MCC on Main’s Dehn Gallery to Hold Photography Show Reception July 31
“Seeing Things,” the latest artist show at Manchester Community College’s Arts and Education Center, also known as MCC on Main will debut July 31 in the Adolf and Virginia Dehn Gallery at 903 Main Street.
The reception to open the photography exhibition that features seven regional photographers will be from 6 to 8 p.m. “Seeing Things” comprises work from Robert Calafiore, a native of New Britain, Conn., who now lives in West Hartford; Rebecca Clark, originally from Simsbury, Conn., and a resident of Mansfield, Conn.; Sean Kernan, of Branford, Conn.; Daniel Mosher Long, of Storrs, Conn.; Kevin Van Aelst, of Hamden, Conn.; Susan Whitehouse, originally from West Hartford, and now a resident of Hebron, Conn., and Kimberly Witham, of High Bridge, N.J.
The show will hang in the Dehn Gallery through September 13.
“The title suggests that the artists are all a bit loony and see things that are not there – hallucinations,” noted MCC Professor Long, who co-coordinated the show with fellow art Professor Maura O’Connor. “In other times and in some cultures, hallucinations were regarded as gifts from the gods or the muses. While these artists see things in a unique or peculiar way, the title also refers to the broad subject of this exhibition – things – as opposed to portraits, landscapes or documentary work.”
O’Connor added, “All of the artists in the show are using photographic technologies to depict objects that are immobile. They are trafficking in the world of still life imagery, inviting the viewer to re-examine relationships with objects, culture, notions of time, love, attachment and history.”
For example, Clark’s work builds on fragments of historical works of art and architecture that she first captures with an iPhone as she haunts museums near and far. She then uses Adobe Photoshop to weave and manipulate images together to create intricate multi-layered montages that she seals in wax using an age-old encaustic technique.
Similarly Whitehouse, who is also a student in multimedia at MCC, is a master gardener who combines her love of plants with photography. Her anthropomorphic, reverent portraits of roots dug from her yard imply plant-consciousness and suggest movement as she looks at and celebrates the mystical quality of things.
