Bayou Gregg

Should the applause be savored? Will my self believe waver under the lights? Be still my soul…

Matthew Wilkins

Here I examine themes such as displacement, aging, and identity, all while exploring a hard-edge style in a non-objective manner. A vintage robot ("Jasper Diode") ponders his self worth in an ever-changing and highly technical age, where one is often overlooked for younger and more vigorous talent.

Gregory Janicke

Kharkiv, Ukraine has a deeply rich, centuries-old cultural history. Under the relentless barrage of bombing, this culture is being destroyed.Or is it? I recently saw a report of a lone cellist bravely playing Bach’s Cello Suite No. 5 in a bombed-out street of Kharkiv (source:https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/22/world/europe/ukraine-cellist-bach-kharkiv.amp.html ). I was inspired. In my painting, the cellist plays on amidst a shattering of the street and its structures. Colors collide. In the background, survivors wander like ghosts.There are unique images to find in this painting, some vague, some emerging. From a distance, this picture reads as a mosaic or stained glass. Up close, it reveals the unyielding color and light of this remarkable city and its people.

Trish Klenow

This collection of landscapes extends from my back door, to Michigan, to Maine, and to the mountains of North Carolina. All of them are special places; luscious places, teeming with life, color, and usually water. It’s entitled Witness because I have been to all of them hiking and reflecting. Hopefully my love of natural landscapes comes through. This work is devoid of figures. I wanted to capture these places untroubled and undisturbed. In the past some of my landscape settings have changed due to construction or natural disasters, painting landscapes preserves these places in time.

Samantha Everette

One of the most intimate yet universal experiences of Black women is the braiding of our hair. Our African and Indigenous ancestry endows hair with significance beyond physical beauty; our long flowing braids are a conduit for spiritual anointing, a symbol of tribe and belonging, and a method for intergenerational bonding. Inspired by her own experiences and by the Black women who make up her closest friends and family, Everette creates a scene that highlights their strength and beauty through the ritual of hair braiding. A ritual experienced around the world, the women tightly encircle Zya — a deeply intimate expression of sisterhood and inter-generational connection. Dressed in white, reminiscent of those worn by Orisha and Houdoun priestesses throughout the Diaspora . As the braiders slowly, patiently create this elaborate east african braided style and Zya and the braids extend out in their splendor, she rises higher on a pedestal in strength and confidence. Taking hours or even days to complete, braiding is labor of love, patience, and artistic precision resulting in a breathtaking headdress. “Crowning Glory” tells the story of sisterhood, motherhood, community, collective care, triumph, and the complex elixir of beauty and spiritual mystique carried by Black women, atop our heads and within our beings.

Julie Long

I want to show the intimacy and trust that can exist between different species. I often draw animals, especially cats, because I love them, but for this piece I wanted to draw the love itself. A moment of connection, and peace.

Danner Washburn

Untitled is inspired by an observation of a gas meter box found in North Carolina's Yadkin Valley. The meter's original pink finish was eroded by its environment, showing its underlying materiality. The painting suspends this liminal moment between the hiding and revealing of truth.

Shannon Johnstone

As an artist, I create work that examines the balance between absence and presence. I am particularly interested in themes that reclaim what has been discarded, and make visible that which is hidden. Cameras have a long history of depicting the truth, recording events, and tracing history. However, I am drawn to photography's innovation in assisting us to see things our eyes cannot, like with infrared thermal imaging.

Tonya Thornton

This piece is from a recent body of work in which I'm exploring sculptural forms in my collage, beginning a dialogue between my flat and three-dimensional work.

Calvin Ulrich

This painting was done originally as a study for a lesson on turkeys I was going to teach for my after school art class. I got carried away with the details and decided to make a completed painting.The dimensions include a mat and frame not shown in the photo. Please let me know if you need to know the colors of those.

Sarah West

Taking inspiration from collage work and pattern making, I aim to focus on the shapes that are left behind when material is cut up. I start with playful colors and organic shapes and I pair these with a steel framework that highlights these pieces. By using a variety of materials: leather, enamel and vinyl LPs, I can build up color and texture as I explore the space between what is useful and what is thrown away.

Skillet Gilmore

"May the Light" is a monoprint created from elements borrowed from several of my recent commercial design projects. The primary focus on the "darkened" lamp speaks to dark times as we are experiencing them, while under-layers of bright colors, city structures and allusions to music making hint at the possibility of emergence.

Caitlin Cary

The “Piers” series flirts with abstraction as it concentrates on the underpinnings of structures and invites the viewer to become meditative about the beautiful and complicated repeating geometric patterns that undergird the built environment. "Piers: Portico" plays with perspective, and it features some remarkable & luminous Thai silk that was a gift to the artist from the NC State school of design.

Doris Kapner

This piece is part of a self-portrait series. The series explores my feelings of being a woman based on the expectations of society and the standards for beauty. The series features backgrounds of layered patterns which nod to the domestic space. Patterns featured on wallpaper, textiles, and ceramics which represent "woman's place" in the home are layered in a way that at first seems merely decorative but are actually chaotic and unsettling, reflecting the feeling of being trapped in a situation which on the surface appears fine. This relates not only to my feelings of having been in an emotionally abusive marriage but the contradicting expectations of our society on women and girls. The figures are hand cut stencils of photographs of myself. The stencil makes the portraits less specific and allow me to objectify myself. The poses cater to the male gaze and the ever present conflict this creates for me as a woman.

Freddie Bell

"Make Room" is part of an ongoing series exploring how the process of grief relates and connects to fascia, a thin structural tissue found throughout the body. Using loose abstract shapes reminiscent of fascia and the strictness of the grid in the foreground, I am reflected on the ways we are essentially forced to make room for grief in our lives. When grief occurs, it can not be avoided and we must stretch, rest, pull, and find the ways that work for us to address grief and it's impacts.

Chris Murphy

This work chronicles the perils of being Black online in the modern age. We work to carve out our Internet identities in the midst of anonymous racism and casual exploitation.

Jessica Burke

The most basic essence of a portrait is its anatomical foundation, the skull. Skulls have a long visual history of being used to provide a sense of urgency, motivation and clarity. Often, they are considered a way to contemplate mortality while prioritizing living a full life int he moment. This portrait also explores identity, power, politics and gender.

Jacob Fluharty

Seated upon a throne with expectation, heavy is the head that holds the crown.

Diana Malin

Returning from a trip to Spain I was overloaded by QR codes at every point in my travel, health documents, airline, baggage,

menu's, purchases of all kinds. I found myself staring at them and wondering how I could transform that code into something fun so

I grabbed a blank panel and turned it into a painting.

Hannah Goff

I intended for this work to reference my own personal history and feelings of place and home, weather it be a home in the past, present or future. Incorporated visual mementos and textile fragments collected through time, bring to life the essence of domestic identity and belonging.

Suijin Li

Spring is a season of transition and new life and what represents it more than the beauty of the butterfly? This piece embodies transformation by using recycled Sterling silver to create a butterfly in flight.

Linda Brink

I love dark, moody spaces and art. This twinkling chandelier just glows in this darkened room begging for a clandestine meeting.

Stacy Rexrode

I examine critical social issues through projects that incorporate traditional methods of craft and use materials from domestic spaces that are often overlooked or discarded.

Material Worth is from the “Flora Fem Fauna” body of works that make direct reference to historical still life paintings that traditionally note the fleeting nature of existence and the passage of time but I use a material that will remain long past the lifetime of any given viewer. The chaotic and overflowing arrangements confront us with the reality of American habits of resource consumption and the consequences that arise from our consumeristic quest for objects. By using materials that are often tossed away in the recycle bin, I use a sense of irony to ask the viewers to question notions of perceived value. Not just the value of the materials being used but also the value of nature and the environment being referenced in the work.

I was inspired after touring a Venetian glass studio and witnessing the Master Craftsmen passing along their expertise to the next generation. I chose to work with recyclable plastics as a marker for what we are passing on to our next generation and form each individual flower with the same intensity I witnessed in the glass studio. The process pushes the limits of the material and notions of cultural value while affirming studio craft labor, and the role of the artist’s hand in the production of these works. Utilizing craft to re-envision and reinvent history through a material that is actually trash is a mechanism to create a bit of confusion and questioning in the viewer once they have the “Aha!” moment and realize what the medium actually is. I purposely use certain printed plastics as signifiers such as a Starbucks cup that most can recognize as a fellow consumer.

I gather the plastic recyclables for each composition from our family’s household bin and manipulate them into floral forms. My contemporary plastic arrangements may have to serve as the alternative to the disappearing landscape caused by climate change and the overindulgences of an excessive society. They suggest a link between the present and something past that has been “passed down” to the next generation I view my work as typifying the underrepresented, discarded, disregarded, and domestic by showing relationships between the historical and the contemporary and elude to the destructive patterns of human behavior that repeat themselves over time.

Christine Hager-Braun

Quite often mental illness is considered a taboo topic. On one hand, those who struggle withdraw and remain quiet out of a sense of helplessness, shame, and fear of negative consequences. On the other hand, society tends to avoid the subject as it is unpleasant to face outdated beliefs. Words fail on all sides. However, silence is devastating. We urgently need an open conversation about the importance of mental health. Even the smallest dialogue raises awareness, shines light on the topic, and offers a glimpse of hope.

Leah Jensen

“Tension” is a tapestry weaving created from yarn and recycled cloth which expresses the physical feeling of tension one can have while under stress. The dark and bulky fibers crushed into the warp of the tapestry, as well as the thick, bunched up curvilinear gray form in the center look taut and tense. The patchy, irregular forms evoke uncertainty and turbulence. This piece was cathartic to make, and I hope that it might also provide some catharsis for viewers of the piece.

