CRITIQUE GROUP: BUILDING MOMENTUM IN YOUR PRACTICE

Join artist Chehalis Hegner for a three‑month online critique group designed to build momentum, deepen artistic inquiry, and support the evolution of a focused body of work. Meeting once a month, this group offers a sustained space for rigorous conversation, critical feedback, and the generative development of ideas.

Participants will engage in thoughtful dialogue around project development, editing and sequencing, and strategies for preparing work for exhibition or publication. Sessions will be tailored to the group’s interests, with an emphasis on articulating personal voice, taking creative risks, strengthening critical thinking, and cultivating practices that lead to fuller expression and transformation within one’s work.

This critique group welcomes photographers at a wide range of experience levels—from emerging artists to established practitioners—who are seeking a supportive yet challenging environment to advance a specific project or to initiate a new one. Whether you are refining a mature series or shaping a new direction, this group is structured to meet you where you are and move your work forward.

Participants should plan to focus on a single body of work for the duration of the program and be prepared to screen‑share during each session.

About the Instructor 

Chehalis Hegner is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and photographer whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Seattle Art Museum, the MIT Museum, Catherine Edelman Gallery, the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Photographic Resource Center, Interlochen Arts Academy, and the National Gallery of Art in Kosovo. She is a recipient of the Gjon Mili Photography Prize and has been featured in numerous publications.

With over 30 years of teaching experience, Chehalis has taught university‑level photography, led workshops, and mentored emerging and established artists at pivotal stages in their creative development. Her teaching is rooted in curiosity, experimentation, and the belief that photography is a moment‑by‑moment collaboration with life—a practice of deep witnessing and honest engagement with the human experience.

Her personal work spans photography, writing, music, mixed media, and conceptual portraiture, often exploring the tension between vulnerability and power, the personal and the political, and the ways images shape our understanding of human relationships. She currently works full‑time as a photographer and photo mentor at Halo Hill Studios in northern Illinois, where she shares a creative life with her husband, kinetic sculptor Arthur Ganson.

Students are drawn to Chehalis for her rigorous and alchemical approach, her ability to help artists find and articulate their own voice, and her commitment to creating learning environments where risk‑taking, critical thinking, and personal transformation are not only encouraged but expected.

This critique group is limited to 10 participants, with a limited number of student spots available on a first‑come, first‑served basis.