Alexander/Heath Contemporary Features New Exhibition of Works by Art Professor Mary Zompetti

Alexander/Heath Contemporary Features New Exhibition of Works by Art Professor Mary Zompetti

Fine Arts, Special Events

November 28, 2022

Alexander/Heath Contemporary Features New Exhibition of Works by Art Professor Mary Zompetti Mary Zompetti

Roanoke’s Alexander/Heath Contemporary is presenting “The Lost Garden,” an exhibition of works by photographic artist and Assistant Professor of Art Mary Zompetti, December 2 – 30.

Located at 109 Campbell Avenue, SW, the art gallery is hosting an opening reception for the show in conjunction with downtown Roanoke’s “Art-by-Night” on Friday, December 2, from 5 – 9 p.m.

Zompetti utilizes traditional and experimental analog photographic methods to investigate land, home, and environment. Her recent cameraless 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.

“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,” Zompetti says. “This curiosity excites and drives me to push the medium further, seeing what is possible outside the parameters of traditional photographic processes.”

Zompetti notes that in “The Lost Garden” exhibition, the cameraless photographs “are created by exposing large-format film to environmental conditions over extended periods of time. The physical remains of wildlife and other remnants of the natural world are placed on the film’s surface. The film becomes an imprint of the fragile body, a witnessing of transformation through loss, and a map-like record of time and place during this moment when our natural environment is on the precipice of irreversible change.”

Zompetti holds a B.F.A. in visual arts from Northern Vermont University and an M.F.A. in visual arts from the Lesley University College of Art and Design. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, from Hollins’ Eleanor D. Wilson Museum to galleries in Boston, Brooklyn, and Iceland.

“The Lost Garden” is partially funded by the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.