2023 Wind Fellowship Exhibition Catalog

WIND FELLOWSHIP EXHIBITION 2023

Exhibition View, The Wind Fellowship Exhibition, InLiquid Gallery

Sitting thirty-by-thirty-six inches, a genial blue figure draped in a quilted blanket extends its hand toward the doorway of the InLiquid gallery. Wearing a broad red smile, Carolina Marin Hernandez’s ceramic vessel Cobija de Culitos (2022) is a sightline into the 2023 Wind Fellowship Exhibition, featuring ten emerging artists living and working in the Philadelphia region. An array of colors, Cobija de Culitos is at once distinct against the white plinth, pillar, and walls that frame it. Hernandez employs playfulness, form, and color to “disrupt the association of Indigenous, Black, and Brown culture with muted earth tones.” Using clay and corn husks, materials familiar from her birthplace in Columbia, she reimagines traditional South American Valdivian statuettes as vibrant and textured “guardians.” Opposite Cobija de Culitos is the bright orange and comically frowning Le dio la chiripiorca (2022), who is in every way its counterpart. Created as expressions of Hernandez and her community, these guardians are intended to be positioned and understood in relation to one another. Spanish titles accompany each piece, simultaneously enriching and obscuring the works› meaning depending on the degree to which the language is understood. Eschewing standard Latinidad cultural identifiers, Hernandez’s guardians do not advocate for a homogeneous societal culture but rather create a visual platform to explore racial identity›s opaque and complex underpinnings. Hernadez maintains that “any place [the guardians] occupy is an open invitation to join them.” With a gesture conveying openness and welcome, Hernandez’s Cobija de Culitos beckons visitors to transverse the threshold of both the physical gallery space and personal categories of understanding to engage in an exhibition rich with conversions of self, others, and the world.

The 2023 Wind Fellowship Exhibition is a partnership between the Dina Wind Art Foundation and InLiquid Art and Design, two organizations whose mission is to support artists› professional advancement. The denotation “emerging” classifies an artist as early in their career, where exposure to the industry of art critics, galleries, and collectors is essential to shaping their future. An exhibition in this manner allows industry professionals to discover new talents and invest in the progression of an artist’s life work. It is no secret that artists like Jackson Pollock became household names through the support of patrons such as Peggy Guggenheim. But beyond the practical opportunity for public attention, an exhibition of emerging artists reflects and embodies the mood and spirit of our times. The 2023 Wind Fellows respond to a social climate grappling with the tension between longing for familiarity amidst global disruptions and recognizing the need for substantial changes to move forward. As farmers turn the soil to aerate it and make space for new seeds, this exhibition locates each artist in the project of recontextualization. Using a variety of mediums, these artists address themes of identity, femininity, materiality, and environment.

Identity

Bookended by the work of Hernandez, the leftmost walls of the gallery feature four portraits pregnant with personalities. Set against a teal background just shy of the edge of the canvas, in Athena Scott’s Look Back and Wonder (2022), four black men sit beside each other, wearing suits and hats dating to the early 20th century. Gazing forward, one man slumps down, holding his face with his palm. Look Back and Wonder uses the back-andwhite photograph Four Young African American Men sitting on Bench, Waco, Texas, USA (1939) by Russell Lee as a reference photo. Russell Lee worked as a photojournalist for the U.S. Farm Security Administration, documenting the economic status of America during the Great Depression. Not given names, the photograph shows the men in front of a brick wall painted with the word “VISITORS.” Portraiture has much to do with identity, often placing the person being painted or photographed, called the sitter, alongside objects and in contexts representative of their status or occupation. If portrayed at all, the black sitter was routinely placed on the periphery, left unnamed, or used as a chiaroscuro to highlight the white sitter. As a black painter, Scott reclaims the image of Four Young African American Men sitting on Bench in her reconstitution of it. The four men are rendered life-size on a sixty-byone-hundred-twenty-inch panel. Placing the figures on the same plane as the viewer affirms the personhood of the men, as opposed to being objects of representation. Scott draws attention to each man›s gaze by concentrating detail on each face while their bodies vacillate between fully painted forms and sketched lines. These direct gazes dictate a response. Look Back and Wonder is a pronouncement to consider the men as more than mere visitors,

invoking curiosity as a restorative measure. Who are these men? What are their names?

