The Chazan Gallery @ Wheeler is showing photographs of Jonathan Sharlin and Kerry Stuart Coppin from November 4 - 22, 2005. There will be an opening reception for the artists on Friday, November 4, from 5 - 7 p.m. The public is invited.

Jonathan Sharlin shares his intimate and enriching travels to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to an island called Little La Salle. Through the camera, Sharlin dives into the confines of a small area. He makes testimony of five generations past and gives form to the invisible, intangible echoes of the island of Little La Salle. His photographs function more as metaphors or symbols than as a document of the place. Through his work, he has begun to understand how deeply a sense of place can influence one's photographic sensibility. Jonathan Sharlin received his MFA from the Visual Studies Workshop at State University of New York at Buffalo and is the recipient of many grants. Most recently, Sharlin has received a 'New Works' Grant from the Rhode Island Foundation for the upcoming book, 'Cast A Cold Eye', chronicling the effects of an aging and ill parent on one man's family. Other grants have included Fellowships from RI State Council of the Arts, New England foundation for the Arts and the ADD Fund of the RI Foundation for his project, 'Letters from the Middle East.' Jonathan's work is a part of many collections including the Fogg Art Museum, Rose Art Museum, Polaroid Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence RI; Rhode Island Historical Society-Library; Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY; Lightwork, Syracuse, NY; and numerous private collections.

Class of 1977 MFA Photography Rhode Island School of Design, Kerry Stuart Coppin presents a series of provocative new images of his travel in Senegal. His visual research bridges international borders to construct a portrait of Africans Born in the Western World. Editor of Exposure magazine, Joel Eisinger describes Kerry's work as "illuminating the "dark matter" of African culture for Western eyes... The everyday lives of ordinary people remain something of a mysterious blank. Coppin fills in that blank with images of life in an urban landscape. Inflected by Coppin's personal vision, this is a piece of the reality of Africa that the photographer offers his Western audience in the interest of deeper, broader, and more subtle understanding..." Kerry Stuart Coppin participates in an ongoing debate of the fate and shape of the Black cultural experience through photography. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships and grants, and he has exhibited widely. Selected exhibitions include: The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Manchester's Craftsmen's Guild, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; The International Center for Photography and The Point Community Development Corporation, Bronx, New York; The Art Gallery, Stephen P. Clark Governemnet Center, Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, Miami, Florida; Silvermine Guild Arts Center, New Canaan, Connecticut; and an extensive history of others. Coppin has taught at University of Miami, Kansas State University, Rochester Insititute of Technology, University of Maryland at College Park, Columbia College Chicago, and University of Hawaii at Manoa. Recently, Coppin has joined the faculty of the Visual Art Department at Brown University.