On Monday, 29 NovemberPucker Gallery hosted a virtual viewing of WildLife: the Quiet Island of Alexandra de Steiguer by Gallery artist Alexandra de Steiguer. Afterwards, we enjoyed a discussion between Gallery Director Bernie Pucker and collector Dr. Carl Herbert. Click here to watch the discussion! And click here to watch the short film!
Alexandra de Steiguer Alex first began photographing while crewing aboard research and educational ships, starting with a stint on an old barkentine out of Gloucester, Massachusetts. For nine years, countless sea-miles and many memorable storms (the “Perfect Storm” of 1991 included), she variously worked as bosun or deckhand, or studied marine biology and oceanography at sea. Initially moved to merely chronicle the beauty of the experience, Alex soon became inspired to enter into a comprehensive self-study of art, eventually discovering expressions of her own home-grown philosophies in the work of other artists and thinkers, particularly in that of the Romantics and Transcendentalists, and within the philosophical traditions of the Far East.
For the past nineteen years Alex has been photographing the Isles of Shoals in winter. Closing up her tiny, solar-powered home in the woods of New Hampshire, she moves nine miles off the coast and onto a small group of rocky islands in the stormy North Atlantic. There, as the winter caretaker, she is the island’s sole resident for five months. Her images pay tribute to the wild elements that claim the Isles’ shores and reflect connections within the natural world, and the transitory and humbling nature of our residence in it.
Her work is in the permanent collections of the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, and the DeCordova Museum, and she is a two-time artist fellow of the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. Alex creates her images using medium-format film and personally hand-prints each image in her traditional darkroom.
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 the 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 Mr. 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.
Dr. Herbert has become an avid and passionate collector of art, including paintings, prints, sculptures, ceramics, and photographs.