The Living Hand
a group exhibition in collaboration with
The Hand Magazine
June 17 - August 1, 2026
The Living Hand features 11 women artists from across the United States. Works on view showcase alternative photographic processes as well as printmaking.
INSTALLATION PHOTOS
The Hand Magazine
From the Publisher:
The mission of The Hand Magazine is to promote printing and making physical photographs you can hold in your hand. The name of the magazine is really more about the hand of the artist. But I don’t want to forget the consumer – the gallery-goer or collector – and what their experience of a photograph is. I just think seeing any work of art in person is better than seeing it on a screen or even on a magazine or book page. The real thing has texture, weight, shape, a smell, a sound, a certain way of catching light, that expands how someone experiences the work. Having seen a work in person, I almost always think about the image itself in a different manner, too. I think that’s because seeing the object makes me start to interact with it – looking at the sides, the back, how it’s hung, etc. – which makes me start to associate the artwork with other things.
My interest in alternative process started in college, with a very brief introduction. But I didn’t really become infatuated with different ways to print photographs until after college. First, I didn’t have a darkroom, which was a bummer. I didn’t want to print digitally and I couldn’t have afforded nice equipment then anyway. This was the early 2000s. Also, the Nelson-Atkins Museum opened a new wing to show off their newly acquired Hallmark Collection, which is fantastic. So, they had a big show, which was the first time I had actually seen tintypes, platinum palladium prints, gum bichromate, Daguerreotypes, and a number of other techniques I didn’t know existed. It fascinated me that I could print this way. Also, my real job is teaching and I always want to learn new things to show students. The possibilities are endless with alternative processes, so it gives me a lot to practice, consider, and teach.
Adam Finkelston
I do think it is important to make things by hand. In fact, making things by hand is not just important, it is essential to a life well-lived. To me, AI is just incredibly boring. I’m not so much mad about it as I am sad. AI is disappointing on so many levels. The vast majority of the AI products I’ve seen feel soulless and banal in addition to often being inaccurate. But, my biggest critique of AI is that it denies someone the experience of making something. For me, artmaking is as much for the artist as it is for a consumer. AI doesn’t express an individual human point of view. It’s just a mashup of billions of things that all sort of just get averaged into being an image. AI art does not represent an expressive act. After a work of art leaves the studio, or even as soon as it’s finished, what the artist gets to keep from that is the experience of having made it. I mean, making art is not just product-oriented, it’s experience-oriented. That experience is valuable to me! I even like art better when I feel like I can sense or imagine the experience of the artist making it. That’s hard to explain. A good analogy is in movies. I love old horror and sci-fi movies with practical effects because I can imagine the people making the movie trying to figure out a problem and working together, coming up with a contraption or a new technique to solve the problem. That is more enjoyable to me than imagining a film-maker sitting at a computer for hours on end waiting for things to render. Boring. I think making things is just good for you. It makes you human. I think one of the reasons people are drawn to alternative processes – as both creators and consumers – is that human connection.
In a moment of artificial image generation and “deep reals” (to riff off of a recent Aperture issue), does it feel important to be producing something that involves a good deal of manual labor now?
In terms of the magazine, we are always working on connecting with new artists for features and working on new shows in different parts of the US. I would love to do a show internationally at some point. A magazine is unique because it has to be somewhat familiar and comforting to readers who like what we do, while also trying to add new features and little tweaks so it doesn’t get too repetitive. So, I’m always thinking about how we can do something a little different, but not too different. Of course, we always want to expand readership as much as possible because that means more eyes looking at the artists we publish. Although, at a certain point, it might get too big for us to do just the two of us (Adam Finkelston & James Meara). That’s one of those problems I wouldn’t mind having!
What’s next for The Hand Magazine