Leslie Pruneau

My paintings pull inspiration from both social and environmental influences; a hike in nature can surely bring a peaceful balance to a bustling city-life. It is important for me to remain mindful that beauty is all around us, no matter the circumstances, so this concept plays a major role in the content of my work.

Colin Murasko

This photograph was taken with a 1970's Yashica 124-G TLR medium format camera with Illford 400, black and white 120mm film. During one of my urban photo walks, I found myself outside the White of Raleigh Bridal Boutique shop near downtown where I saw the young lady through the window having her dress altered. Capturing this moment, I feel lends to the mystery of what she may be feeling and thinking during this time in her life.

Jill Hunt

I've used vivid color and organic shape and line to create playful movement throughout this piece. It expresses whimsy and wonderful tendency to be carried away by fantastical ideas or plans. Acrylic paint layered with graphite and aqua pencil markings.

Sarah Forster

Time and space mean nothing to this adventurous migrator. Acrylic on canvas, finished with resin.

Marsha Glickman

Our souls are bared and revealed as we search for and find hope. This work is created with found vintage papers and needlepoint parts.

Grace Thorpe

My work attempts to process what it means to be human and exist in this world while reflecting on issues such as identity and mental health. I am a queer, trans, and nonbinary artist who creates both as a means of processing and as a method of escapism. “Remedy” is part of a series of work that explores the idea of escapism and entering another reality through art.

Erin Ives

The piece is based on a Linda Darnell image and quote. She was known as the girl with the beautiful face in Hollywood in the 1940s. She stated that she was the most dyin' gal in Hollywood. Why must beauty and death be so intrinsically tied? This piece is a spell for all women punished for their beauty and those who will be. Using natural materials and burning the surface of the piece by igniting powdered incense, I drew from rituals of women in the past that have helped them feel a sense of power in a world where they had none.

Joyce Wynes

As a mixed media, abstract painter my art taps into the issues we face today. Through the use of repeating patterns, mark-making, texture, collage & acrylic paint on canvas, I try to excite the viewer visually, to receive a message of encouragement and/or empowerment to continue on their path to their truth/voice. Coming Full Circles is a bold, colorful textural painting that encourages the viewer to continue on their path, reach their goal and finish what is their destiny to complete in their lives. Circles have always been an important symbol in my work. Once formed a circle has no beginning or end so it symbolizes continuation. As a society of people, represented by the 12 larger circles, we are all different so this painting speaks to those different sectors of people pursuing their passions and encouraging continuation in their process. The squares filled with smaller circles represent those people working together to reach their goals.

Note to Judge: This painting can be hung vertically or horizontally. Because 36" is the maximum width for this exhibition, I sent the vertical photo.

Courtney Fleming

The "Spread The Love" is a series of paintings that are created the same yet each one has a unique style , of color and texture guaranteed to make you happy every time you look at it.

Sydney McBride

Inspired by French historian François Hartog's writing on regimes of historicity, this print depicts Presentism, a theory that describes the emerging way current western culture perceives time, in which the present is all consuming, the past becomes unrecognizable, and the future is incomprehensible and marked with doom. Time takes the form of a river hurtling ever faster towards the future. Each circle represents the overlap, or lack there of, between the past, present, and future.

Mark Blanchard

This photo was shot on Jekyll Island, GA on Driftwood Beach. I digitally manipulated the colors of the sky and driftwood, and silhouetted the bird completely, creating a other worldly feel to the photograph. The sharp angles of the driftwood, along with the featureless black bird, and the Mars like atmosphere, gives this image it's distinctive atmosphere and mood...a feeling of unsettling isolation.

Lynn Newman

I’m a 70 year old retired art teacher who moved to North Carolina in February 2020, just as the pandemic was becoming the menacing threat which confronted all of us. I’ve taken solace in painting flowers - as they are incredibly calming and a great joy to do. My hope is the works are able to convey some of those feelings to others.

Constance Pappalardo

This piece is about language and communication. Whether the language is alpha numeric or music notes on paper, each carry their own DNA of emotion and thought.

Liel Eliad

This geode inspired resin painting in Made with real clear Quartz crystals points, known for their healing properties for body and soul!

ART WITH A PURPOSE - Quartz points will aid in the stimulation of the chakras and the removal of energy blockages.

The healing characteristics of crystals inspire me to use real raw crystals into my artwork to give it a deeper meaning and purpose than just its appearance.

William Parker

It’s hard fixing yourself when you’re in the dark knowing what’s broken. So I realized we all have light and dark inside us, but it’s when we shine our light are we able to be the best version of ourselves. (Physical 20x15 giclee on hahnemuhle framed)

Kenneth Proseus

My work is inspired by the sensorial influence of historically impactful color field works by artists such as Ellsworth Kelly and Frank Stella, while being technically approached with the control and sublimity seen in the work of contemporary artists such as Sarah Morris, Rachel Hellman, and Richard Anuszkiewicz.

Claire Kiester

This print depicts an emotional and textural representation of the grocery store. All layers were drawn and printed by hand.

Patricia Westphal

This work is one of a series of landscape paintings that explore open terrain beyond the spaces we normally inhabit. In particular, I am fascinated by how the surfaces, contours, and colors of rock formations reveal evidence of ancient geologic forces and of the mutability of the earth we walk. In painting, I wish to suggest the physicality of these formations and the sensations of being amidst the untamed.

Chika Gujarathi

I painted this on the chilly morning of my 40th birthday which I celebrated in January. Surrounded by trees and plants that were bare and naked in our yard, all I could think about was spring that would soon erase this monotonous landscape. In a way, it reflects how I feel about my personal milestone and the bright and vibrant adventures that still wait me.

Kyle Stark

This was a piece I decided to put as much detail and clutter as I can. I originally did a photoshoot of a bunch of birthday-related things (bags, confetti, wrapping paper) and tore them up and scattered them everywhere. I really wanted to capture the feeling of what it is like after a large party.

Ashley Armstrong

Grounded in who I am, in who I'm becoming. I am capable of magnificent things-- growing, nurturing, teaching, protecting, slaying. As soft and gentle as a breezy in a spring meadow. As fierce and deadly as a lioness on the hunt. The power I wield is not to be underestimated, nor to be triffled with. Handle me with care-- not because I am delicate like a glass flower-- but because I Am Woman-- the giver of life.

Pinghui Ren

A celebration of the rich Chinese culture mixing with Western Egg Tempera style as homage to medieval and renaissance masterpieces.

Angela Eastman

This piece employs the language of basketweaving to create a sculptural map of Mt. Williams Reservoir in Massachusetts. I created this piece while in residence at MASS MoCA using materials gathered from around the reservoir, which I visited often during my time there. I’m interested in portraying the water supply for a region as an entity worthy of portraiture, as a way of honoring the unifying importance of water and grounding my own passage through a place I am a visitor to. The birch bark, willow, and red osier became non-human neighbors I got to know by sight, and reference the long history of human use and co-habitation with plants; while the steel and flagging tape speak to the ubiquitous extractive industries and building practices which distance us from a healthy stewardship relationship with the natural environment.

Dean Logan

My sculptures are abstract, three-dimensional wood compositions in vibrant colors and, recently, natural wood finishes. As abstractions they are not meant to represent any one thing.

Instead they are expressions of color, form and energy as shapes juxtapose and create random and unexpected relationships to each other. I’m inspired by jazz with my latest work – hard bop jazz specifically. I’m especially drawn to the concept of improvisation as it relates to music. It’s chaos with discipline – randomness with structure.

Much like a player in a band taking his turn at a solo, my work is not planned. There is no sketch or idea before I begin cutting the wood. I simply cut then compose the pieces until it feels right. Then I add color and textural elements to make the piece finished.

Adam D. Cohen

I experience a series of “big bangs” when working – moments when preconceptions are dropped and something unanticipated and new happens. Ideally, every mark is a little rebellion against what came before, what’s expected, what’s known.

Caroline Coven

This is the 25th in a series on the apple. It is a from a new body of work begun in the fall of 2021. My previous work was on canvas and was nonrepresentational. These pieces are on paper and include the materials of acrylic paint, charcoal and graphite. My images, nonrepresentational or figurative, intend to describe power relationships.

Derrick Nicholas

"Misdirection" is a concept I came up with last year and finally executed this year. It originated from a mentality during the early pandemic, that both the country and all of us in it, were having to make bold decisions about our future without necessarily knowing the outcome. With that, came the notion that through the chaos, all of chose a direction to travel, only to possibly find it lead to a dead end.

Anthony Garcia-Copian

When I paint, I paint abstract memories. Sometimes the memory is foggy and has been replaced by an imaginary sediment, a residue that has made one memory solid and the other fluid.

Amanda Duncan

SPACES is a serial photography exhibition, an indefinite series of photographs, that is currently being released in chapters consisting of 12 images that reflect on a "space." This image, Structural Space 1.02, is the second image in the first chapter of SPACES that discusses my personal reaction and the challenging dialogue I have with structural spaces in my environment.

*Image is limited edition and comes with a certificate of authenticity.

Cindy Morefield

In my current practice I build a large wall collage, or “texture matrix,” from paper, tape, and other leftover studio materials, and make wax pastel rubbings from the matrix as it evolves. What Remains Hidden is a series of collages made from recombining parts of rubbings made from the same texture matrix but using different colors of wax pastel and types of paper. Some of the collages include additional materials such as washi tape, fiberglass screen, and thread.

Cinders kilgore

Whimsy and what I consider, not finished, folk and fairy tales find their way out in mysterious ways. I simply found the stone, the remnant of a cut piece to fit a home entry, lying beside a rotten tree. And it was there, right as I reached out towards the ground, ... I saw the glass slipper. Borrowing from another fairy tale, the frog just lent itself to rise from the mud. The red clay, so undoubtedly, southern, staining the bottom of the slipper as the clock ticked closer to midnight.

