Road Trip! Light in the American West, from Baja to the Yukon
The photographs in this exhibition, made between 2004 and 2025, span across the American West from the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico to The Yukon territory in Canada. Paul Schoellhamer’s (Cowell ‘69) color photographs invite us to travel with him and reflect on our relationship to land, the light that shapes it, and the freedom – contested but essential – to move across it.
The exhibition draws on voices across time and perspective that frame the American landscape as more than a stage for beauty and awe. For Chief Satanta of the Kiowa Nation, to roam the land freely was life itself. For N. Scott Momaday, land must be “believed to be seen.” For Eliot Porter, light and reflection imparted magic to Glen Canyon’s waters. For Wallace Stegner, saving natural places meant saving fragments of our collective sanity. For Brook M. Thompson, the Klamath River is recognized with personhood. Alongside these perspectives, Paul’s images press us to see public land not as scenery to extract or aestheticize, but as sustenance and history. Land is alive and contested. To see closely is not to linger on a romanticized vision of the American landscape, but to reckon with responsibility: how we safeguard access, how we imagine “wildness,” and how we hold space for futures beyond our own. For Paul, this exhibition is a call for students to encounter land and light firsthand and let those encounters be their teachers.
Opening Reception
October 4, 2025
1-4pm
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Join us every Friday for Art Fridays.
No experience necessary. Supplies and snacks provided.
- Sep 26 Snail Mail/Postcards
- Oct 3 Souvenir Keychains
- Oct 10 Stamp Magnets
- Oct 17 Cyanotype Totebags/Pouches/Pencil cases
- Oct 24 Candy Around The World Linocuts
- Oct 31 Abstract Felt Collages
- Nov 7 Phone Photos/Buttons
- Nov 14 Travel Related Patches With Upcycled Materials
- Nov 21 Thanksgiving Break! No Art Friday
- Nov 28 Unexpected Landscape Surrealist Collage
Please note that the date and the project is subject to change.
