Dear Reader,
His business card reads “John Gaumond – Photographic
Art.” Years before cracking open his first box of cards,
he was just someone who liked to take photographs on vacations.
We would choose our favorites, then frame the prints and hang
them around the house. He didn’t even sign the mats back
then, because these images were ours to treasure. When we both
retired from teaching in the late nineties, I returned to painting
and writing full-time while photography became a source of creativity
and joy for him, joining his passions for gardening and reading/writing
poetry.
One day, Donna Winant, an art appraiser and director of Worcester’s
Italian American Cultural Center’s art gallery, was visiting
to look at my work for a future exhibit. While we made our arrangements,
she took in the artworks displayed everywhere in our tiny home
and focused on several photographs from Italy.
“Whose are these?” she asked.
John stepped forward and answered, “Mine.”
“Why, I didn’t know that you were a photographer!”
It was a perfect fit: “Colors of Italy,” his first
exhibition was scheduled for January of the following year.
“John Gaumond, 2001”
The Worcester Phoenix art critic Leon Nigrosh published
a glowing review: “This exhibition could just as easily
have been titled ‘The Nooks and Crannies of Italy’
because, unlike the typical tourist, John Gaumond finds greater
pleasure in discovering the little nuances of foreign places,
including light, color, angles, arches and doorway…For
someone who never expected to show his work, Gaumond acquits
himself quite well, using modest double mats and thin black
frames to anchor each of his pleasant, placid, and engaging
photographs…As Gaumond says, ‘I just want to keep
it simple.”
John’s first exhibition in 2001 was bookended by his final
exhibition “Here and There” in March 2024, at the
Gale Free Library in Holden. During those twenty-three years,
he proudly showed his work in dozens of local and regional venues.
Finally, there is an idea which needs to be pondered and acknowledged.
That day in 2000, John was more than flattered by Donna Winant’s
pronouncement. He was handed another identity by someone whose
opinion he respected and took it seriously. Can you remember
those moments, for better or for worse, in your life?
