"One of the pieces in a series called Flying Lessons, "Penumbra" began as a collage that I later turned into an oil painting.  This piece focuses on the ambivalence of landing, the final phase of flight. The vibrant colors in the painting are indicative of the anticipation of outstretched wings and ethereal choreography, and the darker colors and less-distinguished forms mirror the perils and uncertainties of touching down.  Finally, the preservation of the nature of the collage emphasizes shifting orientations, torn edges, and the constantly changing environments we negotiate as we search for ground."

"I painted 'Obelisk in Marblehead' in the weeks following my father's untimely death this past August. After a year of isolation came death. Looking at the soil cradle that would forever now house my father made me look back. At my only-child-weekends spent at Lake Erie with my parents, on our Bayliner. Fishing. He taught me how to double-hook the line to catch twice as many perch and walleye. To make the anyways wait even more worth it. Swimming. He taught me how to float and to always look for shore. Hope, it is always there. And water skiing. He taught me to stand, always. Even when nothing is solid. Especially then. After the day had made Connect the Dots out of the knob of my face and the sun had fresh colored itself on my bangs, my parents and I would go grab dinner at a diner I cannot for the life of me recall. After a fish-n-chips dinner, they served pie to die for; his favorite was lemon meringue, topped with down inches thick. When the curves of the waves had romanced the yellow gone orange turned red enough for him to fall for it, we would walk next door and look at the Marblehead Lighthouse. We would watch the wet slick threaten to locket the day bit by bit until only a sliver was left. That piece, the final one between dark and light, is where I like to think my dad is now. Watching.

"This piece drew itself from one line to another. Suddenly, the Little Seahorse appeared out of nowhere, hijacking the space around it. This unexpected character kept popping up in my work, each time bringing new friends along. I care for them all and wait for them to arrive and brighten up my day."

"In the Summer of 2021, I was in the process of creating a watercolor painting. This photo of that process sketch, "Aura", shows the intrigue of the creation process. The subject matter, hands painting a clay pot, reveals layers of art creation and inspiration. Hands are the magic behind all of this creation."

"My mindset while painting 'Polarity' was to express the internal dialogue of self-reflection and personal judgment over a lifetime, a single day or a single moment. I have used house paint, various tools from my father, and textured canvases to give a physical manifestation for contemplation of this back-and-forth—this conversation with ourselves. My music (which can be listened to while viewing this piece by this link: https://soundcloud.com/user-827466570/reflection) captures the randomness of the emotions that are constantly flowing—we can’t control how they arise but we can control how we process them and if we are ready to let them go. 

In our fast-paced, meritocracy-based, increasingly-divided society, my imposter syndrome is masked by overconfident brushstrokes that can’t cover up a lack of confidence in the multiple layers of paint partially hidden under the surface. The endless inner turmoil that arises from feelings of self-doubt is expressed, at times, as geometric shapes woven together with texture, at other times, as seemingly random chaos running across the canvas—much like the constant ebb and flow of thoughts that consume our minds. These shapes and forms are both in and out of balance with contrasting colors, highlighting the roller coaster of these conflicting emotions and the intensity of introspection."

"The world is collage to me. What happens at the edges and among the layers, where two different materials or ideas meet—that’s where I’m drawn. I have bins and bins of paper and scraps in my studio. It is important to my process that I not use virgin working materials but rather fragments of older work and found materials. Something from something. Beauty from ashes. It’s also important for me to show the sometimes-raw joints, the roughness of their coming together, to be candid about the process of layering and to leave the hand of the artist apparent. The push and pull between two ideas intrigue me most, the animating tensions between destruction and creation, expansion and contraction, and explosion and implosion. These ideas are embodied in the wilderness. The only constant in the wild is that it will change, that an element can and will be both violent and passive, opposites held in a balance. In a world that is increasingly contentious, the need to feel peace within the chaos becomes more desperate. By drawing, painting, and collaging, I seek to find an equivalent to the peace found in wild places."

"This piece is a mixture of pencil, pen, and digital art. I actually created this piece for one of my Honors classes last fall. The prompt was to show how the course had affected my life so far, and I realized that the class had 'opened my eyes' to a lot of new things. This is where the name 'Oculos Tuos Aperi' comes from actually, which is Latin for 'Open your eyes.'"

This artist did not wish to include a description for their piece.

Jason’s work engages the cross-section of Chicano/Indigenous identity, cultural hybridization, post-colonial reconstruction, and political agency. His writing and visual art bridge the aesthetics and feel from the early cubist collage movement and the Russian abstract movement of the 1920s with living and historical Native/Indigenous Californian and Chicano art traditions to explore the Post-colonial narrative through active synthesis and guided (re)construction.

This artist did not wish to include a description for their piece.

"I made this piece with all my dried-out ink pens, scissors, a needle, and an old dollar store paintbrush. The red in the piece is 'her' and the green is supposed to look like fire. The purple colors are what make her trapped, so 'she' is trapped in the fire. If you look closely, you can see scratch marks on the notecard, which is 'her' scratching' a way out. (This was inspired by my cat scratching me on my knee as I was making this piece!) The white spaces are openings for viewers to 'enter' the art piece and find what they see. This piece can be interpreted in many different ways, which I did on purpose. There is an intended meaning, but the white spaces allow for lots of interpretations."

"I am interested in the resilience of the image, in every story, if you go back, as far back as you can, to the point where every horizon disappears, you find an image. Resilience is at play in both the way images survive and push up through time and history and also in which images we create and display. In a larger historical temporality of expansion, exploration, and conquest the resilience of the image is an act of resistance.  In creating these images of people and places with deep and detailed stories, I often take them out into the world, quite literally plastering them onto construction sites, abandoned spaces, and other gaps in the built environment. I revisit them as they are transforming out in the world, often re-harvesting them, bringing them back into the studio, back home in a sense.  I work to build these pieces as palimpsests that embrace their failed erasures -- proceeding divergently, full of resilience, creating many possible associations and not converging into just the singular conclusion. Physically moving their imagery, texture, and color between and across different mediums - from digital to analog, paper, emulsion or acetate onwards onto canvas, wood or linen. When it works, I am producing painted things that contain their own archaeology and that shimmer with their own ghostwritten history."

This artist did not wish to include a description for their piece.

This artist did not wish to include a description for their piece.

“Nature is resplendent with foreplay, especially during springtime. Hopefully, by pausing to view this blissful ritual in my “Foreplay” photograph, humans may be stimulated to sample its euphoria.”