Rich Bergeman, Renee McKitterick, Frank Boyden, Empathies and Energies

April 2 to May 10, 2018
Reception: April 5, at 6 p.m.

Royal Nebecker Gallery
Clatsop Community College Campus
1799 Lexington Ave.
Astoria, OR

www.clatsopcc.edu/community/ccc-royal-nebeker-art-gallery
Hours: Monday through Friday 9am to 6pm

Corvallis photographer Rich Bergeman will be joined by fellow Oregon artists Renee McKitterick and Frank Boyden for an exhibit titled “Empathies and Energies” at the Royal Nebecker Gallery on the campus of Clatsop Community College in Astoria from April 2 to May 10, 2018.

The exhibit features recent infrared landscape photographs by Bergeman, who has been exhibiting his black-and-white photographs throughout the Northwest since the 1980s; ceramics and sculpture by McKitterick, who is currently chair of the Art Department at Linn-Benton Community College in Albany; and ceramics and prints by Boyden, an internationally acclaimed artist from Otis, Oregon, whose public sculptures can be seen at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, and elsewhere
A public reception will be held on Thursday, April 5, at 6 p.m. in the gallery.

“Empathies and Energies” takes its name from the commingling of Boyden’s dry-point etchings of anguished faces with the fire and light that Bergeman and McKitterick use to create their infrared photographs and ceramics, respectively. Boyden’s “Empathies” is a suite of 96 intimate dry-point psychological portraits that began in response to the artist’s disillusionment with the depravity of humanity and evolved into one of empathy and personal introspection. Bergeman said he began using infrared photography in recent years because it has a “haunting quality” that fits well with his historical projects, and can transform an everyday landscape into a surreal experience. McKitterick describes the new work she is showing as “fundamentally feminine,” and an exploration of how “shapes can move the viewer through, around, and back into its space.”