UnBound14! Artist Features: IX
RACHEL PHILLIPS • JACK PLATNER • ANDREAS RENTSCH • ARECA ROE • SHAWN ROWE • OONA SCHREUR
UNBOUND14!
June 27 – August 9
Join us for a breakdown of our annual juried + invitational photography exhibition. Throughout the exhibition, we’ll share information about our artists and the processes behind their featured pieces.
SUPPORT THE EXHIBITION:
UnBound! is our annual juried photography show which directly supports artists in the exhibition through sales and fundraising efforts. Works in the show are available for purchase (like a normal exhibition), but friends can also give to the UnBound! Fund, which will be used by the gallery to acquire select works for the growing Candela Collection. One day, this collection will be donated to the permanent collection of a notable arts institution. This year, Candela excited to offer an honorarium + 2026 exhibition to 1-2 UnBound14! artists with funds raised over the course of the exhibition.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 2ND, 7-11PM:
THE ANNUAL FUNDRAISING GALA.
This year’s theme is A Midsummer Night’s Fever Dream, which you can learn more about here.
RACHEL PHILLIPS | PACIFICA, CA
Not a Cloud 013, 2025,
Pigment print with pearlescent acrylic paint and monoprint from spiderweb,
10 x 8.5 inches framed.
Unique,
$1,150 framed,
The series Not a Cloud in the Sky begins with archival pigment print with hand-applied pearlescent acrylic paint. Images of clouds and nature come from a database Phillips is building of street view mapping software screenshots taken around the data centers powering cloud computing and AI; the terrestrial reality of the World Wide Web. Interestingly for Candela, Virginia is an epicenter for data centers, including top secret data centers powering federal surveillance and military operation. Though both governments and corporations are secretive about their locations, date center warehouses are difficult to hide, and she has been able to find them using third-party directories, Wikileaks documents and satellite views.
Each photographic image is overprinted with a unique monoprint made outdoors with non-toxic ink directly from abandoned spiderwebs, a combination of natural and artificial systems strangely unified by a shared language. "The web” and “the cloud” suggest familiar, organic, sustaining systems from the world around us… a far cry from reality.
In the work, the artist us processing the tension she feels between the grave social and environmental cost of AI and expansive cloud computing, especially in our current political climate, (witness: the security breach of military operations this week), while also admitting to the obvious power, and even magic, within this expanding web of technology that is enveloping—and entrapping—us every day.
Rachel Phillips began photography while completing her undergraduate degree at Skidmore College, graduating in 2005. In numerous group and solo exhibitions she has presented a series of projects exploring the photograph as object, often resulting in unique works incorporating a specialized transfer printing technique as well as other processes like encaustic wax and materials ranging from old envelopes to 19th century cabinet cards. A frequent theme in the work is a desire to “reanimate” the vernacular photographs and paper ephemera in her collection by reworking them in a variety of ways to create imagery that is resonant with the past yet has a new vitality and reflection of our own time and perspective.
In addition to photography, Rachel works in the San Francisco Bay Area as a tutor for children with learning differences, and served as the Executive Director of the community-based nonprofit PhotoAlliance from 2022-2024.
JACK PLATNER | BROOKLYN, NY
Central Park [made with Lanesville Camera], 2025.
Gelatin silver print,
6.5 x 8 inches, framed to 16 x 20 inches.
Unique.
Broad Beach [made with Lanesville Camera], 2025.
Gelatin silver print,
8 x 6.5 inches, framed to 16 x 20 inches.
Unique.
At the core of Platner’s artistic practice is clay, a material shaped by centuries of sediment deposits and water flow. He gathers and processes this wild clay to build ceramic cameras, which he then use to capture photographs of the very landscapes from which they are derived. The pinhole openings in these earthen sculptures allow light to pass through onto a 4x5 negative, creating contemplative, dreamlike images of the natural world. A departure from the speed of the contemporary age and high-resolution digital imagery, my work embraces a more meditative and naturalistic approach to image-making. Inherent variations in the clay make for uniqueness in the structures themselves and subsequently, for deviations in their light capturing abilities. By rendering the movement of clouds, the decay of infrastructure, and the oscillation of water, my photographs consider the interaction between the environment and humankind’s presence.
To create my work, Platner often travels across the country with my 30+ pound camera sculptures. Whether on the beaches of Southern California, in the woods of the great North East, or across the flatlands of Middle America, he is driven to make images that convey the fragility and distinctiveness of regional landscapes.
