Art Gallery 'Ravines Revisited' opening reception March 17

A new exhibition at the Grand Valley State University Art Gallery explores the beauty and complexity of the landscape and the effects of erosion to the Allendale Campus Ravines.

The exhibition, "Ravines Revisited," in the GVSU Art Gallery, in the Performing Arts Center, Allendale Campus, opens March 14. An opening reception with the artists is planned for Thursday, March 17, from 5-7 p.m. Both the exhibition and reception are open to the public with free admission.

Photographic essays by three Grand Valley faculty artists are featured in the exhibition: Dellas Henke, Department of Art & Design professor; Stanley Krohmer, Liberal Studies Department affiliate faculty; and Anthony Thompson, School of Communications associate professor and director.

Henke began as a painter and in 1975 discovered printmaking, which he studied at the University of Iowa. He later moved to Rochester, New York, where he set up a press, began an association with Samuel Beckett, and ultimately made three books of prints with his texts. He began to teach at Grand Valley in 1982 and continues to make prints, drawings and photogravures.

Krohmer's images were selected from more than 1,500 Tri-X and Fuji medium format film negatives made between Autumn, 2005 and early Spring, 2007 and shot with several vintage 1950’s Rolleiflex F Twin Lens Reflex cameras. His Autumnal Series of color photos were taken at the trailhead of Ravines Sanctuary near Calder Art Center.

Thompson's interests include photographic theory and discourse, the intersection of Art and Science as ways of knowing, and creative photography that mixes traditional and digital processes. His Seasonal Light series is a meditation in visual form within and upon a part of the university’s communal landscape, the Ravines.

Additional programs during the exhibition include a March 24, performance by the New Music Ensemble, and an April 15 guided tour of the ravines by Peter Wampler, professor of geology, to discuss improvements that have been made in recent years by the university to control ravines erosion by rain-water run-off. For more information, visit www.gvsu.edu/artgallery, or call (616) 331-2563.