The Queensborough Community College (QCC) Art Gallery opened on Oct. 8 with a fall lineup that will take viewers on an international journey without ever leaving Queens.
“We are extremely proud to welcome three such distinguished, renowned artists whose powerful works represent the fascinating cultures of people and places around the world,” said Faustino Quintanilla, executive director of the QCC Art Gallery.
Charles D. Miller III is featured in his largest photographic exhibition to date, “A Liberian Sojourn.” Miller—who has been visiting West Africa since 1968—owns a home on the outskirts of Liberia’s capital and spends much of his time observing the daily lives of people in the Dan villages. He created the images on display while residing in Liberia through the 1970s and 1980s, and through his art he reveals a colorful world of children, village elders and girls going through rites of passage in the Sande Society from the town of Dwazahn.
“I look forward to meeting visitors of many backgrounds and cultures who come to see my exhibit as Africa remains one of the least-known continents of the world,” Miller said.
“Doors of Memory/Porte della Memoria,” a photographic essay by Eleanor M. Imperato, is a collection of original photographs of old doors and windows taken in the artist’s birthplace of Avella, Italy. Imperato is also a writer and a poet who published a memoir of her early years to accompany her exhibit, illustrated with many more of her photographs and presented in both English and Italian.
Imperato has said that she hopes that “Viewers, immigrants or not, will feel that primeval pull that birthplace elicits in our hearts, without diminishing the strong identity we feel for the place we call home.”
The third exhibit to premiere on Oct. 8 is “Sustainable Nature Solutions II,” a series of large-scale LED panels with silhouetted images of hearts created by Suzanne C. Nagy. Nagy has been an environmental artist for 40 years, and her work has won her international acclaim and a prize from the American Embassy. Her current exhibit was inspired by a 2013 trip to the Amazon rainforest.
“A Liberian Sojourn” and “Sustainable Nature Solutions II” will be open until Dec. 8; “Doors of Memory/Porte della Memoria” will close on Jan. 10, 2016.