Jack Platner (b. 1994) is a photographer and sculptor originally from Los Angeles, California, and currently splits his time between Brooklyn and the Catskills region of New York. With a strong focus on natural materials, Platner handcrafts ceramic camera obscuras using clay sourced from the riverbeds near his upstate home. His work often explores themes of ecology, materiality, and humankind's impact on the environment. Platner's documentation of the Woolsey Fire in California was featured in The New York Times Magazine and Vogue. More recently, he published a book showcasing his photographs of beach staircases along Malibu's coastline.
ANDREAS RENTSCH | HUNTINGTON, NY
Untitled Nr.20, from the Lost & Found series photographed in 2006, figure paint added in 2025,
4 x 5 Type 55 Polaroid print, light drawing, black paint,
20 x 16 inches, matted and framed.
Unique.
$3000.
While cleaning his studio, Rentsch discovered several boxes of discarded 4x5” Polaroid Type 55 prints from his Entangled with Justice series, which he worked on from 2005 to 2010. The now-discontinued Polaroid Type 55 film produced a high-quality black-and-white negative along with a positive print, both of which were processed simultaneously within 30 seconds of being removed from the film holder. Instead of fixing the print and negative immediately, he allowed both to continue processing for weeks, months, or even years. In most cases, the positive prints became unusable as the ongoing chemical reactions often obscured the images. However, he sepia-toned the black-and-white negatives, and the impurities that developed over time resulted in fascinating and unique images. This series has been featured in over 13 museum exhibitions, including a solo show at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland, and was also part of The Polaroid Project, a retrospective showcasing artists who used Polaroid films in their work. The Polaroid Project was exhibited in nine museums across three continents. While sorting through the rediscovered boxes of Polaroid prints, Rentsch found many images with new potential for a series, if he could find a way to reveal the figures again. By using a brush and black paint to trace within the lines originally drawn with a flashlight and captured with a 4x5” camera, the figures slowly came back to life.
Andreas Rentsch received a B.F.A. from Les Ecoles d’Arts Appliqués in Vevey, Switzerland, and an M.F.A. in Studio Art from Stony Brook University. He spent the first 18 years of his life on a prison compound where his father was the warden and where daily interactions with convicts were common. These visual and real-life experiences nurtured a sense of empathy in him for the human condition that has been a guiding force in his life as well as his work. Andreas Rentsch’s work has been exhibited worldwide, including a solo exhibit-tion at the Musée de l’Elysée in Switzerland. His images are in many museum collections such as the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, the Musée de l’Elysée in Switzerland, the Musée de la Photographie in Charleroi, Belgium, the Museet for Fotokunst in Odense, Denmark, the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, NY, the Swiss Foundation of Photography, and the Polaroid Collection. He is a recipient of two New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships and two grants from the Polaroid Corporation. The photography magazine Aperture published one of his portfolios. Additionally, numerous books and magazines have published his work, including “The Polaroid Project”, a book published as part of a world-wide nine-museum exhibition of artists who have used Polaroid film in their work. He taught at the International Center of Photography, Stony Brook University, and St. John's University. He is currently an Associate Professor of Photography at Lycoming College and the Chair of the Art Department.
ARECA ROE | MINNETONKA, MN
Mid-Atlantic Ridge Ghost, 2024,
Archival Pigment Print,
34 x 24 inches framed,
Edition #2 of 5 + 2AP.
$1,000.
Roe’s art practice engages with our complex relationship with the natural world—we need it, we revere it, we protect it, and yet we also destroy it. She explore the ways that the natural world and human-made world intersect, exploring our relationships with the landscape, with plants and animals, and with climate change.
In Spectral, the three-dimensional bedsheet ghosts are a playful exploration of a variety of dramatic landscapes and biomes. The sheets are patterned with nature-themed imagery, which interlace with the landscape, hinting at the domestic and our relationships with nature. The ghostly figures might be ghosts of the biome itself, of plants and trees, or former inhabitants, either animal or human.
The fact that they are three-dimensional when viewed with anaglyph 3D glasses seems to assert that they are “real” and heightens the absurdity. The images are meant to stand alone as 2D prints as well, confusing the eye with the red/cyan shift. The series also references spirit photography, popular around the turn of the 19th century, which (sometimes playfully, sometimes seriously) purported to prove the existence of ghosts with photography.
