Close to Me: Portraits by Julie Blackmon, Rachel Cox, Heidi Draley McFall, Pao Houa Her, Areca Roe

January 23, 2025

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May 25, 2025

Close to Me features portraits by some of the upper Midwest’s most innovative artists. Showing together for the first time, Julie Blackmon, Rachel Cox, Heidi Draley McFall, Pao Houa Her, and Areca Roe are all photographers or use photo-based media. They have a distinct creative voice, but seen together, this exhibition highlights some of the fascinating formal and conceptual overlaps in their work.

Portraiture has been a cornerstone of photography since the camera was invented. Photographers used this format to capture the likeness of themselves as well as their subjects in order to explore narratives of personality, economic status, racial identity, gender formation, and family relations. Camera phones have turned everyone into an artist and a subject, making portraits even more ubiquitous and important for understanding the power images have on adults and children.

The photographs in Close to Me utilize a wide range of familiar portrait formats including historical studio photography, documentary images, family and travel snapshots, stock and promotional images, as well as painting and drawing.

Julie Blackmon’s large-scale portraits are beautifully composed group portraits of friends and family that may include multiple images, creating a dreamlike cinematic quality. They capture everyday moments and scenes that children and parents will instantly connect with.

Rachel Cox’s powerful photographs document the IVF treatment she and her partner went through to conceive their child. These intimate images are extremely personal, using a variety of different photographic processes, to capture a process thousands of families are going through.

Heidi Draley McFall’s large-scale portraits of family and friends begin as photographs. They are converted to drawings then go through a complex process of transformation, keeping the likeness of each person intact, yet their likeness is seen through layers of materials. They recall well-worn photographs and film stills.

Inspired by a fascinating family legend, Pao Houa Her’s photographs were shot during an extended trip to her ancestral homeland in Laos. Her large- and small-scale photographs document her extended family and the Hmong diaspora community, while also exploring mourning, mythology, and family history.

Using prompts offered by stock photography agents, Areca Roe’s captures the shifting relationships between parents and children, and pokes fun at the language used to establish marketing trends. Her sense of humor comes through in her staged scenes, many of which were created during the forced intimacy of COVID-19 lockdowns.

The artists and artwork featured in Close to Me continue the rich tradition of portraiture while pushing what the format can be. They do so by offering a fresh and compelling look at how we see and understand ourselves.

This exhibition and its related programs have been sponsored in part by the State of Iowa through the Iowa Economic Development Authority. It is presented in conjunction with the Celebration of Women in the Arts.