‘Layers Revealed’ Opens at The Norwalk Art Space

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From walking to work along busy city streets to protesting over abortion rights, from portraits to everyday shots, these are just some of the images on display at The Norwalk Art Space as a part of “Layers Revealed,” a new exhibit from photographer Jerri Graham.

“It’s a collection of the past few years of the photography that I’ve been doing, and the different layers of it,” Graham said. “I have some of my [portraits] and events and you know street photography, but it’s just the different layers of what it’s like to be a photographer.”

One of the signature parts about Graham’s collection is that it’s intentionally a little bit of everything.

“I had an ex-friend, years ago, she told me, ‘focus, focus, focus, focus. You should only do one type of thing,’” she said. “But that’s not possible—it’s like ‘oh just eat one kind of food for the rest of your life.’”

Graham said that she hopes her photographs can help create a “space within a space” for visits who come to visit.

During her exhibit, Graham will also be hosting events, particularly portrait sessions where she hopes people will be able to “just think of it as a time to see themselves and be seen.”

“You’re the art of your own life,” she said.

In addition to Graham, who is a Korry Fellow at the Art Space, the exhibit features pieces from invited artists Melissa Newman and Tim Holmstrom.

While the professional pieces will be on display upstairs at The Norwalk Art Space, the downstairs features a wall-to-wall student exhibit. The students created the pieces throughout the year at workshops held at the Art Space.

One student Nia Calhoun, created a piece called Save Our Earth, after being inspired to draw attention to global warming, a topic she said she had been thinking about “for a long time.”

She created the piece, which includes a contrast of a tree alive and thriving and a tree dried up and dead, with the help of teachers and classes at the Art Space.

“The classes were about ‘artivism’ (or art and activism) and it taught us to express our art in a way that we can show others and tell people about things that are going on in the world,” she said.

The exhibits will be on display until February 9, 2023.