Meet the Artist
Adrianna Ault and Ruth Lauer Manenti
January 19, 2023
5:30 – 7:30 pm
474 Broadway, Kingston, NY
On Thursday, January 19 we will be joined by Adrianna Ault and Ruth Lauer Manenti for Meet the Artist night at CPW. Ault and Manenti will be sharing different photographic approaches to the universal theme of death. Ault will be giving a talk about her new book with VOID Publishing featuring work surrounding the love and loss of her mother. Manenti will be sharing a body of work and visual meditation around the passing of her own mother. These talks will be live-streamed on CPW’s Facebook page.
Join us Thursday evenings at CPW, when we host illuminating talks with local and visiting artists. Meet the Artist allows the public to get to know new work, explore artists’ processes, and meet other local artists. Coffee and tea will be provided. Meet the Artist will take place at CPW’s gallery at 474 Broadway in Kingston, NY, and is free and open to the public.
Adrianna Ault is an American photographer raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Ault studied photography from a very early age. She lived and worked in New York City for seventeen years and has spent her life working in the realm of photography, whether commercial or artistically driven.
Ault holds an MFA from Hartford University International Photography Limited-Residency. She works in her studio in the Hudson Valley of New York. In addition to making work for publication, she has taught at colleges and workshops. Ault is working on a book to be published with VOID, coming out in early 2023. This work is a visual mediation on processing the grief surrounding her mother’s passing.
Ruth Lauer Manenti was born in Philadelphia as a first-generation American. Her mother was from Berlin and her father was from Vienna, immigrating during World War II. Manenti’s background is in drawing and painting. She received an MFA from The Yale School of Art in 1995. In 2012, she was given a large format camera and taught herself how to use it in a way that utilized her skills as a painter. Her mother was also an artist who left behind a legacy of unknown work. Part of Manenti’s determination as an artist is to reward her mother for her efforts and create a continuum.
Manenti was awarded an NYFA grant in photography in 2016 and her book Remnants was included in an exhibition at The Griffin Museum of Photography. She had a solo exhibition at CPW in Woodstock, NY in 2020. Manenti is working towards an MFA in photography at Hartford University, where she received a merit scholarship for her studies. Her father found beauty in a whole in his shirt; in the way that it spoke of impermanence and fragility. Her mother was grateful that there was a tree she could admire from the kitchen window while washing dishes. Her parents endured a lot of suffering yet lived with poetic sensibilities that Manenti has inherited from them. Since breaking her neck in a car crash at the age of twenty, she developed a spiritual life and practice that is integrated into her photographic work. She lives in the Catskill Mountains, NY with her husband, a nurse, and tai chi practitioner, and their 3 cats.
Meet the Artist is actively taking proposals. Please mail education@cpw.org with inquiries and for additional information. This program is made possible by a generous grant from the Arnold and Augusta Newman Foundation.
Right Photo © Adrianna Ault
Left Photo © Ruth Lauer Manenti