Credo High School, Rohnert Park's college prep public charter high school, celebrates the opening of its new Credo Gallery on Saturday, May 19, at 4:30 p.m. on the school campus located at 1290 Southwest Boulevard in Rohnert Park.

The exhibit features photographs by Petaluma photographer Adam Shemper and block prints by student artists.

For this exhibit, Shemper collaborated with Credo’s 14-year-old gallery curator, Jourdyn Bossio, and her Financial Literacy classmate, Nadia Haugen, chief operating officer of the student-run gallery business. The exhibition launches the new gallery started by Credo students as part of their academic program – the subject highlights the school’s focus on environmental sustainability, and the gallery itself arises out of a ninth-grade Financial Literacy class and presents works by student artists.

Shemper (born in Hattiesburg, Miss. in 1975) is a photographer, writer, teacher and psychotherapist. His images and words have appeared in Time magazine, The New York Times, Mother Jones, Double Take, Exposure, The Oxford American, Salon, as well as in national and international newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, the Daily Yomiuri Shimbun (Japan) and The Bund (Shanghai). He has taught photography at the University of Mississippi and Hampshire College, and as a volunteer at 826 Valencia in San Francisco.

Shemper has exhibited his photographs nationally and internationally. Selected images from his Mississippi series, "Sardis Lake," were included in the International Center of Photography's 2003 exhibition “Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self.” Most recently, selections from “Portraits of Invisible Men: Photographs from the Louisiana State Penitentiary” were shown in Groningen, Holland, as part of “Cruel and Unusual,” a group exhibition of international photographers who have documented life in prison.

Shemper currently practices as a psychotherapy intern in Petaluma and San Francisco under the Holos Institute, where he specializes in supporting teen boys and their families. He lives in Petaluma with his wife, America, surrounded by trees and sheep.

The current exhibit at Credo includes works by 40 students in the school’s initial freshmen class, all of whom study linocut block printing as part of the ninth-grade curriculum. Credo art teacher Tanya Boone-Alva, a Cotati resident, asked students to create an original image of a landscape or an animal for their initial assignment in her Black and White Printing course.

The public is welcome at the Credo Gallery reception. For more information about enrollment and all aspects of the Credo High School program, visit www.credohigh.org.