Two Mobile photographers, Ashelea Penquite and Sarah Parvardeh, are reuniting for a joint photography show called “P2” (short for “P Squared”) on Saturday, September 26, at Satori Coffee on Old Shell Road. The show runs from 7 to 10 p.m., with $5 admission going to the Downtown Creative and Wellness Foundation.
The exhibit brings together photography the two artists have made in the four years since their last joint show, Word of South, which was also held at Satori in 2005. Work will be displayed in a range of media and frames, and priced to be affordable for buyers, an approach the artists say is meant to make collecting original art accessible to more people. The photos will remain on display in Satori’s back room for a week after the opening.
Musical guests for the evening include Adam Taylor, Zach DePolo, Trey Lane and Penquite herself, performing a mix of acoustic, electronic, violin and percussion-based music.
Satori Coffee has long occupied a particular place in Mobile’s creative ecosystem. The Old Shell Road coffeehouse, sitting just west of downtown near the Spring Hill Avenue corridor, has doubled as an informal gallery and listening room for years, its walls and back room hosting rotating exhibits from local painters and photographers. For working artists without gallery representation, the shop’s willingness to hang work — and to let buyers take it home the same night — has made it a reliable first venue.
That informality suits Penquite and Parvardeh’s approach. Rather than a white-wall gallery opening with invitation lists and price sheets designed to intimidate, P2 is structured around the coffeehouse’s regular crowd: the same room, live music, a five-dollar door charge, and photographs a college student or young family could plausibly afford. The artists have said keeping prices low is a point of principle, not a marketing strategy — original art, they argue, shouldn’t be something people only see in banks and waiting rooms.
The September 26 date also positions the show at the start of Mobile’s fall arts season, when the city’s galleries, theaters and music venues return to full schedules after the summer lull. For the two photographers, it marks a return to the venue where their collaboration first reached the public.
Building toward a new downtown art space
The show doubles as a fundraiser and reintroduction to the community for the pair, who were recently named directors of photography for a planned downtown creative space called The Umbrella Seed.
Penquite and Parvardeh describe the project as an inclusive art and creative center focused on community events, education, green living and artistic expression, with fellow artist Zach DePolo among those helping get the space off the ground.
Within that project, the two are also launching a department called Black Velvet, envisioned as a nonprofit photography studio open to the public for darkroom use and photography lessons. “P2” is the first in a planned series of fundraiser shows meant to help get Black Velvet and the broader Umbrella Seed space up and running.
The Umbrella Seed’s name signals its founders’ ambitions — something planted downtown with the intention of growing outward. The plan places the project amid a wave of creative reuse efforts in Mobile’s downtown and Midtown districts, where vacant storefronts and warehouses have been reimagined as studios, venues and maker spaces. A dedicated nonprofit photography studio with public darkroom access would fill a gap: as digital photography displaced film, the city’s remaining darkrooms have largely retreated into university classrooms and private homes, leaving photographers who learned on film with nowhere to develop by hand.
Darkroom instruction is central to the Black Velvet concept. The founders envision classes for beginners alongside open studio time for experienced photographers, preserving skills — printing, developing, chemistry — that are increasingly hard to study outside a formal degree program. The fundraiser shows, beginning with P2, are meant to seed the equipment purchases and buildout the studio will require before it can open its doors.
Darkroom instruction is central to the Black Velvet concept. The founders envision classes for beginners alongside open studio time for experienced photographers, preserving skills — printing, developing, chemistry — that are increasingly hard to study outside a formal degree program. The fundraiser shows, beginning with P2, are meant to seed the equipment purchases and buildout the studio will require before it can open its doors.
A shared history at the University of South Alabama
Penquite and Parvardeh’s collaboration dates back to their time at the University of South Alabama, where Penquite majored in photography from 2003 to 2006, working as a darkroom lab monitor and serving as president of the school’s Photography Association.
Parvardeh joined her in 2005 to help produce Word of South, the university’s community photography show, which the pair say broke attendance and sales records for Satori Sound & Coffee at the time.
That first show established the template the two have returned to: a public venue, live music, work priced for ordinary buyers, and an atmosphere closer to a block party than a gallery opening. The success of Word of South also demonstrated something Mobile’s arts community has proven repeatedly since — that the city will turn out for local visual art when it is presented without barriers, and that photography in particular draws buyers who might never set foot in a traditional gallery.
Since then, both artists have stayed active in Mobile’s art and music scene. Parvardeh has organized several shows at Satori Coffee, including a 2009 installation and fashion art show called Redemption, and has exhibited photography in New York and Huntsville and paintings in Atlanta.
Penquite spent time running a tattoo shop in Birmingham and building an art and music career in Jacksonville, Florida, before returning to Mobile, where she now curates local artists’ work at Ashland Midtown Pub and teaches guitar and photography lessons.
Their parallel paths — each spending years away from Mobile, each building careers that braided visual art and music together — explain the shorthand of the show’s title. P2 frames the exhibition as the work of a single photographic partnership rather than two separate careers sharing a room, and the pairing of photography with live performance on opening night continues an approach both have favored since their university days.
The four years of work on display will span both artists’ output since Word of South, a period in which one traveled between Birmingham and Jacksonville and the other organized shows and exhibited as far away as New York. Buyers at the opening will see the full range of that period rather than a single cohesive series, with the mix of media and framing styles reflecting the two careers that produced it.
What the $5 door charge funds
Admission to the show is $5 at the door, with proceeds directed to the Downtown Creative and Wellness Foundation, the organization tied to the Umbrella Seed project. The modest charge is consistent with the show’s broader accessibility ethos: the point is to fill the room, not to ration it.
For attendees, the evening offers a preview of what the founders hope to build permanently. Photography on the walls, musicians on the stage, coffee and conversation in between — the elements of P2 are, in miniature, the elements the Umbrella Seed concept describes. The artists have framed the fundraiser series as proof of concept in public: demonstrating to potential donors, volunteers and collaborators that Mobile will support a creative space built around exactly this kind of night.
The show opens at 7 p.m. and runs until 10, with the photographs remaining up in Satori’s back room through the following week for anyone who misses the opening itself.
The choice of Satori as the venue carries its own significance for the pair. Old Shell Road has long been one of Mobile’s main east-west arteries, running from Midtown toward the university area, and the coffeehouse’s location places the show near the neighborhoods where both artists first studied and showed their work. Returning there, four years after Word of South, closes a loop that began when both were still students at South Alabama.
The September 26 opening also lands amid a stretch of momentum for downtown Mobile’s creative community, as organizers of several planned venues and collectives have spent recent years building toward permanent spaces. The Umbrella Seed’s founders have positioned their project within that conversation, arguing that the city’s musicians, photographers and visual artists need more than one-night shows — they need studios, classrooms and darkrooms that operate year-round.
For now, the fundraiser series begins where the collaboration itself did: a coffeehouse, a Saturday night, live music, and photographs priced within reach of the people photographed in them. Admission is $5, the doors open at 7 p.m., and the work stays up in Satori’s back room through the following week for anyone who cannot make the opening.