As the artist, or possibly, simply the craftsman, I followed the lead of the stone as I broke a mirror, a variety of stain glass strips, and a chipped dinner plate. With multiple band-aids covering my wounded fingers, I merely glued and grouted as the tale unfolded.

Mary Storms

This piece was completed in the midst of COVID, right before vaccines became available and dreams of greener pastures were on the horizon.

Atiya Batts

Inspired by my love of mythical creatures, folklore, and the color blue.

Noel Butler

The painting explores womanhood and maternity in a surrealistic way with the concept of blooming and bearing fruit.

Ann Roth

Beauty in the world around me and life’s quirks, mysteries and capacity to change directions unexpectedly inspire my creative process. I play with subtleties, complexities, illusions and the interaction of colors. Tree and plant forms, ocean wave patterns, natural and fabricated textures and structures, the landscape, architectural details, and historic and contemporary textiles draw my attention and inspire me. In 2018 I stopped weaving on a floor loom and began to explore my interest in color, pattern and structure more spontaneously. Painting both sides of sheets of Tyvek, cutting them into free form elements and then interlacing them provides endless possibilities.

Annie Blazejack

We, Annie Blazejack and Geddes Levenson, are engaged in a long-term painting collaboration. We’ve been working together for about ten years, learning about each other’s techniques and idea-building processes over time.

This painting is part of an ongoing painted conversation. We challenge each other's expectations and defaults, looking at problems from two different perspectives at once. Think of two eyes pooling information about a three-dimensional world, or two speakers generating stereo surround sound. We refer to our duality in our paintings by including mirrors and wobbly reflections, imperfect copies and repetitions, or scenes that happen both above and below water.

Our narrative paintings examine the interdependence between human-made and wilderness spaces. As the climate warms and ecosystems try to adapt, how will we adapt in kind? Science fiction stories, especially those about human encounters with alien landscapes, help us imagine our changing relationship to wild places with creativity and nuance.

Jennifer Clifton

This piece features a Victorian clad bison standing in front of his highly coveted insect collection. The viewer fills in the pieces of this "electric fable."CCC

Nirvanna Lildharrie

The person who I spent the most time with in my early life was my sister, Nikki. We are four years apart, but she (the younger) will tell you we are three and a half. In our girlhood days, she was always my literary foil. We have been described as “night and day.” Back then, we were the tall gangly sister and the cute button-sized sister; the dark one and the light one. We now get asked if we are twins all the time and I see more similarities than differences. More than cosmetics, this painting is a story about the dynamic between sisters.

Tavyn Lovitt

Mysterious and strange, the swamp is a place of magic. Loathed by many, it is an undervalued domain of secrets that only the few who adore it come to understand. Some days, if you're walking through the morass and find yourself vexed by the smell of thick fauna, the dinosaurs that survived annihilation, and the concert of crickets, frogs, and cicadas, you can allow yourself, for a few brief moments, to believe in Voodoo.

Beth Mastick

This piece is about exploring shape and line.

Craig Kassan

Lathe turned wall sculpture arranged as a polyptych and mounted to a background that is produced using a cold metal spraying technique.

Kathryn Williams

A portrait created during quarantine.

Sarah Whitney

This body of work started from an interest in the beauty within the ugliness of disease. I have been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and once you have one other autoimmune diseases like to add on to it. At the time I was starting to create these mini pieces, Covid hit as well. I started to think about what these diseases and viruses look like under a microscope and started to be inspired by the beauty they held. I liked the variety of movement and texture within these specimens. I decided to make them small to give that idea of looking at a specimen under glass as you might in a scientific collection.

Debbie Secan

Worship was initially inspired by the Georgia O'Keefe painting, "Music, Pink and Blue, No. 2." The layers woven with varying degrees of relief reaches toward the heavens. Worship evokes both the feminine and the religious and the title and interpretation is left to the viewer.

Pete Borsay

This is a collage or "chine colle" of UltraChrome pigment prints. The work represents a shift in the artist's process by combining print proofs from previous projects as opposed to creating a single print. "Maestus" is the latin term for feral, untamed, and undomesticated.

Jane Cheek

My work memorializes prosaic personal experiences and often overlooked details in immersive formats. I offers glimpses into my daily life as a Southern bisexual woman to help create connections. My colorful and whimsical work is universally accessible, challenging the perception that our differences have to be larger than life. In creating joyful imagery about common experiences, I hope to build connections between the viewer and the work that bridge those differences.

My collages begin as clear sheets of acetate that I paint and draw on with acrylics. I then cut geometric shapes and puzzle together abstract landscapes. Finally, the compositions are sewn on my antique sewing machine and mounted in brass hoops.

“They Were Certain The Path Less Taken Would Be Worth Taking” was inspired by a day of hiking. The flowers are attached with seed beads as the center piece. The work evokes a sense of exploration as the path disappears in to the forest, and rather than capturing the exact look of the landscape, I aim to capture the feeling of that experience.

Tyamica Mabry

Inspired by grieving the loss of my fiancé, Healing depicts a woman sewing herself together and filling her heart with rose quartz crystals. She is surrounded by peace lilies and a monarch butterfly visits her shoulder to symbolize he is still with her.

Kristin Gibson

Endlessly fascinated by the notion and fun of capturing color from jars of paint with big brushes. Compositions both large and small, begin as drawings with my paintbrush. These first lively lines in a layer of fresh paint begin a process of color into color, shape into form. Delights of painting still life in alla-prima technique show up in finding new ways to make color sing and seeing something across the room, or from memory, that balances the canvas right in the moment

Peg Bachenheimer

During the pandemic I walked a lot. My favorite place to walk is by Bolin Creek behind my house. This painting is a memory of the many walks I have taken there and the beautiful light among the trees.

David Barnes

A original piece of handmade art that will not only light up any room but also bring a sense of peace.

Jamie Lynn Moore

The noise of life is unyielding. Our days are packed with to-dos and our minds are constantly occupied with all the things. We become accustom to the interruptions, distractions and fast pace of this world.

This painting offers us a chance to pause, reflect and recenter. The abstracted iris subject invites us follow its lines and curves, like rolling hills on a distant landscape, to dive deeper into our hearts. The undulating lines and forms mimic the deep breaths we all need to take at times on our journey. It whispers "Stop, be present, and appreciate this moment."

Eric Raddatz

I am the artist of my heart and spirit. My image speaks to the freedom in the imagination grounded in a world that screams in the chaos surrounding our lives lived in the moment given. I am the author of my time! I am me! I am you!

Barb Cherry

This painting is part of the dePerson series focusing on a type of mental health disorder called Depersonalization. It can happen to anyone that has experienced extreme stress or panic. According to Daphne Simeon’s research, Depersonalization is a form of dissociation leading to an individual’s subjective state of feeling estranged, detached, or disconnected from their own being. People suffering from this disorder avoid telling others, including doctors, because they do not think it is believable. There are out-of-body experiences causing the inability for the person to control thoughts and movements. It is one of the many ways the brain can protect itself from emotional pain too difficult to handle.

Within the paintings, I decided to overlap an individual with themselves in aerial view to imitate the out-of-body experiences. I included the out-of-focus television to simulate the static and disconnect the person is going through. Elaborating the television screen along with the overlapping figures is to demonstrate the feeling as if they are watching oneself from a distance. This visual representation of a distorted reality is to give the viewer an empathetic interpretation of this condition. I want these paintings to serve as a catalyst while interacting with others about these avoided topics. My hope is to bring awareness to the commonality of the many suffering from its many varieties and potentially make individuals feel more comfortable to handle their pain and anxiety.

Susan Fecho

Visiting a landscape after a fire is overwhelming - blackened remnants of botanical specimens. I collected several cone flowers, pinecones, stripes of blackened bark and drew them on eco-dyed paper that visually resembled water-damaged paper after a house fire.

Oami Powers

The solitary, stoic female figure is a recurring theme in my work. These figures are powerful, yet isolated, focusing inwards on an interior journey. In Heart of Glass the twisting and twirling lines of the hair and body show a frozen moment of turmoil. A runny glaze has interacted with colored underglazes to create a surface that is both shell-like and reminiscent of flesh and veins. This amplifies the vulnerability of the figure and brings a disquieting element to a piece that might otherwise be simply beautiful.

Taylor McGee

While creating this double-woven structure, I embraced intuition and exploration, starting with naturally dyeing all of the fibers that would be incorporated into the weaving. I allowed the raw, natural beauty and texture of the dyed fibers to tell their story. The resulting weaving is a banner that encapsulates the joy of the creation process, the endless and exciting possibilities, and freeing discoveries that come when you let go of perfection.

Dena Reese

Throughout our life, we present ourselves in a way that makes others comfortable, however, we all have things that are hidden beneath the surface. This painting is based on the beauty of being allowed to see what someone has lying beneath their surface.

Michelle Wilkie

Isolation encapsulates the emotions of being an outcast. Several times in our lives we either feeling alone or shunned or just not belonging. The impact that people can have on a single person can make all the difference in these situations. The quilted lines represent ripples and how the two groups affect each other.

There was never a time where these feelings were even more felt by everyone than during COVID. Everyone felt isolated as we quarantined for months. As I finished this quilt last year it gained even more meaning.

Kiki Farish

Symbols represent ideas greater than the object itself and can be used to bring people to a common cause. America has more symbols than most countries. Inserting the vulva as a symbol brings pudenda into the vernacular. There is power in naming. Something that is not named, does not exist. The conception that the vulva is life giving, revered and unexploited should play out as a national treasure and be cared for.

