2023 is an exciting year for community art, as it marks the 85th anniversary of the Rehoboth Art League.

Opened June 18, 1938, the Rehoboth Art League has served artists and art lovers throughout Sussex County for nearly a century.

During 2023, RAL will host special events celebrating this memorable milestone, and providing members and guests with opportunities to step into the past with classic art classes, historical exhibitions, salons and more.

To kick off the 85th year, RAL will host three special exhibitions throughout January and February: the 8th Regional Juried Photography Exhibition, Hot House Hybrids II: Photography from Jenee Mateer, and Everyday Life, Everyday People: The Work of Jack Lewis.

The art league will host receptions for all three exhibitions from 5 to 7 p.m., Friday, Jan. 6, inviting anyone interested to visit the Corkran, Tubbs and Ventures galleries to see these new shows.

The Corkran Gallery will display the 8th Regional Juried Photography Exhibition from Jan. 6 through Sunday, Jan. 29. This show has been a part of RAL’s January exhibition program for eight years, making it one of the more contemporary offerings in the league’s history. The annual exhibit invites artists from Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and Washington, D.C., to submit their latest photographic work. This year, 27 artists were selected from a pool of more than 100 submissions, and their work represents a wide array of techniques and content, from traditional modernist approaches to contemporary and alternative media.

This year’s exhibition juror and awards judge is Jenee Mateer, a Baltimore-based photographer and video artist who will also have her own show in the Ventures Gallery during this time. Mateer’s award selections for the exhibition represent $900 in prize money for participating artists. Mateer will give a gallery talk at 10 a.m., Saturday, Jan. 7, in the Corkran Gallery.

Mateer’s photographs will populate the Ventures Gallery from Jan. 6 to Jan. 29 in a solo show titled Hot House Hybrids II. This collection alludes to the metaphorical connection between flowers and the female or feminine; it is meant to celebrate a diverse group of women, transformed and unified by bold color, pattern and natural forms that reaffirm the female connection to powerful forces of nature and the earth. Mateer combines photographs from her garden with watercolor to create digitally layered compositions that hover somewhere between the mediums of photography, collage and painting.

Finally, the Tubbs Gallery will hang a thrilling exhibition of works from the late artist Jack Lewis in the show Everyday Lives, Everyday People. In 2021, Nancy and Russ Suniewick, longtime friends of Jack Lewis and executive producers of “If You Lived Here, You Would Be Home Now: A Film About Jack Lewis and Bridgeville, DE,” generously donated to the Rehoboth Art League an outstanding collection of 52 paintings and various documents from the late artist. The range of work from this collection dates from the 1930s into the 1980s. It includes portraits, domestic and foreign scenes, and an important self-portrait of the early man. These works will be on display from Jan. 6 through Sunday, March 5, giving patrons plenty of time to view this special collection.

The exhibitions are free and open to everyone during the regular gallery hours of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday to Saturday, and noon to 4 p.m., Sunday.

For more information, go to RehobothArtLeague.org or call 302-227-8408, or find Rehoboth Art League on Facebook and Instagram @RehobothArtLeague.