FEATURED SMALL WORKS EXHIBITION
BIG VOICES
Ambee Damon-Davis
I am a 25-year-old artist born in Colorado and raised in the Gurnee-Waukegan, IL area. I am currently recovering from serious health issues, working on creating an autonomous life in assisted living, and looking forward to eventually returning to college to study social work. I spend most of my time focusing on my health and creating multiple small works per day. I return to the small format again and again, because it lets me prolifically create, while limiting the toll on my body. Small works command you to lean in closer, creating a more intimate relationship with the viewer. I use acrylic and mixed media on wood panels. My current body of work obsessively depicts ghosts in an effort to uncover and embrace the pain and beauty of mental and physical health. Validating others' struggles by being honest about my own is important to me in the current state of this world, where technology and greed attempt to push us apart from each other.
Annie Drake
My sewn textile works are collages of discarded fabrics and sometimes bad drawings, all mine—clothing, underwear, tattered linens from childhood, and pieces that failed. These bits are aggressively sewn into each other. They are garbage, then recycled, then stamped into finality, sometimes marked further with paint or pen. The scraps cannot be recycled again. They are maybe garbage again, in that they take up space for no real reason unless wanted. If wanted, then they are art.
Or maybe that's wrong, and coming from an unhealed place.
I sew with a feminine rage. And wanting. I want the pieces to be touched, to be important, or acknowledged. I want them to be bigger than six by six inches even though they were only allowed to be six by six inches. I don't want them to be garbage.
My next works will be large enough to fill a room.
My work is a pair of paintings approaching the two visual representations of natural organisms tied to the moniker of "bleeding heart." The notion of a bleeding heart is typically associated with matters of sensitivity or vulnerability, both of which are valuable traits within my greater body of work, as well as my personal nature.
This concept came to me upon first moving to the state of Wisconsin two years ago, where I had the joy of learning that bleeding heart flowers grow plentifully here in the spring. Back home in Michigan we had tried to grow some in our garden, but they refused to flower. Within these paintings I explore the growing pains of expanding your horizons, as well the unanticipated virtues.
Kay Manin
This series reflects my journey of rediscovering myself. While I honor these memories, I also recognize the necessity of release. This work is focused on the art of letting go, allowing the past to remain where it belongs- and where it will stay.
Jenna Riordan
I've created the "Sagrado Corazón" series in response to the ongoing discrimination and injustice happening against Latinos in the US. This body of work explores the feelings of being "othered" by society, mixed-identity, assimilation, resilience, and healing through organic motifs rooted in Mexican folk art. This past year has been incredibly heavy, filled with grief and fear within immigrant communities. The Sagrado Corazón is often used as a symbol of hope and resilience, so I wanted to create my own interpretation of this symbol of eternal love to navigate these complex emotions. Each heart is growing out of a seashell, representing the pressures of assimilation that are often forced onto immigrants. My grandmother didn't teach us Spanish as a way to protect our family from the discrimination she experienced for being Mexican. However, there is immense grief from losing parts of your identity and heritage through that process. As I work to reconnect with those parts of myself, it has inspired the second piece which is focused on celebration and joy as an act of resistance. Using vines, vibrant florals, and monarch butterfly wings growing out of the shell, these motifs not only represent healing through those pressures, but celebrate Mexican heritage. In times like these, we must come together with joy, love, and respect for one another in order to create a better future. Healing requires feeling every emotion fully in order to move forward, and to come together despite these difficult times.
Amanda Santos
For years we have lived in “unprecedented times”. From the worldwide quarantine in 2020 resulting from the pandemic, to the current US political crisis, the constant barrage of events has been overwhelming and demoralizing.
My work is a display of my coping mechanism. I am fascinated with the microscopic and how it mirrors anxiety. Both are imperceptible, catalysts striking seemingly at random with the power to disrupt “normalcy”. To adapt, I compulsively create my own imaginary viruses as an attempt to regain control over the invisible. By scaling up the microscopic it becomes demystified, shrinking its power over me. This is not only a meditative practice, but an act of resilience. The work is brightly colored, a conscious decision to choose joy. It is a whimsical resistance against the viruses and policies that try to cage me.
Helena Sucero
Humans interfere with normal cycles in nature in attempts to mitigate our effects on the environment. This is the case with wildfires. Small and medium fires are put out or prevented which allows fuel to accumulate for more severe large fires. Human interference leads to short-term relief and more devastating effects over time while industrial development creates generally harsher conditions. We see ourselves as separate from the ecosystems we change and we look for solutions to problems we create where we need balance and cooperation.
Patricia Whang
The same climate-impacted landscape appears in both paintings: as a direct view and as a view mediated through a window and a framed image. This repetition collapses the distinction between outside and inside, suggesting that climate change is no longer remote but embedded in daily experience. Together, the works position contemporary landscape painting as both an aesthetic tradition and a form of witness to the environmental realities of our time