On the adjacent wall hang two works by Dara Haskins from her most recent series, Taste. Haskins creates what she refers to as “memory paintings.” Inspired by her travels to the Caribbean, she composes lush scenes that combine tropical flora with present locations from her home in Philadelphia. Using bold and vibrant colors, Haskins paints black figures reveling in their surroundings. She refers to her work as “an exploration of color. Of People of Color. Of environments of color”. Coconut Waters xxx (2022) is a portrait of a man sitting back on his knees, arching his back in a reclining posture of ease with a palm tree overhead. Primarily using blues and green, Haskins shows the man basking in the light coming from above. At times, his skin appears transparent, merging with the background. This detail, regularly present in Haskins’ work, calls attention to the importance of place. Haskins’ figures are not simply planted in scenery but are inseparable from the land they inhabit. Surrounding the man is an invisible wind carrying cowrie shells and rhinestones, motifs representing worth, value, and the flow of ancestral energy. Haskins› figure reclines in the unabashed declaration of self-worth in direct defiance to old portraits where black figures were regularly disregarded as persons of value. At once intimate and powerful, Coconut Waters xxx is an unreserved portrayal of freedom, joy, and satisfaction, evoking the idiom “taste and see.”

Contrasting the dynamic of these paintings is Hamilton Street (Vine) (2018) by Meg Wolensky. Like the paintings by Haskins, Hamilton Street (Vine) depicts a central figure surrounded by vegetation. In Wolensky’s painting, however, the figure turns away from the viewer, their green shirt melting into the dark green of the shadowed plants behind them. Light-toned leaves make up the foreground of the painting, forcing the figure further into the background. Wolenksy maintains that their painting is a practice of re-imagining healing. The work is a culmination of personal history that explores queer identity, relationships, and a complex post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis. These paintings “create a suspension between pasts and presents, honoring both personal stories and collective histories.” Described as “the moment when you turn and walk away from an abusive relationship,” Hamilton Street (Vine) reclaims agency as an act of resistance and self-love. In the vein of contemporary portrait artists such as Kehinde Wiley, Scott, Haskins, and Wolenksy use historical references -personal and global- to re-assert voices historically undervalued and unrecognized as stories of power, belonging, and healing.

Femininity

While Hamilton St (Vine) is a portrait, Wolensky’s two other paintings in the exhibition are executed as still life. In the vein of Dutch vanitas, the objects and backgrounds Wolensky chooses to include are symbolic. Hanging on the same

wall of the gallery, Premonition (2018) and Vigil (Dip-Dye) (2022) replace traditional monochrome backgrounds with cloudscapes. These paintings contrast side-by-side, the former with subdued tones and a foreboding grey, the latter with the pink sky of daybreak. In the progression of these paintings, Wolensky moves physically and thematically away from the hidden figure of Hamilton Street (Vine). Three objects float in the center of Vigil (Dip-Dye): a mug evocative of the female form, a candle dip-dyed red, hot pink, blue, and green, and a photograph. The term vigil is associated with spirituality and loss, as in keeping a vigil for those who have passed on, and the objects recall memorials where people light candles and leave gifts and pictures. Against these objects is a dawn cloudscape with yellow, red, and hot pink light streaming from behind a blue cloud. Hot pink is a color Wolensky uses throughout her work as a “deconstruction and reassembling of femininity.” By incorporating hot pink in the candle and the sky, Vigil (Dip-Dye) is contextualized as an outworking of grief while celebrating what is to come and the dawning of a new era.

