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Homecoming 2021

The JKC Gallery is thrilled to announce Homecoming 2021. A show dedicated to photography students who graduated during the pandemic.

December 8 2021 – January 29 2022
Reception on Saturday, December 11 from 5-8pm

Register Here for the Reception (in-person & Virtual) (The event will also be livestreamed on Facebook, details to come.)

The pandemic disrupted what should have been a year of celebration for senior undergraduate and graduate students. Typically, the final year of an art program is filled with hope and possibilities, and while we know that most institutions did a good job of providing students with alternative modes of learning and interacting, the past two graduating classes have had to settle for limited access to artist visits and delayed or remote thesis exhibitions and graduation ceremonies. Homecoming 2021 is our way of helping students to continue their momentum forward to a fulfilling life in the arts.

Homecoming 2021, a FUJIFILM-sponsored collaboration between Booksmart Studio (Eric Kunsman) and Float Photo Magazine (Yoav Friedlander and Dana Stirling), along with JKC Gallery Director, Michael Chovan-Dalton and artist, Alanna Airitam celebrates those hard-fought creative triumphs. The free open call invited 2020-2021 photo grads, at the 4-year and graduate level, worldwide to submit their work. All work will be published, select images will be exhibited at Mercer County Community College’s JKC Gallery, and one lucky student will be awarded a Fujifilm GFX 100S camera and lens donated by FujiFilm North America.

Excerpted from Roula Seikaly / Humble Arts Foundation (Click here for full article)

For over two years now the routines and rhythms of our lives have been endlessly shifting and we have had to adapt to different modes of being productive and to reconsider what success is. The pandemic disrupted what should have been a year of celebration for senior undergraduate and graduate students. Typically, the final year of an art program is filled with hope and possibilities, and while we know that most institutions did a good job of providing students with alternative modes of learning and interacting, the past two graduating classes have had to settle for limited access to artist visits and delayed or remote thesis exhibitions and graduation ceremonies. 

But even before the pandemic, those of us in the arts had been re-examining the systems and hierarchical structures that have determined who gets the big shows, who gets the awards, who makes it into the Museums and history books, and who do we show to our students in our classrooms. In short, the art community has been thinking a lot about representation and gatekeeping and while the pandemic made things worse for artists in terms of opportunities, there were already big problems in the system. 

Homecoming 2021 was an idea that Eric Kunsman had been thinking about for a few years as a means to bring a little more representation and opportunity to those just starting out in the arts. Once Covid-19 caused all of us to figure out new ways of working and interacting, Eric realized that those tools could be used to make this show happen. He invited Dana Stirling and Yoav Friedlander of Float Photo, artist Alanna Airitam, and me to help broaden the goals of the show and the reach of the open call. No artists paid any fee to be in this show and our team all volunteered their time and resources. Also, Fujifilm produced the prints and donated the camera. 

This show represents as broad a range of talented recent photo graduates as we could fit on these walls. We wanted to be as inclusive as possible, limited mostly by wall and publication space. It is our hope that this work gets into the hands of those who can provide opportunities for these talented graduates.

Michael Chovan-Dalton | Director of the JKC Gallery