Ivana Milojevic Beck

I grapple with a continuing foundational question between my Serbian and American home. This tension is at the center of my struggle to mold a present existence into a future resolution between two disparate worlds. My focus is on the women in my family, my grandmother, mother, daughter and me. I work to portray the resilience, flexibility, and adaptability that has been passed down the line. I imagine the female form, strong and balanced, resting as the foundational material for generations to come. I find parallels between structural, foundational home building and women’s physical and mental power as mother, wife, and daughter. Materials that I continue to use - brick, wax and mortar - remind me that what is strong and durable can also be vulnerable and ephemeral. This reality in which the two opposite states coexist is also true of the human condition and its relationship with nature. We often show our strong and dominant side while concealing what is passive and fragile.

Maria Frati

My work is influenced by my deep connection with the natural world. Mainly through lived experience, memory and personal mythology. I create large prints on a flatbed printmaking press; cutting, carving, and printing pieces of linoleum, layering colors and shapes that reference bio forms and organic processes. Most of my pieces are a blend of relief printmaking, reduction printmaking, and oil painting. They’re time intensive, experimental, and intuitive.

Reese Martin

A depiction of my own harrowed philosophies and thoughts. A vast sea of idea and beliefs, constantly shifting and ever-changing. Never knowing how long one notion will remain.

Jackie Sanders

Questions are the foundation of truth- acknowledging them, vocalizing them, and acting on them. But often, the truth can be muddied by the noise from the world and layers of interpretation- layers of emotions, layers of awareness, of relationships, of beliefs, ideas, paint, expressive gestures, and rigid structures. As you begin to unpack these layers of perceived truth, you break them free from their boxes, question the structures that tried to contain them in the first place, and ultimately shatter the perceived integrity of the structures all together.

Blissful ignorance and unknowing submission is no longer an option once you begin to think and vocalize questions of the system itself. You can’t go back to what was, for better or for worse.

The only constant is consistent change.

The Beauty in the Breaking collection explores the deconstruction of reality as one’s consciousness of external forces wakes up. The title of each work is a question in order to challenge the viewer to reflect and question their own meaning, choices and reality.

Oliver Coburn

I grew up in a creative environment that encouraged artwork and exploration of different mediums. As a 3rd generation faux finisher, creative thinking was natural in my household. During my high school days, I worked on theater sets and this inspired me to work with faux finishes, specifically faux effects products. After high school I began training in the use of faux effects product as well as other mediums such as resin, gold-leafing, and similar processes. This led me to explore more with holographic foils and ultimately discover a few of my different art styles of crystals, art deco, and double exposure mixed medias.The inspiration behind this style of work came from growing up and going to church. I would spend many of my Sundays staring at the stained glass's vibrancy and design. I also infused the idea of under the microscope into my artwork. During my travels to Santa Fe, NM I met a fellow artist who worked for NASA and that inspired my fascination with space.

Cynthia Aldrich

" My World Is..." is a piece of ceramic sculpture that was hand formed with coils of clay. The coils were smoothed and then textured. The color was achieved by sponging on various shades of blue underglazes.

It is my hope that the piece will be interpreted in many different ways and that it speaks to the individual viewer personally.

Shaleen Miller

My view of the world and nature has been deeply affected by my position teaching in environment and sustainability. When I look at a landscape, I see and recognize the beauty, but I also see a struggle of native, non-native, and invasive at work. The painting “Long Leaf Pine” is part of a series that I’ve been developing highlighting endangered native trees. The long leaf pine used to cover much of the southeastern U.S., but it is now primarily left in pockets of Florida and North Carolina. Hurricane Matthew in 2016 had a devastating effect on these forests.

Creating the painting in mixed media, using glass and resin, is a process that I have cultivated since the pandemic. Although I had workshopped the method several years ago and loved the living dimension that light played in recreating shadow and color depending on the time of day and light source, it was not until I began to focus on recycled material that I came to embrace this method. I collect recycled glass bottles, vases, vase fillers, and other similar materials from the community and break them for use layering onto of the paintings. This creates a challenge to consider additional texture and color, and it creates something new to capture the eye as it changes with the light. Combining a recycled product along with an ecosystem issue brings the eco-themes together, and I hope, creates hope and vision for a better future.

Gabriella Corter

Based on Degas' Absinthe Drinker. Nothing will make this woman happy.

R Kevin Newell

It is a fairly spontaneous work. I take a flame fractal image and then just "mess" with it until it looks done. With this one, it struck me as an image from the then future war between Russia and Ukraine. So, I titled it "Winter War".

Jim Hallenbeck

Inspired by Kurt Cobain's unplugged version of Led Belly's "In the Pines", this is an oil painting of the pine trees in my neighborhood in North Raleigh. I used a palette knife to paint and detail the shrubbery, leaves of the trees as they reached up into the Carolina blue sky.

Meredith Wyatt

As an elementary art teacher, I recently found myself creating daily for my students, but hardly ever for my own practice. To remedy this, I have made an effort to carve out time specifically for my own art practice, and this is one of the resulting pieces. Once I chose to use the little girl with this background, I decided to flip the original book scene she came from of falling snow. I wanted to have pieces that seemed to originate with her and move upwards. To add some additional texture to the work, I decided to pipe the floating pieces of paint, as well as have the little girl stand on thick swatches of paint. The thick swatches of paint help to ground her, as well as balance the colors and texture of the floating pieces.

Hannah Faucette

Lillies and Gladiolus flowers in a golden vase

Helen Tueffel

"Transfer" encourages us to penetrate the veil between what is and what is possible. Our minds have infinite potential to see beyond our present and immediate experience. Reality comprises three dimensions; the infinite comprises infinite dimensions. Beyond the present space and confines of time, is exquisite beauty and possibility.

Taylor Bragg

"Visions of Spring" combines elements of traditional American landscape painting with a psychedelic twist. The cyclical nature of the piece reminds us that everything in nature is connected to each other and everything eventually comes full circle. Its wide variety of colors and textures show the vast diversity within nature.

Jillian Goldberg

This series of paintings was inspired by photographs I took of yellow and orange splashes of lichen growing on boulders. I loved the unexpected colors on the granite surface, sometimes with tiny succulents and shrubs growing through the cracks in the stone. The painting evolved over time as I resolved the composition.

Natacha Sochat

This series grew out of a need to feel connected to the world in a positive way. I have always felt nurtured by the trees that surround me. These past few years have been very hard on many fronts with negative dominating our lives seemingly every second. I needed to go back to the beauty that art can give life, something we seem to forget about art being able to do. I have always viewed art as a part of public health, and not only a means to promote what is popular in society at the time. The art we create as artists cannot escape what we are as it is. As a woman, Latina, mother, wife, daughter, healer, artist, and scientist I am aware of all the things that go into creating work that reflects my multicultural heritage, but also my complexity as a human. Right now this human needs to create work that speaks to the beauty of the nature that surrounds us. Nature that may become extinct in my lifetime.

Samir Knego

This paper weaving combines two pages of undulating, almost topographic map-like watercolor lines into a single, searching work. I attempted to capture a comfortable sort of chaos, where unknowns are not frightening, just unknown.

Dennis Redmond

I love to tell a story with portraits using bold colors. I also love to hear what story people come up with. The one I liked the most started with a retired professor...hence the name.

What is he telling you?

Mikel Frank

With all that's going on in the world and in our country, I thought this work expressed my response to it well, hence the title.

Peter Marin

I am working with overlapping forms, intersecting lines, luminosity and faulty spatial relationships in a geometric formats.

Ann Silverman

The red thread, made of paper, creates a fabric that I think of as a social fabric through which strands of individual stories are woven.

The stories are of black individuals killed by the police. From 'Know Their Names'. https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2020/know-their-names/index.html. The red text in the background, from 'The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together' by Heather McGhee, is rendered unreadable. Too many black Americans slip through the cracks in the social network and are met with violence. Hence the red, color of blood and sirens.

Jacqueline Dulin

This work is part of a series of paintings that wrestle with embracing life transitions and how the heart is divided between the past and the present. The paintings depict the simple, small white flowers on my front porch as I began planting roots in my new (returned) life in NC after ​living in Kosovo (Eastern Europe) for 5 years. During that time, this specific mountain range surrounded me daily. Together this mountain and these flowers explore the ideas of home -- my recent past still looming as I attempt cultivating a new life in NC. These paintings are the spiritual and emotional and very physical journey of reconciling those two places.

Claire Alexandra

This piece is part of a series I did while in New Orleans that explores time through composition and layering. I used dried plant matter, soil, paper, moon water and ink to mediate on the plurality of now rooted in the past and informed by people and place.

The story begins with the outer most layer of spanish moss, a native plant to Turtle island used by many Indigenous communities for medicine and as a building material. This land is unseated native land first and foremost.

The layer within is painted with soil gathered from a historically Black town in Norco, where people were held in bondage for centuries leading up to the 1800s and also where they found freedom after emancipation.

The layer within is paper I handmade gathering palmetto, cypress and oak leaves from Congo Square, a site that has been home to Afro diasporic traditions of resistance and celebration (poetry, song, dance, cooking etc) that have survived genocide. This plant matter was mixed with speeches and poems of Black artists and freedom fighters from the last 50 years.

Finally the portrait in black ink represents the Now/ future. The turtle is a symbol of guidance and home building. The plant behind the figure's ear is lizard tail which grows in swamp land and is used for healing wounds. The blossoms are those of blackberries a sign of sweetness and sustenance along this journey in which Afro and Indigenous people are finding freedom by being together in ceremony. Ceremony is key to my process too, here I used moon water to paint the Black figure and featured pieces of coal leftover from a ceremonial fire along her spine and arm.

Brett Morris

These reductive drawings are made by covering the surface of each wood panel with powdered graphite and then erasing away the negative spaces to form a black and white image. The act of erasing, along with creating the panels from repurposed wood, acknowledges the effect that human activity has on the environments depicted in this series.