To the right, four digital paintings titled Love Letter (2021) by Shahvteeaylah Williams show the faces of four black women surrounded by yellow flowers. Bright, colorful, and full of whimsy, the women display different hairstyles such as braids and extensions, long eyelashes, and full lips. Hands with acrylic nails and jewelry frame the faces, whose expressions convey self-satisfaction. This quadriptych is an unapologetic celebration of beauty, reveling in and affirming what it means to be a black woman. The work locates power and presence within femininity and not at the expense of it. Williams describes the work by saying, “The pieces are a love letter to myself, to my community, to black women, black femininity, and black beauty culture. I made them in admiration of the way we always lift each other up. I wanted to give a glimpse of how I see myself and other women in my community.” The dream-like quality of the work produces a natural softness not held in tension with the strength the women exude. In this way, Williams “illustrate(s) the grace and beauty of contemporary black feminine cultural aesthetics on black bodies…recontextualizing black femininity to outsiders.”

Magdalena Rieder’s sixty-by-sixty-inch painting Within/Without (2023) hangs in the gallery alcove. A mural painter who works in Los Angeles, CA, New York, NY, and Philadelphia, PA, Rieder’s painting is moving away from her trademark size and style. On canvas rather than a wood panel or a wall, the painting depicts a woman in the foreground wearing an intricate white lace blouse in contrast to the dark, ominous clouds behind her. The figure takes up most of the canvas, mimicking the size of a public mural in the confines of the gallery walls. Often using depictions of animals or Greco-Roman statues as symbols within her work, in Within/Without Rieder opts for a more ambiguous reading, reflecting on the duality of life experiences and perhaps the emotions experienced within those. “While I often have a specific idea that I›m trying to convey in my work, I want my audience to remember that art is open to interpretation. I love to hear what others› responses are to my work, even if their interpretations are very different from my own. To me, that›s the beauty of art.”

Internal Environment

On the gallery›s far wall, spaced with windows, hangs work by artists Kimberly Neff and Samara Weaver. Coming from backgrounds in advertising and architecture, respectively, both artists engage with materiality as expressions of the invisible forces of spirituality and emotion. For Neff, creating art is directly linked to her spiritual practice. Akin to abstract expressionism, Neff’s work is concentrated within the emotionality and process of its creation. Each piece is produced in short bursts, followed by reflection and contemplation. Neff explains, “Art is about stillness - and in the quiet of your mind you can see, or feel the work. It›s super meditative for me - and I tend to be more actively working when I›m suffering in some capacity.” As seen in Cherry Blossoms (2021), whose composition features white lines created by spray paint against a soft purple and pink background, Neff incorporates quick gestures and free-flowing lines with large color blocks. This method involves materials that allow her flexibility in application, such as spray paint, ink, acrylic, paint, and gold leaf. By exhibiting her spiritual practice, Neff renegotiates the division between public and personal, inviting viewers to connect to their emotional intuition.

In contrast to Neff, Samara Weaver’s practice begins with a consideration of the material. I’m Fine (2022) and I Think I’m Losing It (2022) are two “sculptural watercolors,” a method invented by Weaver that fuses painterly explorations of color with three-dimensional forms traditionally associated with wood, metal, and glass. For each piece, Weaver systematically hand-paints hundreds of feet of trace paper before manipulating them within frames to give a

Exhibition View

sense of movement. This labor-intensive process ensures that each sheet of paper is handled multiple times. Weaver experiences this intimate engagement with each component as an embodiment of self. The emphasis on color over shape and vice versa depends on the sculpture›s intended representation. The two pieces in the exhibition illustrate specific emotional landscapes around mental health. In I’m Fine, layers of pale pink bleed into a center of purple, gray, and black, telling a story of hidden emotion beneath a calm exterior. I Think I’m Losing It contains a muted palette that allows the sculpture›s form to take precedence. Strips of trace paper spill out of the frame, the body unable to constrain what is inside.

