Regional Juried Photography exhibit opens at Rehoboth Art League
The Rehoboth Art League held an opening reception for its Regional Juried Photography Exhibition Jan.4. The scope of this year’s exhibition was expanded by inviting artists living in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and Washington, D.C. to participate.
There was a variety of photographs using traditional and unique methods from 53 artists selected from more than 250 submissions. Also opening was an exhibit by juror and judge Alida Fish titled Volunteer.
First place in the exhibition was awarded to Antonio McAfee, for his collage titled “D’Angelo as Mary Magdalene.” McAfee is a Baltimore-based interdisciplinary visual artist working in photography, drawing, video and collage. His recent works transform and build on historical depictions of African-Americans through a process combining glue and prints together to separate and decontextualize the image. While his work is grounded in portraiture he uses abstraction to not only complicate the image, but the response in the viewer. McAfee said of his collage “I was already making more formal decisions regarding tones of black, gray, and white and considering the environments my figures resigned in so hearing D’Angelo clarified atmospheres and moods I was crafting in the collages.”
The juror and judge for the exhibit was photographer Alida Fish. She is known for her still life work using manipulated photo processes, mythic tableaux of flora and curiosities, and disquieting spectral images. Throughout her career, she has indulged the make-believe, using photography as a tool for her imagination.
Fish said, “The impulse to populate and control an invented world has led to photographs of sculptures that appear to metamorphose into living flesh, plants that emerge as heroic in their struggle to exist, and curious objects that are a testament to the wonders of life on this planet.” Fish is professor emerita at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, where she served as chair of the Media Arts Department and later interim dean of the College of Art, Media and Design.