On one hand, this body of work is an attempt to reconcile our relationship with the natural world; while on the other, it's a showcase of the subtle beauty that can be found in nature's quieter moments. In the end, I hope these pieces convey the importance of pausing every once in a while to appreciate our time here.

Karen Rose

I have been a painter for over 30 years in New York City, San Francisco, and Raleigh. Most recently, I have been painting a series based on the North Carolina Mountains to Sea Trail. I have hiked, biked and kayaked portions of the trail throughout 2021. Working from my own reference photography, I often make a preliminary digital sketch. I love to work large scale, enveloping the viewer in an outdoor space. I have also been working on an ongoing series of landscapes on both sides of the Mexican border, with the notion that landscapes transcend borders. My identity and heritage straddle these places, as the product of a Mexican family that emigrated to California during the Mexican Revolution and a Scots/Irish San Francisco family. The border wall, immigration policies, political vitriol against Mexicans, and children in cages are all recent matters that aggressively spotlight these regions and what it means to be Mexican/American. A cancelled trip to the Mojave Desert during the pandemic led me to use film stills of movies shot in Mexico, Southern California, Arizona, and Utah as source material for digital, watercolor, oil, and acrylic paintings.

Krystal Boney

My art practice takes on politics that critique the perceptions of beauty. Stereotypes and myths are challenged in my work; I create a dialogue between the ideas of assimilation, colorism, and consumerism by addressing beauty standards created by white supremacy. Confronting this standard creates a space for all black women, regardless of skin tone.

By utilizing color, objects, and performance, I make photographs of my personal experience creating my identity in white spaces. I use myself as the subject to challenge the mainstream assumptions of a Black woman. In my work, I regain power by turning camera on myself.

Jose Cruz

This painting depicts how people of color still protect this country just as the Black Panthers Protected their people against all the racists people around them.

Andrew Poe

I like using Oil + Wax with multiple textural layers to create the mood and feel of a distant shoreline.

Patricia Horne

These eyes are windows to this wounded heart and pained soul.

Oriana Lopez

This work represents the deep self.

Derek Toomes

This was from a series of drawings that were created in graphite and then scanned. Once scanned the digital file was rasterized into a digital format and laser etched on top of the original drawing. This series depicts the intervention of machinated mark upon the landscape and as a displacement of the hand-drawn, and explores paradox.

Karen Tarkulich

Why do I think my money is mine? Why do I think this dollar bill is mine?

What does it mean to have money? To possess a literal dollar bill? To have thousands in a savings account at a bank? To have millions in “investments”?

What in the ever living fuck is the idea that money can “grow” all about? Who allows it to grow? And who do they allow to grow their money? What are the ways I feel personally entitled to be able to “invest” or “grow” my money? Why do I feel entitled to the cents this dollar could “earn” in a bank, to the potential money of my money?

Why do I think my money is mine? What could it mean to not feel a sense of ownership over my money? What could that enable?

Josiah King

I look for moments of beauty and mystery in my everyday life. For the past couple of years I have been exploring the patterns of light and shape found in nature.

Elizabeth Laul Healey

After many years of being paid less in mortgage banking, various sales jobs I had, and as an actor when I was younger, I have felt compelled to strive for equality. Although I have been a professional artist for over 20 years now, I still feel the stigmatism of being female. The words and figures in my art are an outlet for me to get my messaging out, and as a not so subtle reminder to myself and others that we are worthy just being women.

Dee Rovetta

A tribute to my maternal grandmother, Della Louise Harris-Hargett, who lived a life full circle by passing on her birthday, July 29th, 2014. She was a talented seamstress and quiltmaker who never got to freely explore her love for making. She was the epitome of kindness -- it's only right that I thank her in this way for showing me that pure joy can come from something you made with your two hands.

Daniel Ko

As I was strolling down the boardwalk of Downtown Wilmington, dark clouds loomed over the marina casting an ominous feeling. Through the clouds, however, the sun was setting, casting just enough light to light up the edges of the clouds. This artwork was taken in almost near darkness, requiring an eight second exposure to be able to have enough light for image.

Pepe Caudillo

This piece represents a fictional hen about to lay a golden egg. The texture was created with coffee.

Angie Jones

The story of this work is on-going.

The abuse

The gaslighting

The harassment

The destruction of Her body, Her mind, Her Spirit

She is Reclaiming it All

She is discerning what is not Hers

She is re-aligning with what is.

Jaimon Caceres

This work was created by painting over collaged adult LGBT magazine pages from the 70's, 80's, and 90's. The stories of the models in those pages are shockingly profound, and inspired this commentary on what it feels like to be a "non-traditional" male, both then and now. The boldly-colored, interconnected bodies weave around a central, seated figure that has a submissive, almost timid body language. Faces are either distorted or fully masked, suggesting the urge to hide identity when exposed.

Marriott Sheldon

This work, 'Dream Garden' incorporates abstract imagery of flowers and gardens, part of a recent series inspired by my love of the natural world. The process is intuitive and my intent is to reflect nature.

Asya Shine

Connects braiding as a means of growth for the hair, and water as a means of growth for plant life.

Jason Lord

Attenuated Transmission is part of the series Memories of your Circuitry, a reflection on tensions between the natural and the constructed, the organic and the technological.

Kathleen Kelly

Artscapes are explorations of color, texture, technique and material and how they impact space. By means of photos, scanned matter, varying media and found objects, Artscapes originate as cut and pasted collages, achieving composition, and result in bold, dynamic wall art.

Jalen Jackson

Single mothers haven't gotten the proper respect that they deserve. There is a stigma that "women can't raise men". As a son that was raised by a single mother for most of my life I've seen what it takes. Never underestimate a mother that loves her son.

Corneille Little

I love working in oils and reflections. This piece brings it all together for me - the lusciousness of it all!!!!

Anna Payne Rogers Previtte

Enamored with the concept of positivity presented by meandering, phototropic plant-forms, I wanted to bring real light and life into paintings that were previously only inspired by light. Using the exposure process of cyanotype allows light to directly paint into these works as silhouetted personifications with the surrounding acrylic painting composed in reaction to the print. This intuitive and expressive process further connects my artistic practice with humanity, the natural world and hones a larger conversation about climate change and our human impact on the Earth.

Fernanda Batista

Oxumare is the spirit of the rainbow and the movement. The bucket bag was made of metallic silver leather embroidered with suede in three different colors blue, pink and orange.

Adjustable strap allowing you to wear over the shoulder, crossbody, or handheld by your side.

The bag is lined with a cotton print.

Jacob Trump

This piece was done to support COR museum's event: Raleigh Roasts. During the event, organizations and services offered samples of their various products like Coffee, cakes, etc. The art work I provided them was featured on their yearly coffee mug and other merchandise.

Carson Whitmore

In 2020 a section of woods across the street from my house was clear cut, much of the timber being made into OSB (oriented strand board). Seeing this relatively small section of mixed hardwood and pine disappear was a lived experience of the anxiety I feel around the scope, scale, and pace of consumption. There is a dissonance that pervades my creative practice: is what I'm making worthy of the material costs?

I am inspired by the ethos of quilting with remnant material, and the time and care required to make do with what you have. "Crazy Quilts", popular in the late 1880s, make use of oddly shaped pieces, wasting little material by keeping these forms. This piece is a meditation on slow, quiet labor, and a visual homage to both crazy quilts and my bygone patch of woods.

Josh Sessoms

The new moon is a time of awakening, birth, growth and regeneration. Life-affirming energies are heightened under this phase of the moon and the will of intention, if directed properly, can strengthen a ritual.

The woman shown is a shaman and herbalist. She is flanked on both sides by sculptures that are monuments to femininity, fertility and motherhood. The sculpture to her right doubles as an altar. The milk thistle flower on the altar pulls toxins out of the body to promote healing, reinvigoration and perseverance. The soursop fruit and its leaves reduce the presence of parasites: both spiritual and physical.

The wind around her is becoming stronger as she galvanizes the forces of nature. She is invoking the power of the four elements through the cleansing power of the flame (fire), the living spirit of the wind (air), the intuition of the moon (water) and the natural healing of herbs (earth).

Michele Yellin

I work from an abstract underpainting and look to see what I can see in the colors and texture. This decides the direction of the work. Most recently my work revolves around what it means to be home.

Adam Dehus

Painted in plein air at Jordan Lake’s recreational area. Piece is smaller and part of a collection of paintings all done on the same day. The exaggeration of color and texture is me paying homage to my love of Impressionism!

Adriana Ameigh

Statement about the Visions in Color paintings:

This series began with the intention to create vibrant, energetic, and playful paintings that balance a sense of order and calm. As they series began to unfold, the paintings started to convey an optimistic message:

To navigate the ups and downs in our lives, we need to actively choose to enjoy the ride. We need to find delight in small things, make space for creativity, and spend time in reflection. We need to embrace optimism and tenacity to get through the challenging times. Let art remind us of the colorful side of life and the cherished experiences that make our journey worthwhile.

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Artist Statement:

Through playful experimentation, I embark on an inquisitive journey. Every painting starts as an abstract full of texture, raw energy, and intuitive marks. Sometimes the process is calm and nurturing. Sometimes it’s wild and playful. As the painting evolves, its intriguing story is composed as I add and scrape away layers, revealing the interplay between inner and outer, daring and thoughtful, intentional and unexpected. The underlayers serve as a catalog of the many iterations a work goes through before completion. Whether abstract or representational, my aim is to create dynamic paintings that balance movement, tactile textures and uplifting colors while inviting the viewer to explore the optimistic stories embedded beneath the surface.

