Award-winning photographer Neapolitan featured in Visual Arts Gallery exhibit

Release Date: 3/24/2005. Expired: 5/28/2005

Cella Neapolitan is an award-winning photographer specializing in impressionistic florals and landscapes as well as images of France and the South. A collection of her works, entitled Lotus, Lily, Willow, Tree, will be on display in the Visual Arts Gallery of The Renaissance Center in Dickson April 29-May 28.

An opening reception with the Cookeville artist will be 6-8 p.m. April 29. The exhibit and reception are free and open to the public.

Neapolitan exhibits her works internationally in juried and curated shows as well as in an annual solo exhibit.

Neapolitan calls her medium photographic giclee, a process through which traditional color photographs are scanned into a computer and then given individual treatment by the artist, sometimes creating the feel of an impressionist painting. The images are printed on a fine art paper through the giclee process, then titled and signed by Neapolitan.

Her photographs have won national awards from Canon, Kodak and USA Today.

“The art I love fills me. Physically, I feel myself deep breathing and therefore relaxed and yet also excited by the beauty before me,” Neapolitan said. “Spiritually, I feel my soul is filled, too, nourished by something beyond the ordinary.”

Neapolitan’s artistic process combines her love for photography with a deep appreciation for painting to create vividly colorful images.

“The artists I love are mostly painters: Monet, Matisse, O’Keeffe, Klee, Avery, Rothko, Diebenkorn,” she said. “All colorists, so you’ll find little black-and-white photography here. In fact, a specific color -- resonating a particular chord -- is often an unstated subject of my photographs. The photographers I love do both black-and-white and color imagery -- Atget, Steichen, Laughlin, Raymond, Meyerowitz. Their common thread, I think, is producing work that is contemplative, not so much in a thinking way but feeling. Their work is lyrical.

“I also have an affinity for classical Chinese painting and Japanese prints. I believe this love informs my photography as much as the work of the geniuses I’ve listed. And then there are the life experiences we all have that affect our work, sometimes sub-consciously for being so deep. All these influences impact my photo shoots. Like any artist, I’m drawn to certain subjects and then try to draw them out through my medium. I look for the best angle, composition, lighting, framing to capture what I see, what interests me in the subject, what I feel it has revealed to me.”

A philosophy major, Neapolitan also is drawn to the Eastern philosophies of Buddhism and Taoism, both of which emphasize an appreciation of nature and living in the present. The exhibit title, Lotus, Lily, Willow, Tree, is in itself an homage to American impressionist John Singer Sargent, whose Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose is an example of the same East-West influences.

“A work of art has meaning beyond the creator’s intention,” Neapolitan said. “That meaning evolves to include the responses the piece invokes. It becomes a little less about being one person’s expression and a little more about others’ interactions with it, becoming a shared experience. So, art takes on a life of its own. I’ve learned this by seeing which of my images get responses from people and why -- and they’re not always my favorites or my reasons.”

In addition to fine art photography, Neapolitan leads a traditional dance group and volunteers in an elementary school teaching Songs for the Earth. Under the name Catherine Cella, she currently writes for Billboard magazine as an entertainment specialist and has published the book Great Videos for Kids: A Parent’s Guide to Choosing the Best, which contains reviews of more than 450 titles and a foreword by Shelley Duvall.

Neapolitan resides in Cookeville with her husband, Jerry. Their son Matt is a University of Tennessee graduate who is pursuing a career in digital film/video editing.

Lotus, Lily, Willow, Tree is on display in the Visual Arts Gallery 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Saturday, April 29-May 28. Admission to the Visual Arts Gallery is free.

For more information on this and other exhibits at The Renaissance Center, call (615)740-5600.

The Renaissance Center is an arts and technology education and performing arts center at 855 Highway 46 South in Dickson, just 35 miles west of Nashville on Interstate 40 at exit 172.

Visit the Visual Arts Gallery page for more about the gallery.

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