His images are deconstructed and reconstructed in ways that amalgamate and juxtapose multiple realities to express stories, memory, perception, history, the power of nature, and the effect of humans upon it.  

He recently co-authored “The Saugatuck Cosmology” with writer Ted Wade, and this work will be featured in the 2024 Photobook Exhibition at the Griffin Museum.   His works are widely exhibited, and has received Juror’s Choice Award at VCP, First Place at RICPA, and Best in Show at RAC and was featured in Digits, A Parallel Universe at the Griffin Lafayette.

Barbara Soares

Insight statement about the show

My work represents a zen meditation in seeing, photographing and processing images as ‘visual haiku’ where I invite the viewer to perceive the world in a different light & context. Passion, resonance, shadow/light, movement, essence of the moment and the heart -a synergy of somatic-felt sense that took me Beyond the Frame into choosing Renewal, Illumination, and Is That Me?^ for the show.

“Way to go, way to go, very good, very good, yeah!
Hypnotic rhythm, A child’s chant,
Journey never ending except for the pause inside the breath.
Illuminate, accentuate the path to wellness.
Ebb and flow, moving meditation, but where did it go?
Measuring the miles traversed inside, time and space eternal.
Where are we now? Where are we hiding?
How to recharge? How to renew?
Letting go. Becoming peace at peace.
Remembering how it happens in the light.
How it happens in the flow of stillness.
Recharge, renew, no worries, letting go.
Breathing our life in deeply, with gratitude
Illuminates our souls journey,
To find love, strength & courage despite the undertow! “*

As artists, we must be strong & create art not only to renew ourselves but to renew hope in others. A wise man once said ‘Light will win over darkness.’ May we all stand strong illuminating our humanity through the arts, no matter the challenge.

Barbara Soares
860-946-9470

On Facebook: @hummingbirdsoundyoga

^ Photographs included in the show
 *(Poem- Illumination ©2024, B Soares)

Jim Stasiak

Improvisational Development

Our awareness of the universe changes daily.

Photography is a moment-oriented art. A simple moment in time, however short in photographic terms, encompasses multiple dimensions, fleeting sub-atomic interactions, energy waves of incredibly long and short duration, gravitational constants and undefined anomalies. I rely on emotion and expertise to recognize an image in that simple moment, and skill, taste and judgment to produce an image of relevance and meaning for the viewer.

I have always been fascinated by patterns – and randomness. As my photography evolved from controlled camera movement at age 12 to include documentary, abstract, landscape, seascape, textures, and nature, I found both in abundance. As a musician, I found patterns and randomness there too. I began to realize how integral melody and rhythm were to the heart of an image. Photography is about interpretation and perception: we interpret what we see by the balance between familiar and unfamiliar, patterns and randomness, melody and rhythm, and build our perception on that.

I call my process Improvisational Development. Much like jazz musicians playing a melody, then evolving their emotional connections through improvisation, my work develops a photograph to explore and discover those emotional connections and interactions. There is a blend of conscious decision, mindful guidance and improvised variations. I want the viewer to interact with my improvisations, find new interpretations, new perspectives. New color. New structure. New projections. New feelings. A new balance between familiar and unfamiliar, patterns and randomness, melody and rhythm. Give the mind a chance to interpret reality within a different context.

I trust the viewer will accept the representation of what I see and feel, and use it to improvise with their own mind’s eye.

Jim Stasiak

860-248-5924