CHESTERTOWN — Kent Cultural Alliance will kick off 2025 with an exhibit of art and poetry by Austen Camille.
The exhibit opens on First Friday, Feb. 7 from 5 to 8 p.m.
There also will be an artist talk and panel discussion on Thursday, Feb. 13 at 6 p.m.
The exhibit and artist talk will take place at the Raimond Cultural Center, 101 Spring Ave. in downtown Chestertown.
Camille was part of the inaugural team of visiting artists of Kent Cultural Alliance’s SFW Resident Artist Program. Hailing from southeast Texas, Camille, working in several different media, wow’d audiences with their perspectives on soil health on modern agricultural farms, specifically those of Harborview Farms of Rock Hall, in partnership with owner Trey Hill.
The exhibit titled “O-Horizon” is an unedited glimpse into the process of writing a book. Camille is currently working on their first manuscript, a series of poems and essays about soil health, regenerative practices and rural culture.
The writing is primarily inspired by a series of interviews that Camille has been conducting with land stewards located around the upper Eastern Shore. Here, you can see the tangle of notes, drawings, objects and experiments that collectively add up to a book.
“It is a complicated and interconnected process, overwhelmingly full of different life forms: fertile ground for stories to emerge from,” a news release states.
Throughout the life of the exhibition, viewers will be invited to interact and contribute their stories about soil and the definition of “rural.”
The exhibit has been created with support from Kent Cultural Alliance, Campbell Foundation, Chesapeake Bay Trust, Joseph Robert Foundation and AgArts.
Hours for the exhibit are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Wednesday-Friday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays through March 15.
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Austen Camille (Canadian-American) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, builder and gardener.
Camille primarily makes site-responsive public work that aims to both build relationships with the local environment, as well as call attention to the relationships that already exist within that environment.
Camille’s work has been commissioned and exhibited in a diverse range of landscapes, from the dramatic northern Wyoming rivers to the high desert of eastern Oregon, from the rolling farmland in southern Wisconsin to the tidal estuary marshes along the Hudson River.
Camille’s past projects include orchestrating an interdisciplinary conversation series across Temple University; creating and hosting a podcast titled “Our Shared Field” in order to bring artists into conversation with people from outside of the arts; and a collaboration between artists and oceanographers to undertake restoration work of cold water corals in the Gulf of Mexico.
Camille received their Master of Fine Arts in painting from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture (Temple University) in 2020.
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Kent Cultural Alliance is the designated arts council for Kent County, Maryland and works to support and grow the cultural and artistic ecology of our small rural county. Serving as a pivotal piece of social infrastructure, KCA uses the arts to create opportunities for civic and social engagement across diverse communities.
For more information, see www.kentculture.org.