By Gabbie Burton
Contributing Writer

Tender Ground, a lens-based art exhibit currently on display at The Hook Experiment in Oxford, explores vulnerability, place and the environment through the works of four women artists based in the region. 

The exhibit, which has been on display since March 21, will run through May 1 for local art enthusiasts and curious community members, giving them a chance to explore and immerse themselves in each of the artists’ works.

“What we were looking for and found with these four artists was this underlying theme of unrest and concern, a lot about the environment,” said Constance McBride, a Hook Experiment board member and curator of the exhibit. “It’s an unstable footing, the ground is very shaky right now, and that's what's coming through in various ways with these four artists.”

The four artists include Lynda Schmid from Chadds Ford, Sarah R. Bloom from Narberth and Marnie Ellen Hertzler and Jonna McKone from Baltimore. Both McBride, The Hook Experiment founder, Vicki Vinton and board member and curator Lisa Baird are all artists themselves and explained their process of finding artists to include in the exhibits. 

“We consider our artist friends to connect us with other artists and friends of friends,” McBride said. “It’s a very tight-knit community.”

In curating pieces for exhibits McBride and Vinton explained that they look for under-represented artists and are attracted to experimental work. They also shared that in putting together an exhibit they want to collaborate with artists and create something as a collective. 

“I'll say it again, we're an artist-run gallery space and we want to treat other artists like we would want to be treated,” Vinton said. “We’re very open to what the artist’s vision is but they also want our feedback, too.”

“I think part of that is not being used to that,” McBride added. “That's what is making us stand out as a different kind of organization, putting the artist first.”

For the Tender Ground exhibit, each artists’ work varies greatly and contributes to the overall exhibit in their own unique ways. For example, Schmid’s work features photographs of horses taken from different angles that are then framed together, slightly askew, creating a disjointed image of the animal.

“It's a little bit about the fragility and the trust of the animal,” said Vinton. “In a lot of them you'll see the belly will be exposed which, with animals, is very vulnerable and it's also trusting of the humans who are taking care of them. So that, to us, speaks to tenderness and vulnerability.”

Bloom’s work is a series of self-portraits where she poses nude from behind in decaying and abandoned spaces. In her artist statement Bloom writes that her work explores identity, visibility and what it means to age as a woman and states that she sees herself as an extension of the spaces she poses in. The vulnerability involved in nude self portraiture is obvious for viewers but Vinton and McBride elaborate on how Bloom’s work contributes to the themes of the exhibit. 

“It's brave to expose yourself as an artist, period,” Vinton said. “She's just brave in her vision. That's the vulnerability, the tenderness and her body is her tender ground.” 

Hertzler’s works titled “Material Study on Disappearance" and “Time Enough to Go” focus on Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay. The collection features items found on the beach of the island as well as disposable camera images taken by the residents which all depict the disappearance of the island as water levels rise and slowly wash away the home of the existing community, tying into both the vulnerability and environmental themes of the exhibit. 

“Together, the images form a document of a place in transition, where land, memory, and image move at the same slow pace toward disappearance,” reads Hertzler’s statement. 

McKone’s work features chemigrams, a technique that uses photo chemicals on light sensitive paper creating abstract images. McKone used dirt and materials from the environment in her chemigrams, providing a literal interpretation to the Tender Ground exhibit. 

“The work is about presence, absence, histories and futures contained within terrains,” McKone wrote in her description of the work. “The prints are meditations that explode out of false territories, the gathering and storytelling process, environmental damage and the soil itself.”

Vinton and McBride explained that the response from the community for the exhibit has been positive and are enjoying the last few weeks of the exhibit before the closing reception on May 1. Moving forward, the pair want to continue offering unique works of art to the community. 

“We want to bring something different to the community, and something exciting,” Vinton said. “Sometimes, in a small rural community like this, people are afraid to walk into an art gallery and we really want to be as open and have our arms open for everybody.”

Vinton and McBride said that they hope to educate and stir the imagination of the community through their space. On the other side of things for the artists they collaborate with, the pair thoroughly emphasize the importance of supporting artists’ creative journeys and giving space to artists who may have never received it before. 

“Part of our mission, is allowing artists to do experimental work and we're not afraid to put it out there for people to see,” McBride said. “What we want to do is offer space for people that are having maybe not so great a time getting their work out there.”