Weaver describes her art practice as “functional acts of doing,” wherein she works material from its base element into a functional end. Artifacts, Untitled 1-3 (2022) integrate hand-spun yarn and hand-built porcelain into wall-mounted ceramic sculptures. Lace from Weaver’s mother textures the porcelain, with puffs of wool and yarn woven through. In her title, Artifacts, Weaver links clay with archaeological finds of past peoples and cultures. In that space, a banal ceramic pot or plate becomes a treasure to preserve. By combining clay and fibers, Weaver’s sculptures weave the temporary into the permanent. Through Artifacts, the concept of the relic becomes a receptacle for exploring connection to family and loss of heritage, suggesting that what appears to be mundane can be extraordinary.

External Environment

Situated on the far right wall of the gallery, artists Stephanie Van Riet and Lisa Jungmin Lee explore materiality and process concerning external structures found in the world. On the left, Van Riet’s Earthshine (2022) overlays the wall from ceiling to floor in over one-hundred blue tiles of varying shades. Each tile stands twelve-and-a-half by eleven inches, covered in marks similar to the lines of a topographical map. Taken as a whole, Earthshine emulates the sensation of staring into a churning ocean. The installation comes from Van Riet’s ongoing exploratory research of the trails routinely left by sea snails on beaches during low tide. Using personal photo documentation, Van Riet recreates the tracks on plaster cast tiles. These tiles are then painted with a cyanotype solution and placed in the sun for staggered amounts of time, resulting in a display of blue, white, and indigo. In transferring the ephemeral tracks of a creature as small as a sea snail onto a wall, Van Riet undertakes a grandiose act of preservation, magnifying a quotidian occurrence to a level of great worth and consideration.

Balancing Earthshine is Lisa Jungmin Lee’s Midnight Voyage (2022). One-hundred-eight inches long, Midnight Voyage is a tri-color screenprint on fabric. Hanging the length of the wall, the fabric consists of a repeating pattern that combines architectural elements with flowing curves. Against a teal background, brick bridges line either side of the material, creating the impression of a waterway. Inside the channel are two rivers undulating vertically and horizontally that contain images of buildings. Echoing tales like Toy Story and The Brave Little Toaster, Midnight Voyage is Lee’s imagining of a city that changes while people sleep. She writes: “Before sunrise, while everyone is asleep, a city dances and mingles around to reshape their forms and structures without anyone seeing or knowing it. Once the sun rises, they need to be put back together so that humans can maintain their daily life. It is a city’s secret life during the dawn when everything is stopped.” Drawing inspiration from her childhood in urban Seoul, South Korea, as well as experiences in other cities like Rome and her current home of Philadelphia, Lee’s work explores the unseen elements of cities. Using the layers involved in printmaking to tell a story of time and space, Lee offers a fresh perspective on the cityscape as we know it and advocates for imagination as a tool of change. Each generation rethinks the boundaries of their craft, using the moldering ideas of what was as fertilizer to push the field in new directions and incorporate new voices. As seen in the faces of the workers in French painter Jean Francois Millet’s 1866 Two Men Turning over the Soil, tilling the ground is a laborious task requiring great resolve. The 2023 Wind Fellowship Exhibition presents a collective statement of artists resolutely exerting themselves, their passions, and their art to bring about something new. By virtue of the Dina Wind Art Foundation, Inliquid Art and Design, and other supporters, this exhibition advocates for the essentiality of artists in our world. As Hernadez›s Cobija de Culitos indicates, this show is not solely for those who have created it but for us all. Whoever you are, wherever you are emerging from, you are welcome into this space.

Clockwise from top left: Le Dio La Chiripiorca, Carolina Marin Hernandez; Cobija de Culitios, Carolina Marin Hernandez; Earthshine, Stephanie Van Riet; Within/Without, Magdalena Rieders; Exhibition View, Meg Wolensky; Exhibition View, Lisa Jungmin Lee

Dara Haskins

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work originates from the history that surrounds the image and lifestyles of the black female/male figure. An important part of my painting process lies between connecting historical content to contemporary spaces, and how that relationship coexists. I explore its connection through the beauty of the body navigating domestic living, objects, and overgrown lush environments produced traditionally with oil and mixed media making. My work tells a story that has presence, mystery, and relationship of color euphoria altogether. I challenge the memory of my work by manipulating transparency in the movement within the figure or objects as being seen or not seen that reflect and question identity. Currently, movement and memory have been a large inspiration for my figurative and portrait paintings. I’m inspired to create pieces that reflect daily how the body changes and adapts within elements of pleasure, growth, and bliss. BIO

