Artist Deborah Rockman's work will be featured in her solo exhibition, "The Danger of Being Born (De Novo)," that opens Monday, Aug. 31, and runs through Saturday, Oct. 10 in the Rebecca Randall Bryan Art Gallery at Coastal Carolina University. The exhibit is free and open to the public.

Rockman is a professor of art and chair of the drawing and printmaking programs at Kendall College of Art and Design. In 2010, she was one of four artists chosen to jury the international competition for ArtPrize, which annually awards the world's largest monetary art prize. Her award-winning work in drawing, photomontage, mixed media and digital media has been exhibited in numerous solo, invitational and group exhibitions at venues throughout the United States.

"I am a cultural critic," says Rockman, whose studio work focuses on social and cultural constructs. "Ours is an experience of duality, of parallel worlds of truth and deception. Extremes of 'beauty' are not possible, cannot be fully comprehended, without extremes of 'ugliness' with which to compare them. Once compared, it is hard to untangle the lovely from the disturbing."

The public is invited to attend an artist's talk and an opening reception on Thursday, Sept. 3, at 2 p.m., with a reception at 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the gallery.

The gallery is located in Room 129 of the Thomas W. and Robin W. Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts, located at 133 Chanticleer Drive W., Conway.

The gallery is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. For more information, call James Arendt, gallery director, at 843-349-6409.