Mary Zompetti’s ‘The Lost Garden’ art exhibition opens Aug. 22 at Bridgewater College

Mary Zompetti, a photographic artist and assistant professor of photography at Hollins University in Roanoke, will exhibit “The Lost Garden” Aug. 22 through Sept. 27 at Bridgewater College. The exhibit will be showcased in the Beverly Perdue Art Gallery on the main floor of the John Kenny Forrer Learning Commons on the college’s campus.

An opening reception will take place from 5-7 p.m. on Aug. 29, with an artist’s talk at 5:30 p.m.

Zompetti utilizes traditional and experimental analog photographic methods to investigate land, home and environment. Her recent camera-less photographic work explores the delicate and resilient nature of film emulsion exposed to environmental conditions where she collaborates with light, weather and time to create unique photographs that embrace chance, mistake and deterioration.

“The Lost Garden” series is created by exposing large-format film to environmental conditions over extended periods of time. Wind, rain, ice and snow alter the film, leaving time- and place-specific impressions.

“My creative process is driven by curious experimentation with analog photographic materials – not in the quest for the perfect, captured moment, but rather for the possibilities that exist when control is relinquished and chance helps guide both the process and questions being asked by the work,” said Zompetti. “This curiosity excites and drives me to push the medium further, seeing what is possible outside the parameters of traditional photographic processes.”

Zompetti received an M.F.A. in visual arts from the Lesley University College of Art and Design in Cambridge, Mass., and a B.F.A. in visual arts from Northern Vermont University. She is a recipient of the 2020 Vermont Arts Council creation grant in support of new analog, camera-less photographic work, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Photographic Resource Center in Boston, the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum in Roanoke, the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Mass., the Mjólkurbúðin Gallery in Akureyri, Iceland, and the A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Zompetti has attended artist residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and at the Gil Residency in Akureyri, Iceland, and her work is also held in several collections, including the artist book libraries at Yale University and the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity.

The exhibition, opening reception and artist’s talk are free and open to the public.

The gallery is open from 7:30 a.m. to midnight Monday through Thursday; 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday; 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday; and noon to midnight on Sunday.