Description:  On Site is a collection of recent photographic works by Liz Donadio. It combines two recent projects from 2018 and 2020-2021. The Lumen prints are from a series that documented the water and plant life along Rock Creek, a 32-mile-long tributary of the Potomac River that stretches from Maryland to Washington, DC. The Cyanotypes and digital prints are from the artist’s long-term visual study of Adkins Arboretum, a native plant sanctuary on the Eastern Shore of MD.

Process descriptions: Lumen prints consist of black & white photographic paper, physical objects, sunlight, and time. Each variable in this camera-less process can be manipulated and shifted to produce mysterious, one of a kind pictures. Organic materials are placed in contact with gelatin silver paper and exposed to sunlight. The prints are scanned to preserve them before fading and digitally printed in large-format editions. These visual impressions depict my experience walking along Rock Creek, collecting plants, and getting lost in the landscape.

Some of the first photographs ever made were created using the Cyanotype and the Anthotype processes. A Cyanotype uses the sun to develop a natural emulsion into a vivid blue image, which can be further toned and manipulated. The Anthotype takes photosensitive plant material to prepare a photographic emulsion. Over days or weeks of exposure to sunlight, in combination with plants or objects placed on the coated paper’s surface, an image emerges.

Along with these messy, hands-on methods, I documented my visits with a digital camera, archiving the changes in the environment as months passed. The images shown with On Site are a fragment of this collection, displaying the breadth of colors and textures that one can see at the Arboretum.

Bio: Liz Donadio is a Baltimore-based artist and educator whose visual practice is centered on the nexus of art, ecology, and architecture. Her photographic prints and installations conjure meditations on the natural and human-made world. Donadio received an MFA from Towson University in 2012 and a BFA from Purchase College in 2006. Her work has been exhibited and screened nationally and is in the collections of the Albin O. Kuhn Library at UMBC and the Maryland Historical Society. Donadio is an Assistant Professor of Photography + Media at Northern Virginia Community College, Woodbridge where she teaches digital and analog processes and the history of photography.

On view November 1st though November 23rd “Home Work” represents works completed by NOVA Woodbridge Arts students while taking classes online over the last year and half.  Come by the WAS Gallery and check out the work of your fellow students and watch out for more open calls for art here at the WAS Gallery Blog.

Nicole Mulliungs Pettus

Luke Catania

Kyle Saw

Lucas Bills

Dean McIntyre

Glenda Nunez Maldanado

Aiden Truitt

After a loooooooong hiatus the WAS Gallery is back up and running.  We are so glad to see students on campus again and that means it is time to show some student work.

It’s time to show the Woodbridge Campus what you’ve got!  Submit 3 of your best works to the Juried show for a chance to win cash!

Please read over the flyer and be sure to follow the directions.  If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to email the WAS Gallery Director zjackson@nvcc.edu.

Deadline Extended to March 30th

The WAS Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of in progress work from Faculty member Erin Devine.

“but the so little that had been left was so much” is a project-in-progress by Erin Devine, Professor of Art History, in collaboration with scientists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) who study short and long-term memory via the neurons of insects and small animals. The final installation (at the HHMI-Janelia Research Campus Gallery in September) will include large-scale, textile-based images of birds, animals, and insects affected by various population loss, as well as their neuron structures and nomenclature that enclose a sound chair emitting recordings of wildlife in natural environments – from Australia, to California, and Virginia.  Additional photos of Devine’s interactions with these environments complete a sensory installation that seeks to bridge the elusive processes of memory to the urgent narrative of our fading ecosystems.

This semesters Portfolio Review students are installing their group show!

This course offers a unique opportunity for students to be directly involved in the installation, lighting and design of a group exhibition in preparation for transferring from NOVA.