Bruce Gallery visitors examine “Rooted Past”
(Baron-Forness Library, Edinboro, PA – March 27, 2025)
Thanks to an endowment celebrating the life of a Jewelry and Metals student, The Michael V. Gmitter Memorial Scholarship Exhibition has become the most highly-anticipated showcase of student art in the Edinboro calendar year.
2025’s juried display featured the work of two members of PennWest’s Philm tribe: Jacob Sukhenko (who submitted graphic design reflecting his second concentration of academic study) and graduating senior Riley Francis.
A week after the exhibition’s opening reception, Bruce Gallery curator Maria Ferguson hosted an artist talk by Francis. The photographer walked an audience of 20 people through “Rooted Past,” the collection of six images selected by judges for Gmitter competition. He discussed both technique and concept.
The photographs are studio portraits attached to plexiglass, distressed, then suspended over rural scenes from the artist’s hometown of Warfordsburg, Pennsylvania. Each is framed in rustic materials recalling weathered agricultural structures.
“My work explores the interplay of memory, perception, and place,” said Francis. “Using landscapes captured on analog film as a foundation, I overlay portraits of my closest friends and family, the people who have helped me through my trauma, transferred onto plexiglass. This layering creates a dialogue between depth and distortion, reflecting my own visual experience shaped by a traumatic brain injury that left me with a blind spot and fragmented perceptions.”