AC Southern Light Gallery to Feature Leah Gose’s "Questions of Stella"

The Southern Light Gallery at Amarillo College will feature “Questions of Stella,” a series of Polaroid collages by regional artist Leah Gose, Oct. 5-Nov. 18.

The exhibition explores memory, family history and the questions that remain when only fragments of a person’s life survive. Gose created the work using Polaroid photographs and postcards that belonged to her great-grandmother, Stella.

“Very few items or memories of my great-grandmother Stella remain,” Gose said. “Postcards are all that remain from her life.”

Gose uses the postcards alongside her Polaroid imagery to create constructed scenes with dreamlike qualities. The postcards offer glimpses into Stella’s relationships, travels and connections with family and friends, while some of the locations depicted overlap with places Gose has visited or lived.

“Polaroids and postcards preserve and capture moments, truncated markers of something worth remembering or commenting on,” Gose said. “When interlaced with Polaroid imagery, these constructed images take on new dreamlike meanings with endless possibilities.”

Gose holds an MFA in photography from Texas Woman’s University and a B.A. in fine arts, photography/digital art, from the University of Colorado Boulder. She is a professor and dean of the Fain College of Fine Arts at Midwestern State University. Her work has been exhibited nationally, including a previous exhibition of “Questions of Stella” at Vincennes University.

René West, professor of the visual arts/photography program and curator of the Southern Light Gallery at Amarillo College, first encountered Gose’s work in a regional artists exhibition at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum curated by Deena Craighead.

“I immediately fell in love with the images and knew that I wanted to share them with the AC community,” West said. “They are tiny, handmade and intimate images that I find enchanting.”

Gose said the process of combining the postcards and photographs has given her a greater understanding of Stella’s history, while also leaving questions unanswered.

“I am left with questions rather than answers – generalizations rather than specifics,” Gose said. “Dreamscapes rooted in details, sometimes revealing and often concealing.”

The Southern Light Gallery is located on the first floor of Ware Student Commons on the Washington Street Campus. The exhibition is free and open to the public.