Dara Haskins (b.1992 Baltimore, MD) Has rooted her practice in Philadelphia working primarily in painting oil portraits and figurative oil and mixed media paintings. Addressing the ways the black body has been represented and looked at throughout history, she challenges the identity of being seen and unseen connecting historical content to contemporary spaces and how that relationship coexists. She is currently working on a series called “Havana time” expressively from her own photographs of people she spent time within Cuba.-Her large to small-scale paintings of objects, people, and places connect daily in domestic environments within the African diaspora. She is also working on a series called “ quraintin paintings” that reflects on dealing with isolation, time, and opportunity during the pandemic of COVID 19. Haskins received her BFA at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2019. The J Henry Scheidt Memorial Travel Scholarship to Cuba in (2019). Recently Winning the Mural art fellowship for black artist 2021. Exhibiting solo exhibition at Rush Arts Philadelphia called; Navigating space) She currently lives and works in Philadelphia.

Dark Haskins

Seekout

Acrylic on Canvas

40 x 60 ”

$5,000

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work is an exploration of self-identity and liberation within the social, cultural, and racial parameters which exist within Latinidad. The majority of representational motifs embedded in the ceramic pieces are based on the body of oral literature that highlights Indigenous formal oratory as well as rhythm of hispanohablante music. In my ceramics work, I recontextualize the histories imposed on Valdivian figures and funerary statuettes endemic to western South America to create guardians imbued with animism and joy. A vibrant color palette reflects Colombian culture and disrupts the association of Indigenous, Black, and Brown culture with muted earth tones. I argue that Latinidad, rather than being a geopolitical designator and identifier, is a fabricated monolithic identity rooted in Eurocentrism which promotes the erasure of multi-ethnic forced diasporas and non-white identities. By adopting a critical and hemispheric perspective, this work aims to deconstruct and decenter the construct of Latinidad by exploring how its hegemonic applications erase Black, Brown, and Indigenous representations. The purpose of this work is to highlight the intersections of trauma, joy, and liberation I experience as a Brown person and allow for the creation of an impossible space for others who may feel the same. This installation is a recognition, exploration, and acceptance of a constant state of racial and cultural indeterminacy.

BIO

Carolina Marín Hernández was born in Cali, Colombia and raised in Queens, New York. Carolina is currently based in Philadelphia where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Moore College of Art and Design with a concentration in 3D Media and an interest in Fibers. She uses decorative ceramics, vibrant colors, and woven corn husks to construct large scale sculptures imbued with animism and humor. She is passionate about community engagement, and multiliteracy learning strategies to create equitable opportunities for the hispanohablante communities of Philadelphia. As a first-generation, formerly undocumented person, Carolina pulls from her experiences to rethink identities imposed onto her through experimentations with language, form, and material.

Carolina Marin Hernandez

Cobija del Culitos, 2022

30 x 36 x 32 ”

Glazed Ceramics

Lisa Lee Jungmin Lee

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I am interested in architectural forms and their impacts on our lives and beyond utilizing Printmaking, Drawing, Digital Art, and Photography. I explore the relationship between structures and visual lines we experience in daily life through various shapes and aspects of the industrial buildings. My work focuses on ephemeral spaces and what is happening inside them, from the way people encounter and disappear within them. I am fascinated by public squares and arcades where the public can freely move around and lots of unexpected events can occur. Especially, I have been influenced by the design of the Italian Piazza, Piazza del Popolo in Rome. I conceive of these spaces as a nexus of random and fleeting meetings, a place where human life comes together in the space between solid forms. I observe this space both as chaotic, full of chance encounters, and also as nothing. My visualizations of these spaces gives me an insight into the layers of people, city, time, and life.

