The LH Horton Jr. Gallery held its reception for the new exhibition “Singing to the Difference: An Examination of Surface Strategies” on March 7 from 5 to 7 p.m. The new exhibition features six established artists, alongside two guest curators. The exhibition itself focuses on “non-objective art and its formal qualities,” according to the gallery guide.
“The subject matter is based on texture and principles of using mixed media and creating forms that create texture, but then when you look at their artists’ statements there’s a lot of different content in there, in terms of what they represent.” said gallery coordinator Jan Marlese.
In their statements, most of the artists say they are heavily inspired by nature and other explorative sources from their lives. All of the artists featured have deep connections to their art and how they produce it.
Adero Willard draws her inspiration from her “deep connections to the earth and my heritage, embodying ambiguity, complexity and beauty.” Cheryl Coon finds her inspiration in her love for biology and her time spent kayaking on the ocean, whereas Leah Korican took her inspiration from many different sources, though similarly a love for nature’s processes.
“A lot about reverberations or like natural cycles of processes like water flowing, you know flocks of birds and just kind of the patterns they make,” said Korican, as featured in her piece “Pink Murmuration 2.”
The exhibition opened during the first week of Women’s History month. All six of the artists featured in this exhibition are women.
The artists also opened up about being featured in an all-women exhibition.“It’s not a common space honestly; you have to kind of create the space and host your own show to have an all woman space,” said Celena Peet.
Peet also describes her inspiration coming from her childhood and where she lived — a small town in rural Iowa and Oakland — as major sources of inspiration for her work. She works with materials such as stitching, embroidery and also fibers, etc. She talked about tying in her love for mixed media and the material she used with her past, and how this shaped her art journey.
“It still feels like a very chancy thing as a female artist to be doing things with knitting, with stitching, with embroidery, with any of that, and to be representing it as fine art,” said Peet.
Peet also dived into her journey as an artist establishing herself and her art in those spaces, and staying true to her style. She mentioned how her multimedia pieces were often critiqued by others, and compared to traditional forms of art.
“‘But can you make real art?’ Just like, can I figure draw and oil paint? Like yes, it’s just not my thing,” said Peet.
Stitching and “women’s work” is also present in other non-traditional ways around the gallery. Lori Murphy’s pieces feature torn and reassembled pages of John Canaday’s book “Metropolitan Seminars in Art,” which is about his own ideas about what art is good and what art is bad. Murphy used staples to do this non-traditional stitching, which is featured in her artist statements including “Transforming the Canon” and “Talisman and Harbinger.”
Similarly, Leah Korican featured handiwork in her work statements, “White Bloom” and “Overlapping/ Round and Round.” She also mentioned her tie’s to the importance of lace and handiwork in her own pieces.
“From a body of work that was a lot to do with like doilies and lace, and womens handwork, and kind of taking that and translating it into like a fine art context like something that would just be around the house,” said Korican.
The gallery showcases that each artist has their individual style and inspirations depicted through mixed media and texture. “Singing to the Difference: An Examination of Surface Strategies” will run until April 5 at the Horton Gallery.
