FOCAL POINTS: WOMEN ADVANCING THE APERTURE
Group exhibition of contemporary female photographers

February 7 - April 25, 2020
Opening Reception: Friday, February 7, 2020 | 5 - 9 PM during Art Loop

Art auction is closed.

Focal Points: Women Advancing the Aperture showcases contemporary female photographers whose work centers on the themes of illusion, perception, and perspective against the backdrop of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. Like their antecedents, this exhibition celebrates the strength, conviction, and advancements made by women to address gender parity and the powerful role art plays in producing multiple layers of dialogue.

Punctuated predominantly by black and white photography, this inspiring exhibition presents a convergence of imagery that pushes the boundaries of photo-imaging and technique. Through the manipulation of light, focal points, shutter speed, filters, and subject material, the collective works reveal and articulate a persistence of the female voice. Through a framed visual language, the camera lens creates an illusion and perception between abstraction and representation.

Focal Points: Women Advancing the Aperture exposes the finest range of styles, materials, and photographic processes to tease out the fluid relationship between material process and the soul of innovation and artistic expression. Some works reveal no basis in the visible world, while other works pursue visualizing raw reality. In all, this exhibition underscores what makes The Delaware Contemporary unique: a center dedicated to presenting challenging and awe-inspiring art by young, emerging, and seasoned artists who persevere in advancing the aperture of photography.

While the syncopated cadence of vignettes draw the viewer in for close inspection, they magnify the role, presence, and even the absence of female photographers in history. The imagery serves as the prologue to how we continue moving forward on issues related to an equal voice at the voting booth, but also to advancing female artistic expression in the little white cube of the museum. The exhibition includes fourteen luminaries: Lynn Cazabon, Lisa Tyson Ennis, Alida Fish, Bronwen Hazlett, Connie Imboden, Virginia Lockman, Rebecca Parsons, Laurie Beck-Peterson, Amie Potsic, Christine Shank, Jo Smail, Gigi Stoll, Paula Gately Tillman, and Midge Wattles.

LYNN CAZABON
Cazabon is a Baltimore-based artist whose work has been exhibited internationally including with the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania; Tsung-Yeh Arts and Cultural Center, Tainan, Taiwan; WRO Art Center, Poland; Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand; Artists Space, New York, NY; Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY; Schroeder Romero Gallery, New York, NY; Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA; and with the Art in Embassies Program. She has received grants and fellowships such as Fulbright Scholar Program, Trawick Foundation, Franklin Furnace Archives, and Yaddo. Cazabon was born in Detroit, Michigan and is a Professor of Art at University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

LISA TYSON ENNIS
Tyson Ennis’ work is in many public and private collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Delaware Art Museum; and the Portland Museum of Art; and has been included in more than 75 solo and group exhibitions. Born and raised outside of Philadelphia, Lisa now lives with her husband in a quiet coastal village in central Maine.

ALIDA FISH
Fish’s photographs have been exhibited in galleries and museums including Philadelphia Museum of Art, Delaware Art Museum, The Portland Museum, Albright-Knox, The Pennsylvania Academy, and The Santa Barbara Museum. She has received prestigious awards including an Individual Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Masters Award from the Delaware State Arts Council. She has been a resident artist at several institutions including The American Academy in Rome, Anderson Ranch in Colorado, and Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York. Fish is professor Emerita at The University of the Arts, Philadelphia. She is represented by Schmidt-Dean Gallery, Philadelphia, and Alan Klotz Gallery, New York.

BRONWEN HAZLETT
Bronwen Hazlett has worked as both a commercial and fine art photographer. She received her MFA in photography from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, CA and her BFA from MICA in Baltimore, MD. Her work has been included in a variety of group exhibitions on the East Coast. In 2016 she was awarded Best Use of Non-Traditional Collage Processes in the exhibition Kayak at Gallery One Visual Arts Center in Ellensburg, WA.

CONNIE IMBODEN
Connie Imboden is represented in many permanent collections including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Bibliothèque Nationales in Paris, France, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany, as well as many other public and private collections. Imboden taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art for many years, and has also served as an instructor at the Maine Photographic Workshops, NORD Photography in Norway, the International Center of Photography in New York City, the Center for Photography in Woodstock, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in France, Union of Arab Photographers Workshop, Sharjah, U.A.E., and The Sante Fe Photographic Workshops.

VIRGINIA LOCKMAN
Virginia Lockman is an art photographer living in Wilmington, DE. She has had solo exhibitions at Colourworks, The ArtSpace at Siegel JCC, and at Blue Streak/The River Tower at Christina Landing. Her work has been exhibited at Wayne Arts Center, DaVinci Arts Alliance, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, The Delaware Contemporary, Plymouth Center for the Arts, Rehoboth Art League, and Mt. Cuba Visitors Center.