BIO

Lisa Jungmin Lee is a print-based artist and art educator in Philadelphia, PA. Lee received her MFA in printmaking from Tyler School of Art & Architecture at Temple University and a BFA in printmaking from Hongik University in Seoul, South Korea.She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally and teaches printmaking and studio art at various institutions across the region. She was a Resident Artist at Portside Arts Center in Cherry Street Pier and was a Fall 2020 Artist-in-Residence recipient at Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Philadelphia, PA. Jungmin has shown her work in many international venues, including The Lilley Museum of Art, Reno, NV; Tenant Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; Temple Rome Gallery, Rome, Italy; Galerie New Image, Paris, France; ANDLAB Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Ecorock Gallery, Seoul, South Korea; Dennis W. Dutzi Gallery, Long Beach, CA.; Gyeonghuigung of Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea; Hongik Museum of Art (HOMA), Seoul, South Korea; Stella Elkins Tyler Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; Le Carrousel de Louvre, Paris, France.

Midnight Voyage, 2022

50 x 25 ” Screenprint

$800

Lisa Jungmin Lee

Exhibition View, The Wind Fellowship

Exhibition, InLiquid Gallery

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work is an effort in remembering, belonging, and an exploration of human emotion. It inspired by emotional pain, suffering, connection, spirituality, and the things we most deeply already know. My work explores visual themes of bright bold colors, ethereal shapes, and texture, for viewers to go within, to awaken and speak to their hearts and minds. I am an abstract painter primarily, using acrylics, mixed media, and anything else that helps tell a meaningful story.

media artist. mixed- media bright, playful inspiring and professional marriage of career as an professional

Kimberly Neff

Eyelashes, 2020

36 x 24 ”

Acrylic on Canvas

$350

Exhibition View, The Wind Fellowship Exhibition, InLiquid Gallery

Athena Scott

ARTIST STATEMENT

“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them”, James Baldwin We often ponder the things we’ve carried with us through generations. My work is an amalgamation of experiences and interest, some shared, some personal. I see my portraits as translations of the passing of time coupled with the thought that we cannot truly understand who we are until we investigate the roots of our past, asking how we have progressed or not from pivotal moments in time. When I paint portraits, most of which are of African Americans, the skin tones I choose are made up of various colors. I strive to express the energy or mood that exudes from within them but also the resonating energy that comes from within me. It feels almost like an exchange of vibration or force between artist and subject My goal is to expand on the idea of a portrait and the subjects I chose, both technically and materially. Combining materials such as wood and found objects along with collage, printmaking techniques and more; I’m using

BIO

Athena Astraea Scott is an interdisciplinary artist from Philadelphia, Pa. Athena is a recent graduate of Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts receiving her MFA (2022), she also in Web Design from The Art Institute of Philadelphia (2006) and is currently a resident artist When painting portraits, most of which are of African Americans, the skin tones are normally to express that energy or mood that exudes from within her subjects but also from within or force between artist and subject joining to become one. Athena’s goal is always to continue of what a portrait can be no matter the material, with her subjects touching on identity, present.

also received her Bachelor of Science degree artist at Cherry Street Pier (Philadelphia, Pa). normally made up of various colors. The desire is within herself. Almost like an exchange of vibration continue to grow creatively and push the idea memory and the parallels of the past and

Athena Scott

Look Back and Wonder, 2022 60 x 120 ”

Acrylic & Oil Pastel

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

My work is influenced by the animalistic nature of the female form. It often deals with the invasion of the surreal into the mundane and the impossible into the familiar. My pieces examine the perceived psyche of the modern woman, utilizing ancient mythology and symbolism, creating a dichotomy that tells a new story. I aim to illustrate how we think of womanhood in cultural and historical contexts, and how this thought has both shifted and remained over time. I am particularly drawn to largescale work because of its ability to completely transform the environment that it’s in, while asking viewers to question how they fit into the piece.

