A Sense of Place opened Feb. 11 and will be on display through May 20 at the Waterworks Visual Arts Center.

Exhibiting artists will be on hand to discuss their work on Friday evening, Feb. 17 beginning at 5 p.m. followed by a reception. The show features a site-specific installation, sculpture, works on paper and photography focusing on elements of the “space we occupy.”

Ann Marie Kennedy is a mixed-media artist and papermaker. She is a member artist of Bonded Llama Artists’ Studios in Raleigh. In her installations and works on paper, she uses natural materials and fibers to create narratives about place and landscape.

Ann Marie’s installation, which she describes as a “Memory House,” was assembled on site in the YPG Gallery at Waterworks. The structure is lit from within and reveals cast shadows on waxed silk organza walls. The objects casting the shadows were collected from the natural world and serve to illustrate, in the words of the artist, “how the contents of a house or even a conceptual structure are continually in flux.”

Ann Marie is an associate professor at Wake Tech Community College and a former resident artist at Penland School of Crafts (2001-4). She was the recipient of the North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship in 2004-2005. She teaches workshops in hand papermaking and participates in many exhibits both locally and nationally.

Kennedy received her MFA in intermedia/sculpture from the University of Iowa, where she worked and studied with Timothy Barrett at the UI Center for the Book. Her artwork is in many public and private collections, including Yale University, Bucknell University, University of Iowa, and the Library of Congress.

Durham artist Harriet Hoover uses ordinary materials from everyday life, such as soap, gum wrappers and toothpicks, along with family heirlooms that she distorts and manipulates, to create sculptures and performances that explore personal responses to space, place and memory.

Her process begins with walking, drawing, measuring and collecting objects, sounds and oral histories from the sites she chooses, assembling an eclectic store of materials to inform the visual expression of her work. The work itself reflects the diversity of its components, often taking the hybrid form of figure and machine.

Harriet is a 2016-2017 North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship recipient. Her work has been featured in Art on Paper at the Weatherspoon Art Museum (2014), the People’s Biennial II at The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2014), and at LIGHT Art + Design in Chapel Hill.

She has a BA in Textile Technology and Art + Design from N.C. State University and an M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She coordinates teen and college programming at the N.C. Museum of Art in Raleigh.

Harriet’s drawings and sculptures will be featured in the Norvell Gallery.

Call and Response: A Visual Conversation about the South represents a selection of 34 photographs from the collection of the Do Good Fund, curated by Alan Rothchild and Hannah Israel. Israel states, “The pictures define a rich and strong diversity of Southern culture. The Southern region that is distinct in place, and sensitive to the past and present. Each image tells a story about the people, the landscape, time, politics, and culture. They catalog moments of history by the most important photographers of our time so that we can better understand our place in the world.”

The Do Good Fund is a public charity based in Columbus, Ga. Since its founding in 2012, the Fund has focused on building a museum-quality collection of photographs taken in the American South since World War II. The collection ranges from works by more than a dozen Guggenheim Fellows to images by less well-known emerging photographers working in the region.

Alan Rothchild is a native of Columbus, Ga. and founder of The Do Good Fund Inc. He recently was a judge for The FENCE 2016, an international traveling open-air public photography exhibition. He is Past President of the Board of Trustees of The Columbus Museum and currently serves as Chair of the Board of Advisors at the University of Georgia’s Museum of Art.

Hannah Israel lives and works in Columbus, Georgia. She is an Associate Professor of Art and the Gallery Director at Columbus State University in Georgia. She received her MFA in Sculpture at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Her work as an artist encompasses various interests including sculpture, installation, video, and mark making. Israel has exhibited nationally and internationally and is included in several museum and private collections.

Waterworks will host a Meet the Artists and opening reception on Friday evening, Feb. 17. Exhibiting artists Ann Marie Kennedy and Harriet Hoover will present informal gallery talks beginning at 5 p.m. The reception will follow from 6 -8 p.m. Light refreshments and beverages will be served. The event is free and open to the public. See www.waterworks.org to learn more.