November 19, 7PM

Did you miss our faculty exhibition opening on October 15? You’ll have another chance to celebrate the work of our faculty, and attend talks from four exhibiting artists: John Blalock,  Beb C. Reynol, Keeara Rhoades, Erin Shafkind and Michelle Bates on November 19 at 7pm.

Over the past few quarters John Blalock has been scanning some of his pinhole negatives, experimenting in our digital lab with different digital transfer processes to see how his abstract architectural images fare on brightly gessoed boards. He continues to experiment with the process, taking his pinhole cameras on the road to capture architectural monuments and notable structures. On view from documentary photographer Beb C. Reynol are two portraits from his ongoing project entitled Forbidden Faces. For over ten years, Beb has traveled to the remote border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan, making portraits of the Pashtun inhabitants – a group that has been at the center of many conflicts, yet also unseen in many respects. Keeara Rhoades is an artist of many wiles: her digital photography, interactive performances, video works, and installations hinge on subconscious action and desire, memory and the sometimes precarious state of human rationality. The work of Erin Shafkind offers delightful measures of reality and artifice that mingle in playful portraits of friends and community. Along with their levity, the portraits incorporate elements of popular culture, national identity and bring forward frank interpretations of American icons woven into stories of individuality. Michelle Bates, plastic camera aficionado, has just released the second edition of her book Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity. This new volume expands on the work and technique of artists who employ finicky and, at times, unpredictable plastic cameras to create their work. A survey of this widespread practice, the book delivers a new group of artists and photographers who embrace this vein of photographic creativity.