Mount Laurel Residents Showcase Unconventional Photography in Student Works Gallery
The Student Works Gallery is celebrating the unconventional side of photography as it presents an exhibition, titled “Process,” featuring works by students in the Rutgers University–Camden Department of Fine Arts’ “Advanced Photography” course, through April 9.
Students in the course, taught by Ken Hohing, an instructor of art and head of the photography concentration, are encouraged to explore image making through ways other than traditional “shoot and print” methods. Such methods can include use of film cameras, professional to Lomographic; paper negatives; pinhole and handmade cameras; flatbed scans of film; transparencies and photographs, and historical processes such as Cyanotype, Carbon, Gum Bichromate, Platinum, Gold Leaf, and Mordançage. Mixed media, image transfers, three-dimensional, and Encaustic methods are also explored.
Among the exhibiting artists are senior social work majors and Mount Laurel residents Laura Kusisto and Christina Maxson.
Kusisto created an untitled work using image transfer on aluminum.
“Image transfer allowed me to combat the normal focus of a crisp picture and to test how a photo transfer can allow an image to look grainy and yet still bring out strong colors,” says Kusisto. “The images were scanned and printed using a laser printer. The watercolor paper was treated with the gel medium.”
Kusisto graduated from Burlington County College with an associate’s degree in psychology in 2012. Upon earning her bachelor’s degree in social work, she plans to work in some capacity with U.S. veterans.
Maxson created a piece, titled “Purgatory,” using gel medium, inkjet, watercolor paper, and three 35mm developed photos.
“The way the images transferred to the watercolor paper distorted the images portraying the eerie look to what my idea of ‘Purgatory’ is: loneliness,” says Maxson. “The image of the child was a negative from the 1920s. I then transferred the print using gel medium. Matte Mod Podge was applied over the transfer to act as a sealant.”
Maxson graduated from Lenape High School in 1999 and subsequently Burlington County College with an associate’s degree in psychology in 2008. Upon graduating this May, she will continue her studies in the advanced standing master of social work program at Rutgers–Camden.
The Student Works Gallery is located behind the Corner Store on the main level of the Campus Center, on Third Street, between Cooper Street and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge on the Rutgers–Camden campus. Gallery hours are the same as the store, which are Monday to Thursday, 8:30 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Friday, from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
For more information on the exhibition or the gallery, contact curator Sara Hawken at sara.hawken@rutgers.edu.
Tom McLaughlin
Rutgers University–Camden
Editorial/Media Specialist
(856) 225-6545
thomas.mclaughlin@camden.rutgers.edu