Alexandre E. Henrique

Using only palettes, spoons and my fingers, I did my best to transcribe visually some feelings of fear, doubt and hope into a human begin's everyday life...!

Leatha Koefler

This is a sculpture in the round, suspended from ceiling. Child's size jacket and hat made of film negatives.

Katelyn Regan

Alien atoms is all about connecting with another world by traveling inwards. Explore other worldly dimensions within by looking at yourself free of illusions.

Michelle Davis Petelinz

Part of Michelle's Talisman Series, Shukrani is the Swahili word for gratitude. Upon each tall, narrow panel in the series, Michelle includes multi-textured, multicolored low fire clay elements and tone-on-tone acrylic painted prints of her original stamp designs. Inspired by Ghanaian gold weight motifs, and patterns found in scarification, textiles, and contemporary art from the Americas and West Africa, Michelle imbues her work with the spirit of her African and Native American ancestresses.

Susan Simpson

Digital reproduction of mixed media collage printed on birch wood laminated onto 1.5" maple cradle frame.

Carly Judd

This work is my interpretation of the dance between a flower and rain droplets as they fall onto the flower's petals, causing the whole plant to move and sway.

Mary Louise Ravese

Sometimes it's the simple things that can fill my heart with joy. On a quiet morning walk through a small village in the south of France, I was attracted to this charming street corner with a beautiful juxtaposition of colors. After creating a photograph of the scene, I then transformed my photographic image into a digital painting. In the process I used painting software to add brush strokes, and make other artistic interpretation choices like removing electric lines, adding more wisteria blooms, and tailoring the color palette to be in keeping with a painting. I then made an archival giclee print on canvas of my final digital image.

Amber Cummings

Horizon (2022) is an abstract exploration of the isolated and fragmented nature of human perception. The collision of color and form represents our visual field and the events we witness from our singular and ever-changing points of view. Horizon illustrates how our realities are subjective, and often, unreliable reminding us to never mistake our opinions for fact.

Andie Freeman

Nature is evolving and disappearing. As we crowd our world with things and edge out the natural world in our everyday lives, we need reminders of the whimsy and wonder we felt as children as we were first introduced to nature as it should be. My work aims to bring together child-like wonder and the beings that we so easily ignore. By bringing them into a new setting that is familiar and fanciful, I am making an homage to The Treachery of Images by Magritte. This is not a bird, we should not replace the bird with the art. We should not replace nature with computers, we should not replace time in quiet with noise. My hope is that by highlighting birds and animals in these dreamlike settings we will act to conserve their habitats and their world, as it also our own.

Sara Roberts

This piece has a flat background created with acrylic paint. It is layered with my personal photos of places and locations around North Carolina. The stems tell about Julian Price Park. All are outlined in black and give the feeling of stained glass.

Sabrina Cali

We are a collection of the ancestral soil in which our roots grew. The water of words and actions that caused us to grow in this life; for better or worse. And the breathing cultivation of who we choose to be, as a living piece of our own story.

This piece honors those intricacies of DNA, cultural relevance, and personal story, braided together. For we are always more than the world can see us to be.

The 1st canvas in my “Womxn Warrior” Series.

Shanny Kohli

This painting was made to portray an immigrant who has lived in many different countries and yet has not forgotten their roots! The painting is a reflection of Punjabi culture and tradition. Vaisakhi, the Sikh New Year, is celebrated by the Sikhs around the world on the 14th of April. On this special occasion families and friends get together and enjoy tea (chai) with spices. The tea is usually made by boiling different herbs and spices such as dried rose patels, fennel seeds, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, black tea leaves and milk. The different visual elements featured in this painting are part of the artist's personal visual vocabulary.

Tea is also seen as a caste free beverage as everyone in India regardless of which religion they belong all enjoy tea. It brings the thought of togetherness and unity amongst people. On this day Sikhs celebrate the 10th Guru (Guru Gobind Singh's message of equality, unity and bravery. The Guru (Leader) also had the ability to transform regular human beings into super human beings known as the Khalsa.

Emily Thomas

I make work about places and spaces that have been impacted by tourism. My hometown of Morehead City, North Carolina is a tourist destination that has been facing economic decline since the 1960’s. In various iterations of photography-based work, I examine the decaying buildings and sites that once functioned as places for tourists, such as empty hotels, abandoned pools, half-built structures, and parking lots strewn with debris. I utilize photography by simultaneously using both analog and digital photographs with varying degrees of manipulation to reveal the states of demolition that I find. The current state of disintegration in my hometown reflects the livelihoods that sank with the rest of the tourist industry in many towns like it across the country.

Jamaica Gilmer

I adore photographing other people. With a camera in my hands, I can jump into anyone’s emotional wavelength and ask them to show me the truth. During the pandemic, I began to turn my wonder onto myself. This is one of the moments that happened when I looked my lens in the eye.

Britt Flood

How much beauty can a shadow hold?

When two become one

Let's duet,

While we still can

Liz Bradford

This piece utilizes slowly added layers of colored pencil and acrylic paints on raw wood panel to create a ethereal, dream-like landscape.

Nancy Hughes Miller

The wetlands of coastal North Carolina offer wildlife a place of refuge and sustenance. My marsh paintings pay homage to this tranquil place.

Duane Abbott

I intend for this piece to be playful with a twist of seriousness. It’s a metaphor. If we’re not careful, bliss, balance, our way of life, democracy, etc. can be disrupted (and even obliterated) by forces (both literal and ideological) within plain sight. This is not about the military or any group specifically. I used the army figures because I thought they would have immediate impact and identification. And I used the strong pink color because I thought it too would have significant impact. Again, I’m trying to make a statement without being a hammer. And yes, I see average folks (like me) as the bunnies among the flowers.

Barbara McFadyen

Much of my work focuses on humankind's relationship with nature, a subject I explore both in my jewelry and unique artists' books. I have a particular affinity to the art of Japan and the aesthetic of shibusa, which embodies a deep connection to the fleeting of time, balance and flux, and the subtle unobtrusive beauty of nature. My inspirations, thoughts, and emotions are deeply connected to the natural world. I believe, observing the power and beauty of nature invokes an experience of awe which can provide a connection to a deeper level of meaning lying beneath the hectic demands of the everyday. This experience of awe can remind us of our place in the world. Through my work, I transform my reflections and sense of solace found in nature's exquisite details and patterns into jewelry capturing refined moments of tranquility and beauty. The delicate flow and movement of these Double Willow Dangles are meant to express the sense of wind, beauty, and power of nature.

Susie Silver

The Dissected series focuses on the balance of organic and geometric edges with inspiration drawn from arial views of water and maps. The piece is built in multiple layers of liquid mixed media, working with evaporation for each layer. Exact cuts made by hand starts the collaging process of each piece of the work. The center strip of the work is a nod to the atmosphere in which it was inspired by (brighter, crisp days of light and spring). The piece is constructed on wood panel and then layered with resin (three layers).

Veronica Vale

"Vision" is a stylized portrait of my husband, based off of a photograph I took of him when we were first falling in love. My muse gazes forward as if into the future, picturing a colorful world of possibilities. In this work, timelines collide and converge as nostalgia for the past meets dreams of the future.

Susan Parrish

In my new body of work, I express my growing concern and awareness of the social injustices happening in our world today. I suppose, as a typical artist, I have a compassionate heart. Perhaps you would call me a bleeding heart liberal. Pain in others causes pain in mine.

“If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.”

― Ernesto Che Guevara

Chieko Murasugi

"Maru Fune" means Circle Boat in Japanese. Two of the many references of this icon is the Murasugi samurai crest, and the boats on the Sumida River that, appearing by luck/chance, saved my parents' lives during the WWII Tokyo fire bombings. I employ this personal icon with perceptual illusions that speak to life's often elusory nature.

Paget Fink

My collage illustration art explores how the piecing together of image, color and pattern impact our understanding of the natural world. Insect Study I is part of a series of three 19th century entomological studies that I have illustrated to abstraction. By transforming the rendering of the thorax of an insect through color, texture and collage, this work reveals the innate beauty of nature as a work of abstract art.

Theresa Pastoriza-Tan

My morning walks have found their way into my current mixed media work. The tangle of branches, roots, weeds, dirt… The sky and sounds of water. This piece is one interpretation of those walks.

Lyudmila Tomova

The painting depicts a woman in distress and full of sorrow. It represents the despondence caused by not having a voice. The red hand mark on her face is symbolic of being deprived of the ability to communicate. She is in a defensive pose in need of protection. This painting can be interpreted in many different ways.

Jonathan Rice

This piece is eighth in a series of works I began a few years ago after being diagnosed with a blood clot in my right leg. I started incorporating side effects information from medication I was prescribed, along with other random medical, scientific & historical information, as well as pop cultural references in an attempt to contextualize the hold that the pharmaceutical industry and Western medical community has on Americans. Every medication has a long list of possible side effects, something on most people's minds these days, especially during the Covid 19 pandemic.

Melinda Fine

Originally titled "Bette Davis Eyes" until I realized I was looking at an early Hollywood image of Joan Crawford. "Wonderland" refers to the vast and unknown landscape on the other side of childhood.

Pete Sack

This painting is part of a series focused on memory, and the fleeting nature of it. Each shape represents the most current thought or idea a that moment. Then as more and more shapes are added, each representing a new thought/idea, those preceding forms is relegated to the back. Most often they are completely covered up, other times there is a fragment poking through. Those shapes that are completely covered are forgotten forever, as are most memories. The pieces the poke through are enough to trigger that memory, even if almost entirely covered up/forgotten.

Bailey Knight

Like inhaling and exhaling, fiber and color come together within cloth, then are released as they fade and degrade back into the earth over time. In this piece, I combine my technical knowledge in textiles and passion for the earth through naturally dyeing and hand weaving vibrant yarns into a visually oscillating artifact. Similar to how our perceptions in life continually change, so does the color over the woven grid and through the space of time of my work, capturing a moment of material impermanence.