Areca Roe is an artist based in Mankato and Minneapolis, Minnesota. She uses photography as well as video, sculpture, and installation to explore the interface between the natural and human domains.
Roe is an Associate Professor of photography and video at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and a member of Rosalux Gallery, an artist collective in Minneapolis.
Her work has been featured on several websites, including The New York Times, Lenscratch, Colossal, Slate, Juxtapoz, WIRED, National Geographic, and Fast Company; as well as in print for Der Spiegel Wissen and Le Monde. Her work recently became part of the permanent collection at the Minnesota Museum of American Art and the Minnesota Historical Society.
Roe has received several grants and fellowships supporting her work, including the Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant and the Art(ists) on the Verge Fellowship.
SHAWN ROWE | PHILADELPHIA, PA
FLATS, 2025
Cyanotype, 41.5 x 10 inches,
individually mounted.
Unique.
$2,500.
FLATS responds to the built environment, exploring its evolving impact on identity, community, and culture. Through cyanotype prints, Rowe isolates and reinterprets the forms and patterns that shape urban spaces. Architecture, in my practice, is not merely a physical construct—it is a dynamic reflection of social psychology, cultural memory, and collective identity.
The facades and layouts he creates embody tensions: between erasure and resilience, individuality and conformity, resistance and assimilation. By distilling architectural forms into minimalist compositions, he encourages viewers to confront the power structures and decisions that define the spaces we inhabit.
Rowe’s ongoing project, FLATS, examines how the spaces we occupy affect our well-being and sense of belonging. By reinterpreting architectural forms, his work challenges us to reconsider our relationship with place—not just as a backdrop to our lives, but as an active force in shaping community and connection.
Shawn Rowe is a Philadelphia-based multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the relationship between architecture, identity, and community within the built environment.
Rowe holds an MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago. His work has been exhibited widely, both nationally and abroad. Rowe has participated in residencies such as OINSTITUTO in Porto, Portugal and is the Associate Editor at Skylark Editions.
OONA SCHREUR | RICHMOND, VA
Brooch, 2024
Copper, white bronze,
gelatin silver print,
2.5 x 1.5 x 1 inches.
Unique.
$2,450
A practice of standing still, this brooch forces the wearer to be aware of their movements, their breath, their heartbeat, and time passing. The project questions the duration of a gaze and the wearer's awareness of time spent in a space. It has three components that interchange through a slide-locking mechanism: a pinhole camera, a photo frame, and a brooch backplate to connect to the body. The camera is meant to be worn while capturing the image. After removing and developing the photo paper, they are inserted into a fabricated frame that replaces the camera.
Brooches were originally functional but have become decorative over time. Camera Brooch is a functional object to document and display while providing aesthetic adornment.
Primarily made of copper, the light-tight, tension-fit container is a pinhole camera. While holding onto the white bronze ornament, the shutter is slid up to expose the silver gelatin photo paper placed inside. The process is not a press of a button on a phone screen. Intention, thought, and stillness are required. Depending on the environment, a pinhole camera can take seconds to minutes to hours to capture an image onto the paper. The photos are developed in a darkroom.
The eight images captured for this installment are of a space Schreur has spent many mindful and mindless hours in, the metals area in my undergrad program. Her favorite anvil was captured in clarity as she was able to sit and remain still while exposing the paper. Other images are abstracted due to her movement as the wearer. Adorned with the brooch while she was working at a jewelers bench or pacing back a forth thinking through a mechanical challenge. Brooch gives you the unique opportunity to connect with yourself and surroundings in the present moment while also allowing you to go back in time to that moment when wearing the image captured.
Oona Schreur is a craft artist from Baltimore, Maryland, currently residing in Richmond, Virginia. She earned her BFA in Craft / Material Studies, with a minor in Art History, from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2024. Her work includes metal, ceramics, paper, ink, and found objects. Oona is passionate about materials and identity. She examines the formal and social meanings of craft. She explores the human senses and human connection while acutely aware of her role in consumption and stewardship of material knowledge. Oona has participated in Radical Jewelry Makeover Installments and has work in the internationally juried exhibition So Fresh + So Clean organized by Ethical Metalsmiths, where she is also a student member. In addition to her artistic pursuits, Oona was involved in VCU’s undergraduate research program for two years. She has been published for her research on the Riot Grrrl movement, examining themes of artistic individuality and social conflict.