Stephen Wilkes
America at 250: Through the Lens of Stephen Wilkes
August 1 to 31
For more than four decades, Stephen Wilkes (b. 1957, New York) has trained his lens on the American experience. As the United States marks 250 years, his photographs ask us to sit with its complexity. Central to the exhibition is his series Day to Night. From a fixed vantage point, Wilkes photographs iconic landscapes continuously for up to 36 hours, then composites over 1,500 images into a single frame where dawn, midday, dusk, and night coexist. In his own words, each is like a symphony, built slowly from countless individual moments.
Wilkes’ Tapestries series is, by his description, the jazz to that symphony: spontaneous in-camera multiple exposures captured in four to eight seconds. Here they are presented as commissioned hand-woven textiles, image translated into thread. Completing the show are works from the abandoned Bethlehem Steel plant in Pennsylvania, whose silent ruins speak to the rise and fall of the communities that powered the nation. Where Day to Night and Tapestries find America in its rhythms and textures, Bethlehem Steel finds it in its bones.
Also on Exhibit: Dana Piazza
Each of Dana Piazza’s works begins with a single mark. From there, the Massachusetts-based artist follows a set of rules of his own devising, repeating and adjusting that first gesture across paper, panel, or canvas. Small, unplanned slips enter the sequence and quietly redirect what comes next, so that each mark conditions the one after it and the outcome stays unknown until the work is finished. The accumulation reads as depth and movement, held within a single, deeply saturated hue. Moving between system and accident, Piazza lets order and unpredictability share one surface, tracing chance, discovery, and the passage of time.
1. Wrigley Field, Chicago, IL
by Stephen Wilkes
Fujiflex archival digital c-print
36 x 51.5 inches, Edition of 20
additional sizes available
2. Lake Mohegan Fall Study
by Stephen Wilkes
woven tapestry
39 x 51.5 inches, Edition of 4
additional sizes available
3. Flywheel
by Stephen Wilkes
archival pigment print
30 x 40 inches, Edition of 10
additional sizes available
4. Lines 353, 2026
by Dana Piazza
pigmented ink on 300 lb hot press watercolor paper
60 x 40 inches
5. Lines 355, 2026
by Dana Piazza
pigmented ink on 300lb hot press watercolor paper
60 x 40 inches
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