BIO

Magdalena Rieders is an artist from Philadelphia. She mostly focuses on public and large scale artwork, and has installed many murals on both the east and west coast. Her work has often been described as magical realism, as she frequently merges the surreal into the mundane. Magdalena received her BA in studio art from the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. She was later awarded the Hartnett Gallery Alumni Award, where she installed a permanent mural on the university’s campus. Following college, she honed her skills for large-scale art through working as a painter for various art installation companies in southern California. She came home to the city of Philadelphia to continue her own artistic practice, as well as starting Fathom, her own mural painting company

Magdelena Rieders

Within / Without, 2023

60 x 60 ”

Acrylic on Canvas

$2,500

StephanieVan Riet

BIO

Earthshine, 2022

12.5 x 11 ”

Cyanotype on plaster

$6,050

Stephanie Van Riet contextualize things and life in something drawings, printmaking, connections between in Connecticut. She residencies including at Connecticut College completed a Post-Baccalaureate Philadelphia, PA.

Stephanie Van Riet

ARTIST STATEMENT

Tidy solutions of geometry make architecture of chaos, creating a dance between mathematics and maps. How is the world categorized and ordered? Who do these systems exist for? To understand things better, we must warp, flatten, and make things recognizable and easy to Manipulate. How do we then grapple with knowing that our world maps are ultimately inaccurate, along with the ways we were taught to understand the world? Things that can be solved remain mysterious; restrained ideas are often tumultuous under the Surface. How does science fail us?

Finding source imagery from natural phenomena, formulas, maps and geometric shapes, I reference constructed systems created as a result of human’s yearning to organize the world around us, to grip on things that are ultimately unknowable. I explore pre-existing theories, navigation charts and diagrams through physical and metaphysical landscapes and examine fossilized or fleeting traces of movement to analyze the different interpretations of this record. Through drawings, printmaking, and installation, I investigate the randomness of data, pattern and mark making, while charting connections between past and present.

Riet is curious about the systems created as a result of human’s yearning to organize the world around us and things that are ultimately unknowable. Her work highlights the intricacies of mark making as traces of movement something permanent, or fossilized, discovering the different interpretations that this record can provide. Through printmaking, and sculpture, she explores the randomness of data, pattern and natural phenomenon, while charting between past and present. Her work has been included in several group exhibitions, both in the Boston area and She recently had a solo exhibition at the Wotiz Gallery in Milton, MA (2022). She is the recipient of awards and including MakerInResidence at Brandeis University (2022) and Juror’s Best in Show for her senior thesis exhibition College (2019).Van Riet received her BA in Studio Art and Anthropology from Connecticut College and recently Post-Baccalaureate certificate in Fine Art from Brandeis University.She was born in MA and lives and works in

Exhibition View, The Wind Fellowship Exhibition, InLiquid Gallery

ARTIST STATEMENT

I have always been fascinated with materiality, resulting in my artistic exploration of various materials, and using them to explore texture, color, and perspective. I combine large numbers of smaller often simple elements into multi-faceted compositions, gaining complexity and space from their combination. My work often invites touch and asks the observer to explore it further with multiple senses. I immerse myself in the mediums I work with exploring their different properties, effects and methods of working with them. Currently my focus has been on a process which I created developing colorful paper pieces, composed of layers upon layers of painted paper. For this process I do tests to select a palette of colors and then paint yards and yards of trace paper with water color paint, in large sections or a continuous strip. The final pieces are composed of tens to hundreds of linear feet of hand painted paper which Icrumple, fold and arrange into the final piece.

BIO

Samara graduated with her Masters in Architecture in 2013 from Tyler School of Art and Architecture. After graduating Samara worked in Architecture and Construction while continuing to develop her unique artistic voice using multiple mediums. In 2017 she took the leap to working for herself and started Design Hues, focusing on artisan floral and specializing in large floral installations. In 2018 Samara applied to the Juried Craft Show at The Delaware Art Museum, and was accepted with a host of other talented artists. Showing her work at the museum was a pivotal turning point in her artistic career, supporting shifting her focus to her art full time. She was accepted in Spring 2020 for an art studio at the Delaware Contemporary art museum and has been working full time creating and selling her artwork, functional ceramics and porcelain jewelry.