Stephanie Witchger

A meditation on the space between being and not being, between the positive and the negative.

Charity L Hodgin

I came across this place outside of Apex, NC. During the pandemic we'd go for rides just to get out of the house, and I'd find so many of these abandoned places that nature was reclaiming.

Ashley Harrington

"Onward and Upward" is an original 18x24 acrylic painting on gallery-wrapped canvas. This piece is inspired by the mysteries and excitement of exploring new places. Finding old forgotten paths to follow, torn between the up-close details and what has yet to be discovered.

Danny Peña

A candid photograph of Whoop! at Ruby Deluxe. My interests as an artist lie in capturing moments of subtlety within everyday interactions, manifesting through my street and performance photography.

Wiley Johnson

This painting came out of my escape from winter. The day may be cold and dreary outside, but I create my own escape out of pink, green, white, orange, and silver.

Leticia Alvarez

This work is about the hard work of the Mexican artisans that sometimes is undervalue.

Eileen Griffith

This is a painting that expresses my love for outer space with the inclusion of a dinosaur and an octopus. I really enjoy painting galaxies and space landscapes. I enjoy combining that interest with my overall interest in animals.

Caroline Haw

This weaving was created during a study of the Ikat textile tradition. I resist dyed the warp threads of my weaving in a rich Indigo vat before warping them on the loom. The images and designs created from dying the threads appeared as I wove, and I allowed windows in the weaving to showcase the vibrancy of the Indigo.

Judah Baron

A figure relaxes and watches the colors of the sky change while the sun begins to set. The figure basks in the warm glow of the sunlight, while the surrounding colors bounce off of its reflective skin in its forever-changing forms.

Natalia Beckers

The iconography of an Angel. One of my very first iconography pieces. After college, years ago, I decided to do an Apprenticeship in Andenne, Belgium to learn about color, egg tempera ancient techniques under the works of my God Father, Artist Guy Michaux. He is a Belgium Contemporary Iconography Artist who discovered the works of the icon painter, Grégoire Krug, and Leonid Uspensky, an Orthodox theologian and talented iconographer who introduced him deeper to the mastery of iconography.

I used the Egg tempera technique to mix with the resin color powder pigments. Egg Tempera has unsurpassed luminosity for ages of the work and dozens of layers can be quickly applied in a single session. Yet the medium also allows for meticulous brushwork and fine, linear details.

I do not just do Iconography but works of different media and many drawings and free sketching.

Leni Newell

This piece expresses the cruelty and futility of war. The loss of innocent lives, damage to property and utter disruption of any sort of normalcy is heartbreaking.

Karise Baron

This graphic collage is inspired by the scent of lavender flowers; specifically how lavender smells when I smell it. Lavender to me, is a Black woman adorned with gold, jewels, oils, and minerals basking in the comfort of earth.

Alanah Reid

Sometimes it is an all-hands-on-deck job to just keep myself focused. Self portrait.

Regina Alatorre

Through textures and religious imagery, the artist invites the viewer to think about their relationship to food, beauty, and their own body and what it means to be accepted in our current society. With the advent of fitness gurus with cult like followings and appetite suppressant lollipops and teas, the artist aims to open up the conversation about the lengths female-presenting people have historically gone through to achieve the unattainable.

Sharon Hill

"Luna" is an exploration of light, color, and the aspects of personality that open to intuition.

Kelly Cross

I love the materials I use — the fluidity of oil paint and the added viscosity of cold wax, the surface texture of oil paper, the spontaneity and unpredictability of the palette knife.

The meaning of the title Concatenation is reflected in the painting as 'a series of interconnected things or events.' The brain wants to make connections and it is satisfying to provide an abstract potential for that.

Morgan Goodrum

"Look Both Ways" explores the complex feelings of living with Crohn's Disease and how that affects my relationship with others. Every day I put on a mask because I’m too fearful that if people saw who I really was- distraught, lonely, and sometimes hopeless- they would run away. So I stick to my cheerful persona because no one likes a debbie-downer.

Brenda Brokke

Tangled is a statement about the complexity and interdependence of nature.

Kate Lilly

You're dying of "thirst" and the hand of "god" offers you a "drink."

Luis MacKinney

"Más igualdad y menos violencia para las mujeres" / "More equality and less violence for women"

This work is a call to promote respect and equality towards women. Kidnappings and disappearances have attracted the attention of the media in recent years in many countries and it seems that the different sectors of society cannot find a solution to this delicate problem.

Max Trumpower

A large part of the vernacular growing up in a Catholic household surrounds gender, roles within the nuclear family, and tradition. Parts of these roles are performed, yet some are passed down through intergenerational trauma and become bound to who we are. The conditions that require the correct portrayal of these roles inherently inflict violence, not only onto the self, but to entire communities. As a queer child growing up in this environment, these shoes often felt too large to fill as I began to stumble into adulthood.

My work focuses on the intersection between tradition and queer authenticity. I draw inspiration from Hispanic traditions and its entanglement with the Catholic church that are reflective of my childhood. My work explores the role of authority figures in the church, and how they are often mimicked by authority figures within a domestic setting. Through the utilization of printmaking, I question the permanent, yet fragile, rules that are provided in religious narratives and the inevitable fractures that are created.

Ajané Williams

Living this lifetime as a generation Z Black woman, I've been healing from the ghost of American slavery's traumatic past carried through my DNA.

These sister paintings speaks on a moment where I finally found God's divinity living through myself after being clouded by my trauma for so long.

A type of peace and abundance of love I've been longing and looking for. It's all within me, I carry it. I look at myself differently now, I'm softer...I'm more transparent.

The Divine Feminine.

Born as an Aries sun, the zodiac of fire, re-birth, and fearlessness.

The Divine Masculine.

I embody it.

I have the power to bring in life into this planet within my womb and I have the power to TRANSFORM life on this planet.

Natalia Torres del Valle

At the beginning of the pandemic, my children and I began growing mushrooms at home. Observing their growth was grounding for us in a world that was uncertain. Still, with the ongoing days, weeks, and months of the pandemic, I lost some of my sense of self. I felt like I slowly faded into the background of life as I held space for my children to process the grief of isolation. Still, I witnessed the mushrooms grow and later decay, thus making room for more growth. And eventually, I began to allow my children to see that I was struggling too. I claimed space in the foreground of our family life as I surfaced my vulnerabilities.

I view this piece as a self-portrait, one in which I release the part of myself that concedes in putting my needs aside. We all deserve space to grieve and flourish.

Amy Friend

The only line that's true... is a mixed media drawing and self portrait reflecting on time, space and change. We become so many different versions of ourselves over time that it can be hard to remember all the spaces we have filled. In this piece, the red thread represents the connection between each of these iterations, some a straight connection to our core while others are more entangled with external factors.

Melanie Stoer

Glass powders applied in layers over multiple firings to create a distorted view of life under the sea, complete with a few shells hiding among the sea grasses.

Tanya Lipscomb

A commingling of woman and melanin--the representation of having won past battles, innate strength, and unrelenting resilience.

Dakota Proctor

This is a portrait of my close friend, Cindy

Lynne Hudson

Each of us may choose to show different personas depending on where we are and who we are surrounded by. This wearable sculpture shows how we can get lost inside the various personalities we present to the world. Once lost, it can be difficult to discover who we are beneath the different personas and overwhelming to then reveal our true selves to the world. The photograph shows this piece on a live model and the sculpture itself is an interactive piece for people to experience.

Lynn Alker

This was an experience from my usual palette that I quite enjoyed. i love using oil sticks to add shapes. This is a custom panel made for me by my husband.

Marcia Neal

Out of respect for nature, the artist recycles items to develop sculpted art on canvas. "The Death of Dee" was created to silently show humans that a slight unconscious act such as tossing a plastic drink holder over the side of a water vessel, can start/contribute to environmental destruction.

This piece contains epoxy, acrylic paint wood mulch, sand, natural rope and the fish bone was fossilized by the artist.

Jenny Eggleston

Yellow America is a from a body of work that depicts the ongoing threat to democracy in the U.S through symbolic imagery that is at once visceral and unrepressed. The mixed-media work employs taboo imagery of the KKK, guns, and a yellow US flag. The symbols and materials composed on the canvas are meant to be a stark reminder to white audiences that there cannot be democracy when there is only one dominant narrative.

John Shaw

This piece is a reflection of turmoil; but while making it, and after finishing it I've been finding calm moments losing myself in the ebb and flow of it's shapes and colors. I wanted to share that possibility of tranquility with others.

Shalini Mitra

This painting is a tribute to the resilience and spirit of Ukraine. She, the Ukrainian girl is like the sunflowers, standing proud, face to the sun, symbolizing the country’s resistance to the Russian invasion.

Jean Gray Mohs

Everyday forces are at work in our very own bodies that allow us to breathe and move. They can go easily unnoticed unless there is some sort of disruption. The pulse of our hearts, the inhalation and exhalation of our lungs all in a steady rhythm carry us through our days. We depend upon these natural mechanisms and like clockwork they support us. Those of us in the disabled and chronic illness community are in tune with these disruptions all too well.

I make abstracted objects that honor and bring attention to these processes and mechanisms through the use of contrasting sturdy and fragile materials. My objects communicate the body’s tenacity and put emphasis on the balance we all walk in this world. These pieces celebrate the harsh edges of life and closely observe our bodies’ exposure to time and disease. As fragile and fleeting as life is, it is also strong and relentless, unhindered by the constant barrage of obstacles sent its way.

Greta Boney

A painting of a trans black artist with no bowls of fruit or a landscape— just history and a body.

