MCCC to Host Artists Reception in Honor of Mel Leipzig, Lou Draper, 6/21

Mercer County Community College's (MCCC) will celebrate the work of two of its most renowned artists and instructors during "Trenton Makes: Art and Artists in Trenton." The reception will be held Sunday, June 21, from 3 to 5 p.m. in James Kerney Hall on MCCC's Trenton Campus, 102 North Broad Street.

The reception will feature two important milestones in the arts in Mercer County: The donation to MCCC of the painting "Fashion Design, MCCC Campus," by acclaimed artist and Mercer Professor Emeritus Mel Leipzig and the debut of a book chronicling the photography career of the late Lou Draper, "Louis H. Draper: Selected Photographs." Leipzig will also display four other major works, including "Lou and His Son," which features Draper in his MCCC office.

Leipzig is an internationally-renowned realist painter who began his career as a professor of Fine Arts and Art History at Mercer in 1968. His works are part of the permanent collections at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Academy Museum and the Cooper Hewitt Museum, as well as the New Jersey State Museum, among others. He retired from MCCC in 2013.

Draper coordinated MCCC's Photography Department from 1982 until his death in 2002. His photography career took him around the world, where he met and photographed historical figures and celebrities, including Malcolm X, Langston Hughes, Jacqueline Kennedy, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Miles Davis. Draper worked for publications that include Essence, Camera Magazine, and Black Photographers Annual, and his photographs have been exhibited in permanent collections, including the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Studies at the New York Public Library.

"Trenton Makes: Art and Artists in Trenton" is free and open to the public. To support the arts at MCCC, Patron tickets will be available for $150 and include a pre-reception luncheon at Settimo Cielo restaurant with Mel Leipzig and members of the Trenton arts community, and a copy of the Lou Draper book. Copies of the book will be for sale at the reception.

To register for the free reception or purchase Patron tickets, contact Toral Patel at (609) 570-3616, e-mail patelt@mccc.edu, or visit www.mccc.edu/trentonmakes.