REBECCA PARSONS
Rebecca Parsons is an emerging artist and the founder of Rebecca Ashton Parsons Photography, which offers photojournalistic and posed portraiture photography. As Director of Operations for The Mill, a co-working space in Wilmington, DE, she also curates exhibitions tapping into local talent for displays at The Mill.

LAURIE BECK PETERSON
Laurie Beck Peterson is a Philadelphia based artist working primarily in traditional historic non-silver processes including gum bichromate, cyanotype and platinum palladium. Much of her work is film-based using pinhole and Holga cameras. Recent work seeks to incorporate digital imagery, inkjet/pigment prints, and works printed directly on wood. Her work has been exhibited throughout Philadelphia and New York and is included in many exhibits and publications specific to alternative process photography. She is currently teaching photo process at Tyler School of Art + Architecture and occasionally teaches at The University of The Arts. She maintains a studio in Germantown.

AMIE POTSIC
Amie Potsic is a photographer and installation artist whose work addresses cultural, personal, and natural phenomena. Potsic has exhibited her work at the Art Park in Rhodes, Greece; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, Colombia; Medfoundart di Cagliari, Italy; the Royal College of London, England; as well as in museums and galleries throughout the United States. Potsic received her MFA in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute and BA’s in both Photojournalism and English Literature from Indiana University, graduating with Distinguished Honors as a member of Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. She has held faculty appointments at the University of California at Berkeley, Ohlone College, and the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been published in The San Francisco Chronicle and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

CHRISTINE SHANK
Christine Shank is an artist working predominantly in photography. Her artwork is in the Harry Ransom Center and the William Benton Museum of Art as well as several private collections. Shank has been an artist-in-residence at the MacDowell Colony, Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the SIM Residency in Reykjavik, Iceland. Shank has received funding through The Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, New York Foundation for the Art’s Strategic Opportunities Stipend, and The Midwest Center for Photography. Shank received her MFA from Texas Woman’s University in Denton, TX. She is an Assistant Professor and the Director of the MFA program in Imaging Arts at Rochester Institute of Technology.

JO SMAIL
Baltimore-based, South African artist Jo Smail is celebrated world-wide for her abstract paintings, drawings, collages, and prints. Influenced by South African Apartheid, a devastating Baltimore studio fire, a life-altering stroke, the socio-political content of personal effects, the natural world, and art history, Smail’s work has been the subject of myriad exhibitions and publications such as The New York Times, Art in America, The Baltimore Sun, and The Washington Post. She has been the recipient of numerous accolades and residencies, including the Trawick Sapphire prize, the Rochefort-en-Terre Residency in France, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Smail is represented in private and public collections internationally including the Baltimore Museum of Art; US Embassy, Johannesburg; Johannesburg Art Museum; Johns Hopkins University Collection; National Gallery of South Africa; and Pretoria Art Museum. Smail is represented in the USA by Goya Contemporary Gallery.

GIGI STOLL
Gigi Stoll is a freelance photographer based in New York City specializing in portraits, humanitarian, and fine art photography. Her photographs have appeared in magazines such as Marie Claire Brazil, Conde Nast Traveler, Glamour, Wall Street Journal, Harper’s Bazaar Japan, British Vogue, Vanity Fair, W Magazine, Visionaire, and Vogue Paris. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Oprah Magazine, and Adorama ALC. Her charitable affiliations include Save the Children, Make-A-Wish, and Operation International Kids.

PAULA GATELY TILLMAN
Paula Gately Tillman’s nationally and internationally exhibited photographs are represented in numerous public and private collections, including the Permanent Collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Sheridan Libraries, Special Collections, Johns Hopkins University; New York University’s Fales Library; the LGBTQ Collection in the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives; and Rare Book Library at Emory University. Her book, Fringe, has won several prestigious awards, including the 2019 Communication Arts Award for photography and design, Communication Arts Design Annual, September/October 2019 issue; the 2019 New York Art Directors Club Merit Award; and the 2019 Best in Category and Best in Show at the Printing & Graphics Association Mid-Atlantic Excellence in Print Competition.

MIDGE WATTLES
Wattles is an artist based in New York and Palermo. She has a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and was awarded a Peter S. Reed Foundation grant in 2015 and a Fulbright grant in Sicily in 2016-17. She is represented by Francesco Pantaleone Gallery in Palermo and Milan.

DuPont II Gallery

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This exhibition is generously supported by: