The community is invited to join the Department of Art + Design for a reception and conversation with visiting artists Ashley Jones and Danea Males on Thursday, October 24, at 5 p.m. in the Lander Art Gallery, located inside the Abney Cultural Center at Lander University. The exhibit, titled “Home-Land,” will be on display in the gallery beginning October 1 through November 13. The reception and visits to the gallery are free and open to the public, and the gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday.
The exhibition will feature a collection of handmade cyanotype photographs that are direct impressions of botanical specimens from the artist’s home states of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Texas. These prints represent a visual dialogue about history, landscape and the environment. Drawing upon the cyanotype process, the two artists create work that explores the relationship between landscape and home place.
Cyanotype is a historic printing technique that requires the application of light sensitive chemistry to paper. When the coated paper is exposed to sunlight, the final image will be a unique blueprint. Cyanotype photography dates to 1842, and a few early practitioners found the process to be helpful in the scientific study of plants and algae. The accuracy rendered in a cyanotype print was often preferred to an illustration drawn by hand. In the digital era, contemporary photographers embrace cyanotype for its aesthetic qualities, and the allure of a handmade print.
Jones and Males are photographers and collegiate educators living in Greenville, South Carolina. Their photographs have been exhibited in galleries and academic institutions across the United States, including Southeast Center for Photography and Northern State University. Their collaborative work, “Home-Land,” was recently featured by Epiphany Knedler on “Lenscratch” and a pairing of their cyanotypes were published in “Common Ground,” Issue 02 by Borderline Press.
Please visit www.lander.edu/events for updates and to confirm event times and venues. For questions, please contact the College of Arts and Humanities at 864-388-8323, or email Perrin Rickenbaker at jrickenbaker@lander.edu.
To make a gift to the College of Arts and Humanities, please visit https://giving.lander.edu/give/CoAH.