Samara Weaver

I Think I’m Losing It, 2022

28 x 22 x 5 ”

Watercolor, trace paper, wood frame, oil paint, & charred

$2,500

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work is colorful, expressive and infused with a sense of comedic relatability. I like to depict fantasy scenarios plucked straight from my imagination. These scenes often feature carefree, mostly black and brown women expressing themselves freely, as well as whimsical animal characters. Clothing is also featured heavily in my illustrations and it often takes on a character of its own. In my pattern design work intended for use in textiles, I use my illustrations to make a garment tell a story. Often, using my light colorful and poppy illustrations to communicate complex and somewhat dark themes.

Shahvteeaylah Williams (b. Be’er Sheva, Israel) was raised in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia, PA. She was inspired to start drawing at a very young age by the cartoons she would watch and continued to develop the skill all throughout her formative years. During her time as a student at Central High School, she decided to turn the hobby into a career. She then went on to study illustration at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA.

At the University of the Arts Williams received The Presidential Award for Creativity and win The Richard C. Von Hess Travel Fellowship and Scholarship in the summer of 2020. This award paid for her final year at university and allotted her 7,000 dollars to take a trip to the country of her choice: Japan. Unfortunately, the covid-19 pandemic and travel restrictions that have yet to lift in Japan have prevented Shahvteeaylah from taking the trip. She now spends her time working as a waitress and trying to develop her career as an illustrator.

Love Letter 1-4, 2021

22 x 7.5 in Digital $150 (each)

(Left to Right)

Shavteeaylah Williams

ARTIST STATEMENT

I paint as a healing practice to explore queer joy, reconciliation of trauma, chosen family, and the freedom of autonomy. As a queer artist living with CPTSD, I translate fragments of my unfurling aftermath, experiences, memories, and dreams into a cohesive whole.

Like many of us, my queerness was identified, rejected and suppressed long before Irecognized it within myself. My survival depended on queer expression through nonverbal language. Through paint, I reconstruct a home in which my identity is welcome as I meditate on the impact of trauma on the ebb and flow of my relationships. I build cryptic still lives, secret tenderness, simplicity, and heartache of authentic love. In oil paintings that draw together chromatic authentically is vast and can hold space for our greatest dreams and biggest challenges. This collages that layer cross-sections of personal narrative.

BIO

Originally from West Chester, Pennsylvania, Meg now resides in Philadelphia. In addition to opportunities as the Managing Director of Continuing Education at Moore College of Art & Design and participating in public arts programming as a curator, juror, visiting artist, guest speaker, foundations and advanced oil/watercolor painting techniques. In their previous role as a Project art-focused educational experiences for high-risk youth, young adults, and incarcerated parents.

writing, art handling, and arts nonprofit administration strategy services to other queer artists,

secret little love notes, nestled into chromatic elements that hold the naturality, joy, chromatic hope and contrasting devastation, I argue that the sum of a queer life lived This evolving investigation takes physical form in paintings, drawings,photography and

being a visual artist, they specialize in creating art and design educational Design in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They have a range of experience organizing speaker, art history lecturer, and as a hands-on arts educator specializing in fine arts Project Manager at Mural Arts Philadelphia, they worked to facilitate trauma-informed parents. Outside of creating and working, Meg lends professional curatorial, grantartists, students, organizations and initiatives.

Meg Wolensky Preminition, 2018

18 x 36 in Oil on Canvas $850

Exhibition View, The Wind Fellowship Exhibition, InLiquid Gallery

InLiquid

InLiquid is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to creating opportunities and exposure for visual artists and works with more than 280 artists and designers. It serves as a free, online public hub for arts information in the Philadelphia area. Find out more at www.inliquid.org.

Many included artworks will be available on Arsty.

Inquiries for purchases or commissioned work can be directed to Clare Finin at Clare@InLiquid.org.

1400 N American Street

Studio 108

Philadelphia, PA 19122

215-235-3405

www.InLiquid.org

Many included artworks are available for purchase on Artsy