When Jeannie Hutchins peers through her camera lens, she isn’t merely capturing the world as it appears—she’s searching for what lies beyond it. Her exhibition, entitled Projections of Possibility, at the Edwards Art Gallery is less a display of photographs and more a cosmic dialogue between light, perception, and the infinite unknown.

“I seek answers to life’s unanswerable questions,” Hutchins writes in her artist statement. That pursuit has led her across art, science, religion, and reason—yet it is in the interplay of light and shadow that she finds her truest medium. Using the physical properties of projected and reflected light, her images form what she calls “an anthology of my own mythological interpretations of the nature of the Cosmos.”

Join us for a gallery show opening Tuesday, October 28 from 6 to 8 pm in the Edwards Art Gallery.

The show runs through December 16 and is open to the public, Monday through Saturday, from 10 am to 3 pm.

 Windows into Other Realities 

Her works hover in the space between the tangible and the transcendent. Light, often taken for granted as mere illumination, becomes both subject and storyteller. Her photographs suggest the presence of “something” just beyond human cognition—an unseen dimension made briefly visible through her collaboration with her muse: light itself.

These photographs offer viewers the opportunity to consider the beauty and wonder of what might exist alongside, though perhaps contrary to, reason. They are an invitation to navigate the mysteries of mortality, time, and existence itself.

 A Life Shaped by Wonder 

Ever since the night she aimed her camera deep into a midnight blue lake and saw “to the end of the universe,” Hutchins has been chasing that same ineffable spark.

Jeannie lives back in Maine after decades living “away”. Having had careers as a community health nurse and as an upholsterer, both in the USA and Canada, she now spends less time trying to fix other people and things, and more time wondering why we all exist in the first place. Regardless of the “right” answer, currently she chooses to embrace the marvelous wonder of all the possibilities that could lie ahead.

In 2024, she earned her MFA from Maine Media College in Rockport. Her images have been exhibited internationally and across the U.S., including at the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts and the Vermont Center for Photography.

 Light as a Living Presence 

Jeannie continues to engage with Projections of Possibility on a near-daily basis. In a darkened room, shafts of light are her muse, guiding her to photograph fleeting glimpses of beauty.  She doesn’t spend all her days in darkness, however, and loves being outside. 

There, as an ongoing personal project, she seeks the light that illuminates what lies beyond our physical experience of reality–including sometimes the light from “just” sunrises.

The images serve as windows into the realm of other possibilities, presenting magical and profound ways in which light can induce perceptions eclipsing those we expect to see.

These photographs offer viewers the opportunity to consider the beauty and wonder of what might exist alongside, thou perhaps contrary to, reason. They are an invitation to navigate the mysteries of mortality, time, and existence itself.