Heritage Habitats featured exhibit at WSCC Dawson gallery

VICTORY TWP. —  The Manierre Dawson Gallery’s new exhibit for January and February will feature the collaborative works of Michigan artists Ginger Owen and Vicki VanAmeyden.

Partnering to create multi-faceted installations for the last five years, their current project centers on the stages in one’s life as represented in photographs inspired by family photo albums as nostalgic heirlooms.

Through the exhibit, entitled “Heritage Habitats,” both artists contemplate our dialogue with the past as given to us in the collected images and remembered stories that ultimately tell us where we came from and who we are.

Vicki VanAmeyden currently teaches at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art. She earned her Master of Fine Arts in Painting from West Michigan University in 2002, and her undergraduate degree at Kendall School of Art and Design.

Her work has been exhibited in Michigan and beyond where she has also received numerous awards and grants.

VanAmeyden says of her work, “I use image as a metaphor for the human condition and navigate through empathy. I desire to understand what it means to be a person, ranging from the cultural sense to the political sense.”

VanAmeyden also has a local connection to the area as her parents live in Ludington.

Ginger Owen is an Associate Professor of Photography and Intermedia in the Gwen Frostic School of Art at Western Michigan University where she has worked for the past ten years. She attended New York University in the Tisch School for Art at the American Photography Institute from 1997 to 2000, and earned her Master of Fine Arts in Photography from Louisiana State University in 1998.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and she has also received numerous grants and awards during her career.

Owen says that her artwork “derives imagery from narratives and themes of family history, race, gender, and culture.”

The exhibit will be on display in the Manierre Dawson Gallery on the campus of West Shore Community College from January 13 through February 28.

Hours for the gallery, located in the Arts and Sciences Center, are Monday – Thursday, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m.,Friday, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. with open hours evenings and weekends during Center Stage Theater performances.