July Art Hop Features "Echo Location" Exhibit by Colleen Woolpert

The July Art Hop exhibit at the Center for New Media's Arcus Gallery is "Echo Location" by Colleen Woolpert. The opening reception will be held on July 14 from 5 to 8 p.m. and the exhibit will remain on display from July 14-28, 2023.

Echo Location, a solo exhibition by Colleen Woolpert, considers the same sites in different ways through multiple lenses. Colleen's photographs, stereoscopic (3D) photographs, interactive objects, and installations convey how she experienced the former Lee Paper Company mill in Vicksburg, MI with her twin sister Rani Young at the Prairie Ronde Artist Residency in the Summer of 2022. Further extending her visual motifs, Woolpert includes images from her subsequent site-specific installation at the Hill's Building in downtown Vicksburg.

Among her media explorations, Woolpert's stereoscopic photography may be viewed as standard photographs or in 3D for an immersive encounter that predates VR. Woolpert's interest in stereoscopic photography originated with a desire to help her twin sister, Rani, whose visual impairment (strabismus) impedes her depth perception and affects her mental health. Woolpert's stereoscopes reinforce the vision therapy program that trains Rani's eyes to coordinate, resulting in depth perception and calm self-confidence. In Woolpert's view, the work is joint art therapy.

Support provided by the Kalamazoo Artistic Development Initiative, a program of the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo.

Woolpert is an interdisciplinary artist based in Kalamazoo. She creates still and moving images as well as interactive objects and installations rooted in photography that promote the value of multiple perspectives and explore the meaning of vision - from visual perception itself to abstract concepts like imagination, wonder, and doubt.