VINCENNES, Ind. - An exhibition featuring the photographic work of Kalee Appleton and Dana Fritz will open August 21 at Vincennes University’s Shircliff Gallery of Art. The exhibit will include new photographic landscape projects from both artists and will run through September 21. 

An artist talk and reception will take place with Appleton and Fritz on September 13, 11 a.m. – 12 p.m. (EDT) at the Gallery.

Imagined Landscapes takes on the age-old subject of the landscape. The landscapes presented create a connection and viewpoint that does not actually exist in reality. Artist Kalee Appleton constructs larger than life backdrops that are digitally created to amuse the senses, while Dana Fritz builds her imagery from multiple negatives in the darkroom that create rich tonal values and quiet solitary spaces.

Appleton’s series, Verisimilitudinous, playfully examines the digital nature of photography through the device of humor and kitsch. The title of the work being playfully derived from the word “verisimilitude” meaning “the appearance or semblance of truth,” this series of photographs references the inclination to believe photographic imagery but contradicts this tendency by blatantly existing as false landscapes. Inspired by the tradition of photographic backdrops, each of these images are halfheartedly intended to transport a “sitter” to these strange cliché locations.

The photographs in Fritz’s Views Removed render trees, stones and other natural materials in ways that their scale and perspective become ambiguous.  Fritz combines more than one negative to create a "landscape view" that exists only in the final print. The composition and contrast in the resulting gelatin silver prints emulate the white paper background and equivocal space in ink painting traditions that are free from the technical constraints of photography

The Shircliff Gallery of Art is located in Room A103 of the Shircliff Humanities Center at the corner of First and Harrison streets on the VU campus. Gallery hours are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday, and 12-4 p.m. on Sunday. Admission is free.

For more information, contact Prof. Arthur Fields, 812-888-4316, or afields@vinu.edu.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Kalee Appleton a photography-based artist and educator living in Dallas, TX. She is currently an assistant professor of Photography at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, TX. Originally from Hobbs, NM, she attended Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX and received a BFA (2005) in Photography. After graduation, she worked as a corporate and aviation photographer, and she later attended Texas Woman’s University in Denton, where she received an MFA (2014). Appleton’s work deals the nature and materiality of photography, specifically landscape photography. Appleton exhibits her work regionally at Erin Cluley Gallery in Dallas and has exhibited nationally at Filter Photo, Chicago, IL; Houston Center for Photography and Fotofest International, Houston, TX.

Dana Fritz is a Professor in the School of Art, Art History & Design at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She holds a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Arizona State University. Her honors include an Arizona Commission on the Arts Fellowship, a Rotary Foundation Group Study Exchange to Japan, a Society for Photographic Education Imagemaker Award and Juror’s Awards in national exhibitions. Her work is held in several collections including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; New Mexico State University, Las Cruces; the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art; and Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

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