Susan LaMantia

Abstract expressionistic painting while listening to jazz music

Katlin McFadden

Reflection was painted towards the end of the year 2020 where uncertainty was all around for a variety of reasons. I wanted this painting to reflect a time of solitude but also a time of reflection upon the world and ourselves.

Stephanie Freese

My portraits explore the inherent magic of the human figure and the alternate realities of environment. In this specific work, the young girl looks into her future with a thoughtful expression. Her antlers imply growth, power, and change. Within the expanse of stars and neublae around her, anything is possible.

Sarah F Johnston

Huginn and Muninn are the ravens of Odin from Norse mythology. Huginn represents thought and is perched and stationary in a present thought. Muninn represents memory and is in flight because memory is always shifting with time.

Susan Martin

Contrived objects precariously perched, one small shift and collapse is possible. As in life so goes this work: vulnerable but optimistically shored, suspended yet weighted just so, fictitious while flirting with reality.

Sarah Tector

Evolution of an idea from small and wearable to large and functional without losing the poetry of design.

Maria Register

Birds are natural free spirits, soaring high amongst the clouds or perched on a limb. I felt much like a free spirit myself gluing lots of torn pieces of magazine pages, sheet music, maps and painted papers to create this whimsical creature.

Sudie Rakusin

This body of work is cold wax and oil on wood panels. The properties of cold wax fascinate me and keep me curious; how the underlying layers inform and alter the layers applied over them, how incising and scraping and glazing make more changes. I know I am wielding the palette knife and mixing the colors, but what happens on the panel is beyond my control. I’m learning how to be fine with the state of ‘not knowing’.

Katherine Duttman

Hand-drawn digital illustration created from photos that I took in Grand Teton National Park on the Canyon Pass trail.

TAYLER DRATTLO

This piece was a delight to light up post-assembly. I challenged myself with this first daisy in my daisy chain by focusing on the design of the piece as a whole. Both the bending pattern and assembly diagram were created considering dimension, material, and the realities of neon itself, (glass footage for powering, durability and fragility of the neon bulbs themselves). I then bent my glass in two torches and filled the glass with my selected noble gasses.

Inspired by Osteospermum ecklonis, I focused on recreating the vibrant pink/ purple hue of the petals. I selected a blue coated glass filled with Neon gas to act as my warm toned magenta, and clear glass filled with an argon gas mixture to achieve a clean blue aura. Together this combination shines a vibrant glow that balances with the soft lava backlighting.

Georgia Paige Welch

In this collaged portrait of Henry Taylor, the painter is in the middle of an animated talk while one of his own subjects observes him from the background. Her pensive, authoritative gaze seems to be judging what he is saying and spinning a creative world of her own. He continues on unaware as this scene unfolds and encroaches on his performance.

Paul Gala

Painting was inspired by a morning on the Outer Banks. The sky was filled with color and movement. Awesome day!!!

Lonai Leach

There is nothing like having a nice red popsicle on a hot summer day.

Michael McCue

Inspired by downtown Raleigh's southern charm and hidden gems in regards to dining, retail, nature, and the arts, the city was created in sunset-like metallic jewel tones. The black overlay of the intricate paisley/henna allows me to explore the principles of design as I hope the viewer notices something new about the work upon each glance. I find something new in downtown Raleigh weekly and hope to emulate that feeling in this work.

Boots Quimby

This peony was painted to celebrate spring and the joy and beauty springtime brings with all the colorful flowers the earth gifts to us.

Shakira Shipman

Misty in the Mesas features a giant, graceful, statuesque woman roaming through a stretch of land dotted with mesas. She towers over them, letting you know she is not merely human. Her four arms and afro hair that also forms the clouds should also lend to that conclusion. She is a repeat character from another piece “Misty in the Mountains” and her presence is supposed to represent internal power, vitality and life, and resplendent joy.

Anne Dirilgen

This portrait represents the African American man who fights in wars for the US. Throughout the history of this country, African American men were not given the same opportunities as the white man. In some wars they weren't even free men or counted the same as the white soldiers. The faceless portrait represents all the brave and dedicated African American men who have defended the freedom of this country.

Vladimir Vitkovsky

While Vitkovsky’s art echoes classical training of the Russian academies, he relies more on the wealth of his own human experience. The essence of his work is not confined by any one purely national or cultural context. Vitkovsky emphasizes that his artistic endeavors are not about political or cultural statements, but rather concerned with the artistic process itself. It is his understanding of the past that allows him to question the present. The process itself lets him be “at home in the world” wherever he resides. Vitkovsky creates a unique world of emotional surrealism where the past, present and future are transformed into a heightened sense of “right now.”

Eric Saunders

Photograph of white oak tree near Pittsboro, NC in autumn (November, 2021), which has been digitally altered (February, 2022) using Photoshop CS5.

Alia El-Bermani

When I hired this model to pose, I did not realize he was a Marine, until he came to the first session dressed in this tattered shirt worn since boot camp. He quickly told me he had served in Iraq, my father’s homeland. A rush of emotions and trepidation coursed through my body. I was not sure how I would continue to paint. But I did and with the gift of expanded time that painting from life requires, he shared that he himself was of Palestinian descent. The title Dissonance refers to the cognitive dissonance he must have had to use to be capable of killing anyone, let alone fellow Arabs. It also refers to my own struggle and resource needed to be able to continue to paint someone who had a hand in killing my own family members. Being in communion with a fellow human, to fully witness their complexity and accept them as they are, as I am, in this moment, is one of the greatest gifts my practice of painting from life has offered.

Steven Cozart

My work as of late is reflective of my thoughts and feelings about interaction and identity in Black America, focusing on stereotypes of the African American Male and Female within the paradigm of the African American Community.

Specifically, I have noted the use of codecs (devices that compresses data to enable faster transmission of that data; also decompresses data received) to quickly pack and unpack information about African American men and women amongst themselves. These codecs may take many forms, such as a brown paper bag (or colorism, as related to skin tone) or a pencil (or texturism, as related to hair texture). The tones and textures themselves then serve as codecs.

In this image, the model is reflective on her own childhood experiences in which she did compare her skin to that of a paper bag due to her interracial parents.

Kendra Irvin

These are handmade Bohemian style that I think have a sort of nostalgia that reminds me of my time living in West Philly. I was very young, single and a free spirit. After I made them, I sort of stared and imagined there is a built in time machine that is activated by looking through the clear window glass beads. Otherwise, just fun way to journey backwards.

Zach Storm

Mirage at its linguistic root means to look or to wonder at. Typically, the depiction of mirage is a singular, fluttering image, quite often a landscape within a landscape (a grotto, a spring, some salvation). In these paintings I was thinking of the way that a flash photograph or a car's headlights tend to bounce off the nearest objects creating an optical effect similar to how a mirage is described. There is a flattening, as well as a glow that makes it difficult to understand what you are looking at. I hope that the work will reward those that like to stare and wonder.

Angela Lombardi

A silverpoint drawing might at first glance seem to be an attempt to capture the likeness of something real, observed. The fascination of the medium of silverpoint lies in the obsessive placement of thousands upon thousands of the thin, delicate lines of metal that amass to fill the space. "Medium" then describes something closer to the spiritualist sense of the word - something mystical that opens a door from one realm to another. It’s as though the silver, on its own, is able to capture an invisible world of energy surrounding everything. Something so literal and presumably observed while being rendered turning into an idea of what the subatomic looks like, the crackling static charge of all matter and or in this case, the energy field of a dream.

Becky Joye

My quilted buildings took form during the COVID pandemic, as I was quarantined and living amidst the boarded-up downtown buildings of 2020. These quilted homes started sewn up and protected from the outside world, like a child covered in a cozy blanket. As COVID ebbs and flows, these houses represent the duality of wanting to protect and nurture ourselves but also the need to open our doors and connect again with our community, our friends, and loved ones.

Aliyah Bonnette

My work tells the story of a black woman’s journey to find herself. My figures are representations of me and the women around me. Through them, I construct stories of our own blackness, femininity and sexuality beyond the violence and hyper sexualization that we face as Black women in a colonized world. My Kindred who have lived through slavery and Jim Crow directly aid me in the process of making while simultaneously guiding me on my own path of womanhood. The figures within my work are women living in comfortable environments where they may reveal their authentic self. They are Black women, often partially or fully nude, who take ownership of their bodies and refuse to be controlled by imposed standards of race, gender or sexuality. Guided by the Kindred, both myself and my figures may find our paths to our true selves, imagining who we may have been without the interference of colonization.

Jane Dittmer

Underlay design from one of my original stained glass designs with acrylic abstract overlay creates a double vision.

Sanjé James

I took this during my workshop at Anderson Ranch in Aspen Colorado.

Annah Lee

My work creates environments where multiple imagined narratives can take place. Inspired by Spring in NC and found images, I've created a nonsensical battle between nature and man. Who will win?

Jason Bryant

In my recent series of paintings, I have incorporated my love of skateboarding to explore themes of portraiture. With vibrant visceral iconic skateboard graphics coming from behind or bursting through the elegant black and white images of various actors and actresses, I’ve merged two of the most important parts of my life, skateboarding and art. I use the traditional format of the portrait, to simultaneously, comment on identity and create portraits that mean so much more than just the individual being painted. With most of my paintings, the figure is the focal point, but when all of the elements of the painting come into play, the work really explores the identity of others, not the subject being painted. There is so much to be learned from a person’s portrait, information that goes well beyond the face.

Ana Galizes

Gel medium photo transfer mixed with pastels, paint marker, and charcoal.

Lakeshia Reid

The Wheel of Fortune reminds us that all change is inevitable; what goes up must come down. However, neither position is meant to last forever. So while she may see clouds, she knows that she can continue to enjoy the moment while it lasts.