Pareidolic Figure, 2023 | Karen Hunter McLaughlin | Indigo dye, watercolor pencil, interference watercolor, on botanical dyed paper
On View January 19 – February 26, 2024
Opening Reception | Friday, January 19 | 6:00p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Coffee Break: Artist Talks | Saturday, February 3 | 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Coffee Break: Artist Talks | Saturday, February 17 | 10:00 a.m. – 12:00p.m.
Featured Artists: Mia Fabrizio, Karen Hunter McLaughlin, Nicole Santiago & Summer Yates
DIGITAL CATALOG
ARTISTS
Mia Fabrizio, Mixed Media
Tile Gallery
Aluminum wire, leather lace, fabric, wire, silkscreen, collage, spray, wood, drywall, foam core, digital photographs, acrylic paint, latex paint and found objects
“My work operates at the intersection of architecture, sociology and visual art.”
– Mia Fabrizio
Interdisciplinary artist, Mia Fabrizio, creates mixed media paintings, freestanding sculptures, and installations comprised of building materials and domestic items. Her work acts as an investigation into the relationship between physical construction and cultural paradigms, highlighting contradictions within domestic spaces with the intent of exposing the true fluidity of perceived binaries, such as masculine and feminine, public and private, and modern and traditional. She describes her artistic process as “[vacillating] between tearing apart and tenderly memorializing [her] personal family experience.”
Fabrizio’s work is on display in our Tile gallery.
Karen Hunter McLaughlin, Mixed Media
Book Room Gallery
“This work is motivated by a fascination with the mycorrhizal network – the symbiotic association between the plant world and fungi, drawing on the deep connections between trees, plants and mycelia. The new work draws on concepts of how they invisibly share what the other lacks, how they rescue each other.”
– Karen Hunter McLaughlin
Artist Karen Hunter McLaughlin’s work uses symmetry to expand on long-held interests in the connections between natural science and art. This series investigates kinship with the more-than-human world, and a dive into “Ki”, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s suggested pronoun for other-than-human. She employs a language of shapes that mimic the threadlike hyphae of mycelium, the same marks often used to illustrate galactic space, brain synapses, and other human, and non-human body systems. They are perfect symbols of the matrixes that support the essential nexus of human connection.
Hunter McLaughlin’s new series, Golden Thread, is on view in our Book Room gallery.
Nicole Santiago, Painting
Kellner Gallery
“My work is autobiographical, its content thinly veiled by the mundane domestic debris that clutters the picture plane.”
– Nicole Santiago
Artist Nicole Santiago creates paintings that are rooted in personal experiences, yet read universally. Her use of familiar scenes, a desk littered with empty soda cans and medicine bottles, help stretch her compositions beyond the limits of her own experiences and engage with broader audiences. She notes, “while storytelling is an integral part of my work, it always remains subservient to the broader formal concerns of the picture itself.”
Santiago’s narrative paintings are on display in our Kellner gallery.
Summer Yates, Sculpture
Community Arts Gallery
“In a celebratory fashion, the work reflects the complexities of ‘holding it all together’ and total surrender.”
– Summer Yates
Summer Yates assembles mixed media wall hangings and soft sculptures that are light, flexible, and brightly-colored. There is an emphasis on the material of her work and how it parallels her intertwined experiences as a woman, artist and mother. She notes, “As a mother, I’m confronted with my own need to care for and nourish myself… the sculpture, installation, and wall hangings in this show reveal the catharsis I experienced in doing so…the soft, squishy quality of my materials and how I assemble them affirm how I embrace all the parts of myself.”
Yates’ series, WAM! (Woman Artist Mother), is on view in our Community Arts gallery.