Free and open to the public

For April First Friday, stop by and have your portrait made by Aurora intern Alexander Toms on a paper negative using our 8 x 10 camera; the portraits will be free and first come-first served. This will be your last First Friday opportunity to come experience Aurora’s first solo exhibitions in our new space! In the galleries April First Friday and through April 15: Beholden, by Eli Craven, in Aurora’s Main Gallery and The Quarry Project, by Tsar Fedorsky, in the Project Gallery.

Indiana-based artist Eli Craven reconsiders gesture and touch through the photograph in the exhibition Beholden. In his work, images of faces and bodies, often sampled from anonymous archival photographs, are disrupted, reconnected, and layered in ambiguous ways. The classic markers of identify — the face and eyes — are often obscured or covered, leaving a tantalizing impression of the players, a photographic flirtation in which roles and identities remain in flux. The works ultimately explore sight, looking, loss, and healing; the exhibition includes images from multiple series, including Soap Opera, PPS, and First-Aid and Living Anatomy, visual research completed when the artist was the 2022 Aurora + Herron Resident, and three mural-size works that expand the artist’s typical print scale and the size of the wood overlays that complete the murals.

The beautifully printed images in Tsar Fedorsky’s The Quarry Project continue her 20-year research into black-and-white photography and its power to create abstraction from the reality recorded by the camera.

Known for expressive images that relate intensely personal narratives, the Boston-based artist transforms everyday scenes into a space for contemplation of new lives, identities, and perceptions. The large-scale prints, made by the artist on Washi paper, offer a serene and peaceful space to remember the beauty of the natural world.