Wendi Smith's "Elegy" opens next week! For more information about the artist and work, see this post.

Joyce Garner, gallery co-founder and emeritus staffer, will have a solo show at the Thyen-Clark Cultural Center with Jasper Community Arts, from September 2 through October 22, 2021.

The show opens with a reception and an artist talk—information below. Masking is required.

If you'd like to preview the show or can't attend, please see the work online here.

​Stay healthy!

Wendi Smith

Elegy
​

​Friday, Sept. 3 - Sunday, Oct. 10

Note: The regular reception with the artist has been cancelled, as the pandemic has curtailed gatherings and we want people to stay safe.

The artist has picked a few days and times to be present at the show and speak with guests. If you are interested in attending a very small gathering, you are most warmly invited. Please let the artist or the gallery know, and we will make a space for you.

This measure is to spread out our guests, and to support masking.

email: [email protected]
​text: (502) 303-7259

artist statement

After working on boxes for the past 7 years, the work has become less about ritual, although it is still a part of this body of work, and more about the dread that simmers underneath what we are experiencing in the world.  

Ritual in my past work has been an attempt to tap into the ceremonies and objects that are prayerful, hopeful and evocative of unseen power.

The ritual connected to these boxes is the ceremonial treatment of death.  And because so much of death and dying is done outside the human species, and often because of it, it is there that my intention is founded.

I borrow from the reliquaries of prophets and saints to make sacred the tombs of turtles and birds.
Technically, these are low color, and reduced pattern to lend solemnity to the contents.  I have used metal leaf as a nod to historic reliquaries, and to give them a formal feel.

The triptychs and other wall-mounted pieces are a mixture of nature and ritual.

about the artist

Elegy is Smith's second solo show with garner narrative, postponed over a year because of the shutdown; her first was 2018's Ritual Collections. Smith's resume details over forty years of a faithful and rigorous painting practice.

The twin themes of nature and ritual are perennial for Smith. Reliquaries, illuminated manuscripts, and altarpieces are contextual for approaching her work.

Smith quietly subverts ideas of value by placing found objects from the natural world—butterfly wings, seed pods, animal bones—into protected spaces inside sturdy wooden vessels. Meanwhile, she paints exacting still lives of these same natural objects on the outside of the vessel, vulnerable and available to touch and gaze.

Please join us for an open house reception with the artists this Sunday! Lisa will attend from 2-5, and Will from 1-6. 

(We found last month that a reception with open house extended hours, as we hoped, was quite successful in spacing out guests which is better for Covid safety. We ask all guests to mask when not directly eating or drinking, and guests have been enthusiastic or at minimum supportive. We have masks available right at the door. Thank you for supporting the arts and artists!)

About our show:

Lisa Austin and Will Garner: New Works
Lisa Austin: 3d collage
Will Garner: mixed media paintings

Lisa Austin is a self-taught collage and assemblage artist, and a Signature Member of the National Collage Society with regional and national awards. Austin lives in Louisville and has a longstanding artistic inquiry into regional American culture, exploring contemporary issues through the manipulation of printed memorabilia.

Austin writes, "This has been a difficult time for everyone. There have been a lot of losses, deaths, violence and mayhem in our lives because of the pandemic. As a result, I began to make 3-D collages as a way to challenge myself technically and find that place in me that laughs at the world instead of crying.

"I made collages with several of my favorite items in them: old-fashioned pin-up girls, orchids, dinosaurs and pop culture (can you find King Kong?) I deliberately kept my sense of humor and added a bit of whimsy to them. They are not really serious although I can easily make social justice-themed pieces as well. They are just for fun. To make the viewer laugh or at least smile when there has been so little of that in our recent lives."

Will Garner is a second-generation artist (son of gallery co-founder Joyce Garner) and has worked as a fencing coach, a sprite designer, and a sculpture studio assistant. He manages operations full-time for garner narrative, with a studio on site.

Garner writes, "Nature is all about finding things that work and continuing to do them with slight variations in case there might be a way that still works, but differently. Some things have worked well in the same way for a very long time. Others have become very different. There is much to marvel at in both results. Who can say ahead of time what living will look like?"