Join us for the opening of Photograph Jie Deng and Invited Artists, on April 3rd at 5 pm. Light refreshments will be provided. Join us and artist Jie Deng for her gallery talk at 5:30-6:00pm.

About the Artists:

Jie Deng is a portrait photographer specializing in storytelling through the lens of her camera. With a unique ability to connect with her subjects, she creates images that reveal the essence of their personalities and passions. Her work bridges art and narrative, weaving together emotion, identity, and connection in every frame.

A self-taught artist, Jie’s love for photography began with her childhood fascination with drawing portraits in southwest China. Over the years, she has honed her craft to capture not just faces but stories, evoking depth and intimacy in her work. Whether working on editorial photography, fashion shoots, or personal projects, Jie approaches every subject with a focus on authenticity and beauty.

Her latest project, The Artist, celebrates local female creatives by pairing her portraits with their unique creations. Each photograph becomes a visual dialogue between Jie and her subjects, offering viewers a glimpse into the artists’ worlds and the stories behind their work. Jie is also curating the show, bringing together the work of these talented artists to create a cohesive and inspiring narrative.

This April, Jie brings her storytelling vision to the Kennett Library, where her portraits and the artists’ creations will be displayed side by side, reflecting the vibrant spirit of the community she captures so vividly. The exhibition will feature eight artists: C.C. Czerwinski, Jill Beech, Katee Boyle, Jie Deng, Lauren E. Peters, Samara Weaver, and Rebecca Adler.

Rebecca Adler's work focuses on the female form—the lines and curves, bends and angles—in bold shapes and saturated hues. A swathe of indigo; a splash of chartreuse; a block of fuchsia; puzzling out the perfect palette makes her heart sing and continues to bring her back to the easel. When she’s not painting figures, you can find florals, abstracts and more popping up in her home studio outside of Philadelphia. 

Rebecca’s artwork has appeared in Veronica Beard boutiques, Anthropologie pop-ups, Kristen Coates Gallery, LAA Art Collective, the Campbell Collective, Rennie Art Company, Spotlight on Art, the Scouted Studio Emerging Artist show, and the Chairish Fall Art showcase. 

She’s inspired by travel, pop culture, antiquities and nature. Yoga, pastries, hiking and a healthy dose of reality TV also make her happy.

Lauren E. Peters is a visual artist working with the construction of identity through self-portraiture. After an extended hiatus from painting, she began creating portraits for a small exhibit in 2016 and won an Emerging Artist Fellowship in 2018 from the Delaware Division of the Arts with an affiliated exhibit at the Biggs Museum of American Art. By 2023, she was awarded her second Individual Artist Fellowship from the DDOA as an Established Fellow and was exhibiting on a national level. Peters attended a residency in 2024 at the Vermont Studio Center supported, in part, by a grant from the DDOA in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. She was also awarded a month-long residency at ChaShaMa's international program, ChaNorth, in May of 2024. Peters maintains a studio at The Delaware Contemporary and has served as the Vice President of the Studios@ group and the Artists Program Manager, helping develop this role to serve local and emerging artists. Peters was previously the Operations Manager of the Somerville Manning Gallery and a board member of The Art Trust in West Chester, PA. She continues to grow as an artist and arts professional, supported at home by her husband, two cats, and a dog named Rosie.

C.C. Czerwinski is a self-taught artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Primarily a painter, she creates subtle abstract compositions using mineral pigments and other natural materials. Her organic color palettes are often inspired by remote parts of the world. While traveling, she collects different shades and hues on 35mm film or gouache on paper to have as references in the studio. Back at her indoor and outdoor studio she works in oil on linen, often experimenting with different elements throughout the process.She is currently focusing her work on the female experience in the modern Western world and the cosmic forces of the divine feminine.

Katee Boyle, B: Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania explores a wide range of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, words, sound, and installation to create the artifacts and narratives attributed to her work. A conceptually-driven expressionist, her stories stem from personal tributes to the human experience honoring the power of an emotive response.  Her work teaches the viewer the importance of learning to look. 

Boyle's work responds to the universal question: what does it mean to feel human, unapologetically from a feminine perspective. The manifestation of Her documents offers a representation of memory energized by a sense of momentum. Her work shares a strong temporal dimension - a place where the past, present, and future are always meeting, often colliding or in conflict. Boyle's work resonates with a tug of memoir, the desire to move forward but always with a strong gravitational pull of the past. Speaking in a viscerally raw language  on invisibility, exclusion, and social conditioning, Boyle presents the viewer with a deconstructed, perspective on emotional life. 

Boyle's Artifacts reflect on cultural and gender-nuanced elements of life: birth, death, mother, family, discord, trust, and healing. Her work explores the mapping of connections and growth between that which is tangible and that which is most often unmentionable and fleeting. Her narratives embody the external social messages that speak to personal and private but simultaneously mingle and resonate with her audience as emotionally responsive, universal experiences.

Boyle's work is in private collections internationally. She has exhibited at SOFA Chicago, is a Winterthur Museum Maker-Creator Fellow, and a United States Artist Nominee. 

Samara Weaver: I grew up making artwork my whole life. Having an artist for a father can have that effect. In my college years I got both my bachelor's and master's in architecture which further enhanced my artistic abilities and added another layer of reasoning and functionality to my work. Through college I was also able to add other skills to my artistic repertoire, taking oil painting and glass blowing alongside my architecture classes. I use many different mediums, including: paper, watercolor, clay (ceramic), wood, photography, glass, wool (felt), dyes, oil paint, and metal. Using these different mediums allows me to choose the best one for the project I'm working on. If I think there's a better medium or method I haven't tried yet, I'm always up for learning something new! 

Jill Beech was born in England and  spent most of her youth in Panama (Canal Zone).    This lush tropical area exposed her to many different animals and plants and also provided the opportunity to spend a lot of time with horses.  She was always interested in art, however, at a young age she became focused on becoming a veterinarian, especially because of her interest in horses.  She came to the United States for college and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine in 1972.  Her post graduate training was at the School’s large animal hospital at New Bolton Center and she remained there until her retirement as a Professor in 2011.  When she retired she was then able to devote much of her time to working in her studio. 

Jill became interested in working with clay about 1980 and over many years took workshops with various instructors, primarily at Penland School of Craft.  Her work initially was functional but then became more sculptural.  Her interest in different materials widened to include use of metal, paper, and wire and more recently painting.  Jill’s forms are organic, usually abstract, and especially influenced by nature and horses; her goal is to evoke the  feeling or spirit of a form or image, rather than realistically present it. Shadows and hints of shapes are integral to much of the work.  Spontaneous alterations usually occur as a piece is evolving. Her work is in private spaces and also has been shown in various venues.