EXHIBITION: Science Girl Party
SCIENCE GIRL PARTY
KATINA BITISICAS & SCOTT MCMAHON • MACKENZIE CALLE • ROSEMARY JESIONOWSKI • COURTNEY JOHNSON • BETH JOHNSTON • GALINA KURLAT • ANNA LAZA • DAKOTA MACE • AMANDA MARCHAND & LEAH SOBSEY • BEATRICE THORNTON • DM WITMAN
Friday, September 5, 2025 – Saturday, October 25, 2025
EXHIBITION PREVIEW NIGHT | Thursday, September 4, 6pm [6:30 tour kickoff]
FIRST FRIDAY ART WALK OPENING | Friday, September 5, 5-8pm
A portrait of Constance Talbot, who was a mother, an early photographer, and a better painter than her husband. This image is a calotype, an early photographic process, and was made by her husband, William Henry Fox Talbot, a man photographer, c.1840
In 1833, William Henry Fox Talbot began his journey of creating some of the earliest photographic processes after becoming jealous of his wife Constance’s superior painting abilities. We love that for us.
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (French, 1765–1833), Untitled 'point de vue,' 1827. Heliograph on pewter. Credited as the earliest surviving photograph.
Since its conception, photography has bobbed between science and witchcraft, art and technology, documentation and fabrication. From the early camera obscura to the development of Kodachrome film, we have countless men to thank for their fastidious commitment to capturing life as image, and most likely, countless mothers, daughters, wives, mistresses, subjects, and students to thank for their influence upon those men.
Epifania de Guadalupe Vallejo (pictured), who learned the daguerrotype process by the time she was fourteen, making her a very young first Latina and first (pre)Californian photographer. One of her daguerreotypes is said to have been mounted onto a ring which may still exist with a descendant.
“How charming!” we muse, as we gaze upon one of over four hundred very scientific and exhaustively documented photograms of algae that Anna Atkins (possibly the first woman photographer, definitely one of the first practitioners of cyanotype) created and self-published in the first photo book ever published.
Virginia Oldoini, whose status, astronomically high opinion of herself, and eccentric sense of play led to a collaborative partnership of over 400 images with studio photographer Pierre-Louis Pierson. Olodini often art directed and hand painted the photographs. RIP countess, you would have loved social media.
Science Girl Party is a nod to the early scientific spirit of photography’s evolution through the perspective of the woman-identifying artist. Though this exhibition is a “party,” it speaks to more than just play; these artists show a proficiency in chemistry, technology, research, and craft, which they use as tools to ignite curiosity and empathy.
BITSICAS AND MCMAHON
Within the exhibition, there is some reference to the history of the photographic object itself: in Cellulose Documents: Forget Me Not, Katina Bitsicas collaborates with Scott McMahon to give new purpose to a found archive of decaying 1930’s studio portrait nitrate film negatives. The scanned objects are combined with microscopic imagery of botanic material, referencing the parallel between cellulose in nitrate film and the makeup of organic plant cell walls.
WITMAN
KURLAT
The manual, scientific process folds into the conceptual through Texas-based DM Witman’s Ecologies of Restoration, where she addresses healing and resiliency as a counter to loss and grief through a meditative exploration within her salt printing. Galina Kurlat’s Vestige subverts the traditional gaze upon the female form: her non-representational lumen prints present the reaction between ephemera from her body and the silver gelatin paper. Richmond artist Rosemary Jesionowski brings the 19th century wet collodion process to space with her modeled planets in the series, All Science is Fiction Until it's Real, referencing ideas of place, technology, and communication.
JESIONOWSKI
MACE
JOHNSON
In Łichíí (Red) Series, Diné artist Dakota Mace creates a cycle of images which return to the land to be honored as a dedication to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. The artist exposes cyanotypes in locations significant to these women, using red cochineal to dye the resulting abstractions. The reaction between the two applications establishes a timeline within the material as the dye overtakes the image and deteriorates. A sense of place is also integral to Courtney Johnson’s Dark Skies, which utilizes tri-color gum bichromate to record stars in areas with low levels of light pollution in a greater conversation of protecting ecosystems.
MARCHAND & SOBSEY
THORNTON
A plant-based method is key to Amanda Marchand and Leah Sobsey’s This Earthen Door, in which the artists honor Emily Dickinson’s skilled gardening efforts through growing and harvesting plants from their gardens to create an impressive series of cameraless anthotypes. As featured in Balsamic Time, Oakland-based Beatrice Thornton’s practice centers on sustainable darkroom processing using homemade chemistry from foraged plants, pairing this technique with layers of geometric imagery.
LAZA
Photography becomes a tool to examine contemporary topics in Beth Johnston’s Absence of Evidence. The series is the artist’s response to a study on the impacts of high concentration cannabis through a science-informed collaboration of 11 artists for the University of Colorado School of Public Health. Cyprus-based Anna Laza uses photography and technology to recreate encounters with unknown entities on the remote island she lives, which is a hotbed of mysterious activity with its own mysterious military project, “Blue Bayou.” Mackenzie Calle’s Gay Space Agency confronts the American space program's historical exclusion of openly queer astronauts, weaving archive and imagination to offer a counter-narrative to the history of the astronaut program and present a diverse and accepting future, “both above and below our atmosphere.”
JOHNSTON
CALLE
Science Girl Party will be on view alongside Hannah Altman’s We Will Return to You
from September 5 – October 25, 2025.
SCIENCE GIRL PARTY
EXHIBITION PREVIEW | THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4
Doors at 6pm, tour kicks off at 6:30pm