Editor’s Note: The following was provided by the Whitewater Arts Alliance.

On May 5, 2022, the Whitewater Arts Alliance will be presenting a gallery exhibition of work created by Mary Nevicosi and Jeff McDonald. This exhibition will be on display through June 26 in the Cultural Arts Center located at 402 W. Main St., Whitewater. The gallery will be open Thursdays through Sundays from 1 p.m. – 5 p.m. There will also be a virtual display.

There will be a reception on May 7, 2022 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Cultural Arts Center. Both Mary and Jeff will be present. The reception is free to the public. Food and drink will be provided.

“Explorations: Photographs by Jeff McDonald” is one half of the exhibit to be displayed in May. McDonald’s photography has been awarded medals at international photography competitions in the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, Africa, and Asia. His photographic interests include black and white, long exposure, landscape, birds-in-flight, and various types of studio photography.

Born in west-central Iowa in the late 1950’s, he grew up on a dairy farm in southern Wisconsin. After receiving Bachelor of Music and Master of Business Administration degrees from UW-Whitewater, he spent 18 years working in information technology and executive management with a large supplier of musical instruments and related products in the Milwaukee area. For the last five years, he has performed IT, web, and accounting work for a local Whitewater company.

He has served as a board member of the Whitewater Arts Alliance for seven years, including several years as its treasurer. He continues to chair the Annual Fran Achen Photography Competition. Photography has been his passionate pursuit for over 15 years.

“Around and Around” is the other half of the exhibit to be displayed in May. Mary Nevicosi was born in Watertown, Wisconsin, and has spent her entire professional life surrounded by the natural beauty of the state’s Southeast region. Nevicosi enjoyed a successful career of more than a dozen years with what is now George Williams College of Aurora University in Lake Geneva, as an Assistant Director of Marketing and Graphic Designer. During her employment at the university, Nevicosi created and curated the on-campus Gallery for Wisconsin Artists in 1997. Changing her goals in the helping professions, Nevicosi pursued further education at Blackhawk Technical College, Janesville, securing her certification and working as a Medical Technologist.

Nevicosi and her husband, Jim, live deep in the heart of the Southeast Kettle Moraine area, where she now works as a “clean” studio artist. She uses no solvents and no cadmium colors. Rather, she uses walnut oil and natural colors that are close in tone and vibrancy but don’t contain poisonous chemicals—and she uses environmentally friendly lighting and often works on recycled surfaces.

In addition to oil painting, Nevicosi draws intricate portraits and landscapes in ballpoint pen and on her computer. Considered a regional artist, Nevicosi has exhibited her work extensively. Her paintings have been shown at George Williams College of AU; West Bend Museum of Wisconsin Art; Fort Atkinson’s Hoard Museum, Monroe Clinic, Portage Arts Alliance, and the Alexander House Center. Her work has been sold in area galleries and is in permanent collections of several universities and corporations.

An artist’s statement provided by Jeff McDonald: This exhibit represents several ongoing bodies of my work, two of them relatively new.

About a third of the photographs are representative of much of my black and white work. As explorations of the interplay between shadow and highlight, this work tends toward the dark side with lots of shadow detail together with areas of contrasting highlights.

In 2020, I was exploring alternative methods of storytelling through photography. That search led me to the Interpretations collection. These are photographs that have been [re]interpreted using digital post-production software tools to take them in directions more akin with illustration and painting.

Liquidity (The Oil and Water Studies and the Parasols) is a new, ongoing, body of work which consists of photographs made of liquids. The studio setups for these range from the simple and straightforward to the highly technical and complex. The Oil and Water Studies are composed of oil, water, and carefully positioned colored light; the Parasols are a different matter entirely.

The images in the Parasols series remind me of, well, parasols. They are high-speed photographs of colliding drops of liquid. These images were shot using six identical speedlights controlled wirelessly from the camera, four back-lighting a white, translucent piece of acrylic for the background along with two to illuminate the front of the droplets from either side.These were photographed in a darkened room with the shutter open for the entire duration of the drop sequence but using the flash duration to freeze the motion.

Chemical Abstractions, another new and ongoing body of work, are both very real and very abstract. The subject matter, as with many abstracts, is probably not readily apparent. These happen to be photographs of various chemical crystals with birefringent properties. They were photographed in cross-polarized light through a compound microscope. The colors result from projecting polarized light through birefringent crystals, then cross-polarizing the light for your eyes through the eyepieces or for the camera.

An artist’s statement provided by Mary Nevicosi: Everything in nature excites me. I love wild sunsets, birds migrating and even the dark November days. My whole life has been spent in SE Wisconsin and it is the centerpiece of my art. It always reflects my love of the outside. I experience life in the colors of nature and create art that shares those experiences with others.

This newest collection of work represents an ongoing artistic evolution, an extreme departure from my loose, impressionistic oil landscapes to detailed pen drawings influenced by Aboriginal paintings. The work is delicate, intricate and intense.

Interspersed are small, saturated, minimalist oil landscapes which were also created the past two years.

The mission of the Whitewater Arts Alliance is to promote the visual and performing arts through an alliance of artists, individuals, educational resources, and organizations to promote creativity and diversity that will serve to educate and enrich the lives of the residents of the Whitewater community and surrounding areas.