Gianni Branciforte

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Elizabeth Calderone

Elizabeth Calderone

A House is a Body, a Body is a House

The concept of home is very complex to me. After living through years of emotional abuse by my mother and being rescued by my father, I am now living alone for the first time and am thinking a lot about this idea. I am slowly coming to terms with the thought that home can be myself; my own body, even if some days I don’t want to be alive.

But this series of work isn’t about all that bad past junk. It is about how, every day, I am trying to be better. Some days are a lot harder than others, and I don’t have the motivation to leave my bed, but at least I have a cat who loves me dearly. I also have a wonderful support system that I am deeply grateful for.

Every day this body of a home stands a little taller. 

Digital Photography. 2021.

Nina Gabriel

Nina Gabriel

"Little Psyche"

Paintings

^Click to Go to Collages^

About

A standard stuffed animal is soft, cute, and perfect for comforting a child, but they also are vessels for our imagination and feelings. They are one of the first things in the world we human beings project upon. We name them, give them genders and personalities. Through the storylines we create for stuffed toys when we play we establish our own fears, desires, and things we like and don’t like. A human’s identity and view of the world starts to unfold. “ Little Psyche” takes this concept of seeing through stuffed animals and makes the play echo darker and complex human behaviors like toxic relationships, abuse, and manipulation. The five paintings featured play with symbolism and body language of the figures to explore these themes in an imaginative way a child’s mind might try to capture them. The show also has a side series “visual notes” too. Each painting has a “sister collage” that works as an X-ray and dissection of the story in the painting. Like the paintings these collages utilize kitschy and childlike imagery to further the narrative.

Suyang Gong

You Tell Me

Suyang Gong

I have been mulling recently over my parents’ old family photos, which they brought over when they immigrated from China, primarily for the ways in which they both convey and withhold information. Obviously my parents can read them without issue, but I’m caught by how I know that they’re important while also feeling completely divorced from the photos as family history and as my personal identity. Who were these people, where were they, and what were they doing? The photo’s existence means there are answers, but I can’t tease them out, and so the photos become more significant as objects rather than images. They force me to consider how my family history — my Chinese-ness, my relationship to the language — factor into my sense of self.

My drawings and paintings form my examination into this strange relationship between the photo, my family, my cultural heritage, and myself. These ideas are more literal in some works than others, but this line from family to self is the binding thread.

Email: gong.suyang@gmail.com

Instagram: kitcat_pls

Shannon Heylin

Shannon Heylin

NOW PLAYING

“NOW PLAYING”

Acrylic paint, wood panels, nails, metal fasteners, canvas, and stretcher bars.

27′ x 8′

2021

Welcome to my home and the movie in my head. Enter. Stroll through the grass fields, watch the moonlight dance on the water, hear the laughter at the lake, walk on the cold asphalt, feel the heat of the fire, and the deafening quiet after a car crash.

Take a seat with the characters and watch the scene unfold as they gaze right back at you. Allow your own feelings and experiences to come to the surface as you experience the serenity of the waterfall and the trauma of the forest fire. 

Listen to the quiet chatter before the movie starts and the hush that falls when the opening scene begins.

We are all voyeurs of this movie. 

This is my love letter to Painting. She has the ability to allow me to express my own feelings and traumas so that I can process them. Painting allows intense vulnerability and human connection so that we can all heal. I can connect with people through that vulnerability.

Hear my love of melancholy and quiet disaster. See yourself crouching to witness the small details and step back to take in the entire scene.

We are voyeurs of each other’s lives and our own. Who are you watching, and who is watching you?

“And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
-Friedrick Nietzsche

Olympia Martin

The protagonists and antagonists of these worlds are my own reimagining of the monstrous and uncanny women in Slavic, Norse, and Greek mythology. They live with the demons of their history and failures, reveling in hedonism to cope with their situation. In my paintings they revel in self destruction and hedonism to cope with their situation. Each painting functions as a parallel world adjacent but separate from our modern day world and the world of myth, where colors and brushstrokes show both the mental state of the characters and the composition of the world. I focus on creating sympathy and a source of comfort for the characters within the painting, as play and lightheartedness is vital to surviving turbulent experiences. Despite the torment the characters go through, my work rejects nihilism and polarization of what is considered monstrous. Their monstrosity is what allows them to adapt and thrive in turbulence and boredom.

Though they are part of a 12 piece anthology, each piece is meant to be seen individually, like pages in a fairytale book. Just as how when parallel worlds collide it results in a rip in time and space, it would be an anomaly for the paintings to clash together. 


Sara Shrier

SARA

sarashrier@gmail.com

The Sara Doll

9.5″, Polymer Clay & Other Assorted Materials

Dolls, much like human bodies, act as vessels through which we project personalities. We dress them up and present them in specific ways with the intention of expressing and projecting our internal selves into the world. However, as much as these representations reveal ourselves, they are mere recreations. The “Sara Doll” demonstrates this concept, inviting the viewer to project themselves onto the doll and imagine their own stories, much like a child in play. A major source of inspiration for this project was the idea that, by transforming my outer self into a doll, I might be able to explore something about myself. I often wonder how my self-image differs from the persona perceived by others. Perhaps, by stepping out of our own bodies and revisiting a child’s worldview, we may glean some new perspectives into ourselves and each other.

Talking to Myself

11″ x 14″, Gouache & Acrylic on Bristol

Accompanying The Sara Doll, this painting series dives even deeper into themes of identity through characterization. These characters – Little, Middle, Older, & Elder, as I like to call them – each represent a different key point in my development; even those I haven’t experienced yet!