Exploring Connection Between Dogs and Humans

How do homeless dogs find their way into an art gallery in Boston? Through the images of Framingham resident Nancy Diessner, an artist who also volunteers at a dog shelter.

Diessner’s latest exhibit, “Shelter in Place,” is currently showing at the Bromfield Gallery in Boston  through Saturday, April 30. It includes a series of prints exploring the relationship between canines and humans.

The exhibit grew out of Diessner's experience volunteering at Save a Dog, an all-volunteer group in Sudbury that rescues and finds home for abandoned dogs, some from as far away as Tennessee and West Virginia, according to the organization’s website.

“Volunteering at Save a Dog brings me into contact with many dogs,” Diessner said. “Those dogs can be vastly different breeds or combinations of breeds, different sizes, and different personalities and histories, but they all have in common the fact that they are currently looking to be adopted. They have no homes or families, so the people at Save a Dog become that family.”

Diessner remarked that the connection between the dogs and their human caretakers often happens quickly and intensely, and it was something she wanted to explore through her art.

“Making a cross-species connection is a powerful and moving experience. We aren't chatting about the weather; we're connecting to each other as living beings who enjoy and need some of the same things," Diessner said.

"As an artist, I wanted very much to express the intensity and mystery of that connection with a dog. For me, it's visually expressed in the dog's gaze into your eyes, and the shared connection that takes place in that exchange.”

The images in the show focus on the powerful relationships between people and dogs, but also highlight the differences between the species.  Humans portrayed in Diessner’s pictures are small, with backs turned away, while the dogs are larger and often look directly at the viewer.

Diessner's technique involved taking photographs of the dogs then, in her studio, altering the raw photographs using Photoshop, drawing, or painting. The final images were later hand-printed like traditional etchings.

Diessner studied printmaking in college and graduate school, but found that traditional printmaking uses chemicals she considers harmful. A few years ago, she began working at Zea Mays Printmaking in Northampton, where she learned “green” printmaking techniques that are better for the environment, as well as the artist.

“The printmaking process I use is not traditional copper photogravure, which uses some harsh chemicals, but instead is an etching process that uses a photopolymer plate. The process is sometimes called ‘polymer gravure’ or ‘photopolymer intaglio’ (etching),” Diessner said.

She demonstrated that printmaking process at the Bromfield Gallery on Saturday, April 16.

Diessner makes her prints on thin Japanese papers, as well as thicker Western printmaking papers.

“For this exhibition, I layered many thin, translucent Japanese papers to create the kind of surface and depth that I wanted. The print quality on a Japanese paper called gampi, which I used in many of the prints, is crisp and very beautiful,“ she said.

As a member of the Bromfield Gallery, Diessner has a solo show there every two years and also participates in group shows. She began her work on “Shelter in Place” two years ago, soon after her last solo show in 2009.

Meanwhile, Diessner is working on another project as well. She is in the process of converting a concrete barn behind her house into a public printmaking studio.

“The studio will be open for artists to work on their own work with the large press and other equipment in the studio, and I'll also offer workshops and classes to people interested in learning photo-based etching, monotype, and other printmaking processes,” she said.

Her printmaking studio will embrace the green printmaking processes she has adopted. Construction on the public studio is expected to be complete by the end of the summer.

Diessner has lived in Framingham for 10 years, but spent much of that time in New Hampshire, where she taught art at Chester College of New England. Last year, she left her teaching job to focus on her own studio work and on building the new public printmaking studio. 

“I’m excited about really beginning to live and work in Framingham,” Diessner said.

“Shelter in Place” will run at the Bromfield Gallery through Saturday, April 30.