EXHIBITION ARCHIVE

Black and white promotional poster for art exhibition titled 'Shared Space' featuring three black and white photographs of skulls and shells held by a person, with exhibition dates from January 24 to March 21.
Gallery wall with black and white photographs of animals and people, brick wall background, clock at upper left, small display table with books at bottom, a green informational sign on a stand.

Shared Space
January 24 - March 21, 2026

Donna Wesley Spencer’s Shared Space features a selection of hand-printed photographs inspired by her recently released book Recover & Release. Created in rescue facilities, wildlife refuges, and protected areas, the work centers on animals whose lives illuminate the broader forces threatening biodiversity, including habitat loss, climate change, and human action. Spencer’s photographs underscore the interdependence of all living beings, emphasizing that the fate of wildlife is inseparable from our own. The care in her approach to the processes of vellum over gold leaf and platinum palladium printing gives each image a distinguished and tactile quality.

STATEMENT

Shared Space is a series of hand-printed photographs inspired by my recently released book Recover & Release. Photographs were made in rescue facilities, wildlife refuges, and protected areas. The issues faced by our local wildlife illustrate the problems that are diminishing their numbers - habitat loss, climate change, and human actions. Their continued existence is directly linked to our own as we share this planet with other living beings.

The photographs for this exhibition are printed in platinum-palladium on Hahnemuhle Cotton Rag or on vellum over gold leaf. 

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Two black and white photographs, the left showing tropical plants and three white birds, possibly herons, and the right showing tall grass and three white birds, possibly herons, standing on a log in water.

In Stillness
October 1 - 31, 2022

STATEMENT

The past few years have given all of us reason to be in despair, but that is not a place where I want to live. I am fortunate that I have always heard my camera saying to me, "Go look for what you need to find".  Most often I am unsure what I need to find, but if I go out enough with my camera, sometimes I get there. I've needed to find the places and moments that transcend the worries of the current moment – the always true that can be found in the stillness of wild places.

The images in this series are printed either on vellum over gold leaf, or are platinum palladium prints on rag paper. I use these alternative methods both because I love to print each image by hand as a one of a kind piece, and also because both methods take the image out of immediate time.

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