This month Erin and I were excited to present our first opportunity to curate a group photography show at Kettle Art Gallery in Deep Ellum. We’ve been a part of the “Kettle Family” for a few years now and have had the pleasure of having our work hang there on several occasions. To be able to go in and shape an entire show and present a complete and cohesive exhibition was a special honor as well as an engaging challenge. When it comes to our own photography, we have a special place in our hearts for images that capture and evoke a sense of “space” and bring to light the beauty of places that exist all around us. For this show we decided to recruit photographers and to feature images that shared this message with regard to the Texas landscape. We then took this concept a step further and added a twist. We reached out to local writers and asked them to produce short texts of poetry or prose to go along with each of the images in the show. The end result FAR exceeded even our most optimistic of hopes and we couldn’t be happier with the results.
The show will hang at Kettle Art Gallery through Saturday, June 3rd. On that last day there will be a reading as a part of the Lit Hop event where several of the writers will be on hand to read their contributions alongside the prints on the wall. This past Friday there was a reading at Deep Vellum Books in connection with the White Rock Zine Machine, and I have to say it was incredibly moving to see the images and to listen to the words come together to form such a harmonious conclusion.
I can’t offer enough thanks to all of those that participated in and helped produce this show.
Frank Campagna & Paula Harris @ Kettle Art Gallery
Anne Hollander & Will Evans @ Deep Vellum Books
Lisa Huffaker @ White Rock Zine Machine
Sebastián Páramo & Coutney Marie @ Pegasus Reading Series
Photographers: Diane Durant, Don Essmiller, Devyn Gaudet, Justin Goode, Jason Lee, Paxton Maroney, Erin Reeves, Steven Reeves, Guy Reynolds, Rachel Rushing, David Simpson and Patti Simpson
Writers: Leslie Aguilar, Tim Cloward, Dan Collins, A. Kendra Greene, Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi, Lisa Huffaker, Andrew Koch, Courtney Marie, Joe Milazzo, Sebastián Páramo, Caitlin Pryor, Christopher Stephen Soden and Robin Turner