KCC to host photographer Mary Whalen for public lecture Oct. 1

Three dead birds in a detail shot of a Mary Whalen photograph.

Kellogg Community College will host Kalamazoo photographer Mary Whalen on campus this week as part of the College’s DeVries Visiting Artist Lecture Series.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held from 1 to 2 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 1, in the auditorium of the Davidson Visual and Performing Arts Center on KCC’s campus at 450 North Ave., Battle Creek.

Whalen, the Photography and Digital Media Department Chair and a photography instructor at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, has been a professional photographer for more than 20 years, regularly exhibiting her works. In the bio on her website – online at www.marywhalen.com – Whalen states, “The camera is a device which is an extension of myself that I use for expressing what I visualize, teaching, earning a living, and creating a collective work of images which capture the world and our times.”

Whalen’s presentation will focus in part on the historical wet-plate collodion/tintype photographic process, which she will expand on in later workshops with KCC photography students.

The lecture is funded through the Kellogg Community College Foundation Art on Campus Initiative, the mission of which is to provide art experiences on KCC campuses for students, employees and the community. In addition to offering public lectures, the Art on Campus Initiative brings visiting artists to classrooms to speak to students, funds exhibits in the College’s Eleanor R. and Robert A. DeVries Gallery, and this summer funded the installation of two new sculptures on the College’s North Avenue campus.

For more information, contact KCC art professor and DeVries Gallery coordinator Ryan Flathau at flathaur@kellogg.edu.

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