Ohio Wesleyan to Display Photographs by University Graduate Lesley Louden
Lesley Louden, OWU Class of 1999, spent more than a decade photographing ‘Evelyn’ for Louden’s ‘Nothing Fancy’ series. Images from the series will be featured in Louden’s Ohio Wesleyan exhibition April 24 through Oct. 4. (Photo by Lesley Louden ’99)
Class of 1999 OWU Alumna to Give Free Illustrated Artist Talk During April 24 Exhibition Opening
DELAWARE, Ohio – Lesley Louden captures photographs that bring people’s lives into focus, images with a sense of time and place that lift their stories from the ordinary to the extraordinary. She combines documentary practices with a fine arts background to create powerful and poignant gallery installations and multimedia pieces.
Louden, a graduate of both Ohio Wesleyan University and Rutherford B. Hayes High School, today is a professional photographer and college photography instructor in the San Francisco Bay area. Her work has been featured in galleries and museums nationally and internationally, including the San Jose Museum of Art, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, the World Affairs Council in San Francisco, and the Open Society Foundations’ “Moving Walls 15” Documentary Photography Exhibition in both New York and Washington, D.C.
From April 24 through Oct. 4, Louden’s work will be on display in Ohio Wesleyan’s Alumni Gallery, located on two floors inside Mowry Alumni Center, 16 Rowland Ave., Delaware. The gallery – a satellite of OWU’s Richard M. Ross Art Museum – is open to the public from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays. Admission is always free.
She also will be on campus April 24 for the opening, when she will present an illustrated artist talk at 7:30 p.m. in Room 312 of the R.W. Corns Building, 78 S. Sandusky St., Delaware. A reception will follow in the adjacent Mowry Alumni Center.
“Lesley is a perfect example of a former student who used her undergraduate studies here at OWU as a springboard into advanced photographic studies and finally as a photography instructor on the college level,” said Justin Kronewetter, director of the Ross Art Museum. “She is also a highly accomplished photographer who has produced imagery celebrated with inclusion in both group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. We are happy to count her as one of our most accomplished art alumni.”
After earning her OWU Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in photography in 1999, Louden went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree in photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield, Michigan, and a Master of Arts degree in photo-media from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
Her upcoming exhibition, titled “Storied Grounds,” will include 30 chromogenic color prints. The full-color photographic images are created using traditional chemicals and processes. The exhibited images will include works from three Louden collections:
“Evelyn: Nothing Fancy,” created between 1997 and 2009, and featuring more than a decade of images capturing the life of Evelyn, a Midwestern woman, and her plush apartment on the banks of Lake Erie. “(Un)common Ground,” taken from 2005 to the present, and capturing Louden’s life with her husband in the Santa Cruz mountains, which includes sharing (un)common ground with nearby neighbors. “House of Books,” taken in 2007 in Botswana and Lesotho, Sub-Saharan Africa, and showing the children, teachers, and parents whom Louden met while working on a documentary video for the African Library Project with filmmaker Anne Evans.
Of “House of Books,” Louden writes: “The children in the images were studying hard to learn English in order to graduate primary and enter secondary school. … Because Botswana and Lesotho have the second and third highest prevalence rates of HIV/AIDS in the world, these countries struggle to educate their young. Many of the students in the photographs were often single and double orphans as a result of HIV/AIDS, having lost one or both parents. The importance of reading and the prevention of infection of the disease were necessary at the earliest ages possible.”
Learn more about Louden and her work at lesleyloudenphotography.com. Learn more about this exhibit and all Ohio Wesleyan art exhibitions by calling (740) 368-3606 or by visiting https://www.owu.edu/about/offices-services/richard-m-ross-art-museum/ or www.facebook.com/RossArtMuseum.
Founded in 1842, Ohio Wesleyan University is one of the nation’s premier liberal arts universities. Located in Delaware, Ohio, the private university offers 86 undergraduate majors and competes in 23 NCAA Division III varsity sports. Ohio Wesleyan combines a challenging, internationally focused curriculum with off-campus learning and leadership opportunities to connect classroom theory with real-world experience. OWU’s 1,750 students represent 46 U.S. states and territories and 43 countries. Ohio Wesleyan is featured in the book “Colleges That Change Lives,” listed on the latest President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with Distinction, and included in the U.S. News & World Report and Princeton Review “best colleges” lists. Learn more at www.owu.edu.