The Etherton Gallery is having its first exhibition of the 2010-2011 season, Ojos bien abiertos/Eyes Wide Open opening September 7 and running through November 6, 2010.

It is part of a yearlong celebration of Etherton Gallery’s 30^th Anniversary.  The show features sgrafitto drawings by Alice Leora Briggs, hand-colored gelatin silver photographs by Guatemalan photographer, Luis Gonzalez Palma and documentary photographs by Mexican photographer Rodrigo Moya. Together these artists give the viewer access to intimate moments, insider views and documentary images that challenge the cultural myths and historical understanding that have conditioned our appraisal of Latin America.

Coral by Luis Gonzalez Palma

The Etherton Gallery will host an artist reception Saturday, September 11, 7-10 pm at the gallery. Luis Gonzalez Palma, who lives in Argentina, is traveling to Tucson in one of his few trips to the United States this year, to attend the reception and will speak at the Center for Creative Photography the next day.

Observar en Silencio by Alice Leora Briggs

Etherton Gallery will show new work by Alice Leora Briggs as well as a number of works from Dreamland: The Way Out of Juarez, a collaboration with writer Charles Bowden, which she describes as part “illuminated manuscript” and part “crime blotter.” Briggs’ sgraffito drawings reveal the otherwise untold story of the victims, bystanders, and collaborators in the Juarez drug wars.  Images from a series of postage stamp styled drawings like Silencio make clear that sins of omission are in fact political acts that can have the same deadly consequences as sins of commission, regardless of who perpetrates them. (more…)