There will be an art opening on June 27th from 6:00 - 8:00 pm in the Carolyn M. Wilson Gallery for Good Samaritans. This reception is free and open to the public.

March 26, 2025 marked 10 years since Jaroslaw Studencki ended his own life. Jaro was a photo-
based artist poised to complete his MFA from the University of South Florida in the spring of 2015. He lived for 27 years, beloved by his USF peers and mentors & broader communities of friends and family 
in Tampa, Illinois, Poland, and beyond, and thus endures through our memory. The life of his artwork, too, is deserving of continuity. Jaro’s portraits and pauses were approached with mutual vulnerability 
between photographer and subject, a tacit awareness of the mediation and power exchange in the making of any photograph, and a desire to visualize desire (not necessarily one predicated on lack, 
but on the production of meaning through longing, glimpses of shared understanding, and the limitations of empathy). This exhibition of Jaro’s photographs is the first solo retrospective of his work. 
The passing of a decade seems an apt time to revive Jaro’s work here in one of his homes, so that it might be experienced by the community who remembers him deeply and by those encountering it 
anew, during a collective moment when seeing others for the fullness of their humanity is ever more 
urgent.