Katie Baldwin

“Neighborhood Garden is inspired by the photographs I took while I was a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan. Through photography, I try to make sense, as a visitor in an unfamiliar world. I explored Taiwan through the lens of everyday life, which began each morning with a jog at Da’an park and fresh pineapple from my neighborhood market. Masking, contact tracing and views of fighter jets flying low over the city were a reminder of the global challenges affecting life in Taiwan. I would move through the city of Taipei discovering small gardens along the sidewalks and bike paths throughout the dense urban city. 

“Tidy public bathrooms in the subway stations had small potted plants on each sink. Over the course of the year, I visited numerous public bathrooms to pose for a mirror selfie with the plants I found. These reflections capture me in middle age posing next to a bit of green, representing a moment of time in a particular place.

“I have been making quilts since 1990, when I was a young mother, working with limited time and space. Quilting was a way for me to work in fifteen-minute segments and the work could be folded up and stored away. It was when I was traveling in Taiwan that I started a new series of quilts that respond to my experience of the landscape. 

“In 2021, as a Fulbright Scholar, I explored the traces of human activity, transformations, and reconstructions of the Taiwanese landscape. By bicycle and on foot, I visited wetlands, canals, mountains, farms, and neighborhood gardens. Over the course of the year, I created hand-pieced quilted textiles inspired by the Taiwanese landscape. I work with a limited palette, pattern, shape, and form, embracing evidence of labor through hand stitching. 

“I began this quilt by posing a simple question: Could I represent the wetlands along the Tamsui River in color? Working with a limited selection of fabric scraps, I pieced squares (and fragments of squares) together intuitively. I arranged and rearranged fabric until I arrived at a combination of color and shape that express the wetlands.” 

Donald E. Camp

Part 1: Freedom Summer: Self Portrait of the Artist as a Child

It was once my space-
Solitude-
Comfort-
We stood There like-
He thought he was me-
Or I-
He

Part 2: Freedom Summer: 1964

“…He’d been especially active in organizing local boycotts of biased businesses and helping with voter registration. . On June 16, acting on a tip, a mob of armed … “

Andrew Goodman 1943 – June 21, 1964

James Chaney 1943 – June 21, 1964

Michael Schwerner 1939 – June 21, 1964

Marguerita Hagan

“My Grow Series cultivated fertile ground for this abstract self-portrait […]. Microscopic diatoms, single-cell organisms, live in fresh and salt water and in the moisture in the soil. The holes or areolae take nourishment in and engineer filtering and buoyancy. Water is life, and I love being in or on the water and have always lived near the sea. Some diatom species have ‘horns’ that fuse to like-species, forming jewel-like interconnected networks or colonies for mutual benefit. A beautiful and practical model for how we can move forward during our global transition, individually and collectively. ēvolvō, an intuitive process, took on the shape of a human heart but with three, not four chambers. [….] The upper passage is more internal and private but energy flows equally via the lace worked sections. The three chambers celebrate the indelible trio I share with my two daughters. [….] The design speaks of movement, growth, and progress from the inside out. It also represents spirit-mind-body…There are seven significant horns or portals on the exterior wall for reciprocal flow of downloading, self-expression and sharing. The number seven represents seeking, digging deep, and we have seven main chakras or spiritual energy centers. The gold leaf signifies the divine energy of the crown chakra at the top of our head. There are three smaller supporting portals. One side is more private, one more open. I am the ninth of eleven children and nine is the power of three. When nine months old, my mother found me walking across the mantel piece, born to discover. ēvolvō is reaching up and out with her portals stretching in continuous learning, the next adventure and celebration of life.

Robert Jackson

Myself As A Still Life     
“In April 2019, I fell off a ladder onto the sidewalk outside of my studio, fracturing L1-L4 in my back and as well broke a rib or two.  Pretty darn painful and scary, yet I felt extremely fortunate. Slight change in the fall and “Myself As A Still Life” would have been even more true. This is the first painting I painted after the accident. I was holding a small can of yellow paint on the ladder and the yellow paint splattered everywhere, the homage is obvious. I opted not to include my back brace. The painting was mainly painted from a small mirror in the back room of my studio, getting me walking again…from the canvas to the mirror, from the mirror to the canvas, again and again. As a result, you might say this is a painting of healing. The balloon dog is a nod to the humor still being alive and ready to emerge again.”

Putting on A Happy Face
“Of course life isn’t all peaches and cream! But I think a lot about life, well aware of its fragility and impermanence, and in my thinking, I know what I want it to be and try my best to push it towards hope. Sometimes putting on a happy face actually works.” 

John Karpinski

“When I was a kid, I was always making stuff. The medium didn't matter; the lazy susan was razed and spice cities ascended. Legos. Paints. Sticks. Grave markers (that's another story). Walls, eventually. Anything to shove the narrative into the next day. If you're an artist and if you reach adulthood, you may realize that you never actually chose to make stuff. The ‘stuff’ -- the ideas, the vision, the discipline -- somehow chose you. It's just who you are. It shoves you into the next day, sometimes regardless of the consequences, which can be problematic, because being an artist isn't solely an occupation. It's an identity. And the combination can corner you. I am the Mouse.”

In his second piece, Memory Bank, John explores the nature of the material we use to construct our histories. “Our memories corrode upon every recall. With each recollection, the proteins that compose the memory weaken, inevitably allowing the past to be questioned, permitting reality to be challenged. Yet, we insist that we can navigate between fact and fiction, that we innately know what is real and what is not real while the experiences that burn into our minds transmogrify into who-knows-what as we age. As we age, our origins become questionable as narratives merge. Images flash and we question if they were memories. Or dreams. Or the recollections of fictions. Or the memories of others.”

Chelsey Luster

“I created [these two self-portraits] during very difficult times in my life. I was inspired by a subcategory of selfie culture where people take photos of themselves crying or having emotional outbursts.”

Lydia Panas

“My work explores women, relationships, and the secrets we hold. Acting as self-portraits, my photographs happen through an intimate and revealing encounter between the models and myself. I think about what lies beneath the surface and what is not being said. The portraits are interpretations of early hopes, uncertainties, reservations, and a means of processing what I knew as a child but needed to keep hidden. Motivated by empathy and compassion, my work is conceived from experience and understanding, from transparency, and empowerment. I work to create a gentle environment of safety and respect, where we both feel seen.

“Layla and Miko depicts a tender relationship between mother and child. Layla sits in front, protector and guardian to Miko, who peers over her shoulder, watching the proceedings cautiously. Their bond is one of affection, caring, and compassion as Layla holds a bouquet of flowers that have started to drop off. Posed at a similar height, the tenderness and parity of this scene speaks to longing and relationships.

“The companion piece, a floral still-life, suggests similar themes. The dahlias, suspended against a dark background, mingle throughout the scene, seeming to float, fall, and weave in various stages of bloom. There is beauty and sadness in both images, a metaphor for life in all its complexity.”

James Stewart

“[…] I can see my aging has accelerated these past couple [of] years, and often when I see a photo, I do not recognize who I am looking at. I think that lack of recognition is the most unsettling; anyway, sitting down and working on 5 or 6 (then picking 2) was more interesting and maybe self-reflective than I expected. The results, who knows? […]”