This beautiful and informative volume illustrates the vitality and importance of North Carolina's contemporary art scene, showcasing the creation, collection, and celebration of art in all its richness and diversity. Featuring profiles of individual artists, compelling interviews, and beautiful full-color photography, this book tells the story of the state's evolution through the lens of its art world and some of its most compelling figures.

By Mark Jenkins

Experimental photographer Colby Caldwell has two interests that might seem incompatible: nature and digital distortion. For his Hemphill Artworks show, “over & under,” Caldwell hauled flatbed scanners into the woods to grab close-ups of the forest floor or, less often, panoramas of sky framed by treetops. The bulk of these wax-coated pictures are crisp and detailed, but they’re partly tinted in electric shades of red and pink and punctuated by swipes and swooshes of random pixels. Here and there, traditional nature imagery melts into computer-generated incoherence.

By Louis Jacobson

Caldwell’s forest floor images live up to their early promise, depicting natural elements within wavy glitches, unreal pink-hued distortions, and adventures in broken vertical hold settings. One work, “otff_(23),” includes a spectrum-like pattern that could be a crypto-homage to the Washington Color School, while another, “otff_(12),” suggests a Robert Motherwell abstract expressionist canvas limned in shades of brown and pink. But Caldwell’s photographs of the forest canopy and the sky more than hold their own. The skyward images are more conventional—essentially free of the digital glitchiness seen in the forest-floor works; as such, they offer a respite from the dizzying brambles below. 

Open to the public

Join us for a walk-through and discussion of the exhibition over & under with artist, Colby Caldwell. Complimentary coffee from our neighbors at Brew'd.

Exhibition on view May 14 - June 25, 2022

Seating is Limited, Registration Required.This event is currently at capacity, please register for the waiting list. In the event a ticket becomes available we will notify you by June 7.

"Now, What is Photography?" a panel discussion, brings together three viewpoints from the art world, journalism, and academia. The participants will address the subtle and dramatic changes in photography brought about by digital technology and social media. The panelists include Vesna Pavlović, a fine art photographer, educator, and recipient of the Fulbright Scholar Award; Lucian Perkins, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist; and Colby Caldwell, whose current exhibition was created with the radical use of standard office digital scanners in place of a camera. 

"Now, What is Photography?" is presented in conjunction with Colby Caldwell: over & under.

Since 1998, the ART TALKS series at Hemphill has included educational lectures on topics such as collecting for beginners, artist talks, and panel discussions on issues in contemporary art.

by Louis Jacobson, Washington City Paper

This coloring book was created during the shelter-in-place period of 2020. Thanks to the artists for their participation and inspiration. Art endures and so will we. Be well and thank you for continued support. 

by Michael Shoeffel, Asheville Made 

Bronwen Latimer, The Washington Post

"These are photographs, Caldwell insists, because they have all the elements of a modern photograph: light, time, a capturing tool, and a subject."

Ali McGhee, Asheville Grit

"Colby Caldwell has been thinking about the place of the digital in photography for a long time. His most recent show, How to Survive Your Own Death, is currently up at Washington, D.C.'s Hemphill Gallery, and much of it revolves around one corrupt PICT file that Caldwell has been exploring for years."

Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post

"Separating the large and small galleries at Hemphill Fine Arts is a room so tiny that it might be better called a niche. Sometimes it’s empty, but at the moment it holds a small 1999 print titled 'How to Survive Your Own Death (Whole).' Colby Caldwell made this array of random pixels, but not on purpose. It was an accident — one he has been exploiting for almost two decades."

Kriston Capps, Washington City Paper

"The exhibit is split between Caldwell’s surveys—prints from his dives into the abstract depths of corrupted digital interference—alongside more traditional still-life photos. Together, these series tease out what it means to construct photos. One series is no more natural than the other."

Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post

"Several mini-shows nestle within “Represent,” Hemphill Fine Arts’s 20th-anniversary exhibition."

Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post

"If the personal is political, these grandiose, dysfunctional structures are calling artist-citizens to take to the streets (or, more likely, cul-de-sacs)."

Matthew Smith, Washington City Paper

"The show focuses on artistic civic engagement—artists that are out of their studios and walking the streets. Mostly culled from the gallery’s stable of artists, 'Artist-Citizen' presents works that speak through the city itself."

Danielle O'Steen, The Washington Post

"Caldwell’s subject matter, as it turns out, is only the vehicle for his greater dialogue with the history of his medium. He questions what fits into the definition of photography. Does a scanned object count? Must photographers use a camera? Must prints offer a certain truth, in the spirit of a documentary?"

Louis Jacobson, Washington City Paper

"The exhibit is variegated, but like any good combine painting (and those are included too) it coheres pretty well despite itself, as giants like Robert Rauschenberg mix with such local figures as Joseph Mills, Mingering Mike and Colby Caldwell."

Jessica Dawson, The Washington Post

"Here hang big, striking works by Tom Downing and Jacob Kainen. Here, too, are precious works on paper by Al Jensen and Alma Thomas. That Eugene Atget picture of the taxidermist's vitrine? I'll take it."