Between June 1st and June 29th 2023, the exhibit from Envision Arts & UNT CoLAB entitled ‘SOJOURN; Focusing on the Human Condition’ was on display. I got the chance to see it, and captured the experience of visiting the exhibit for you here today! Take part on this journey with me as we investigate the ins and outs of the human condition depicted in visual arts together. Let’s go!
Starting us off is Janice Sheppard’s wonderful mixed media piece titled ‘The Johnstons’ featuring a prominently blue suited man and a vibrant yellow outfitted woman. I wondered if they were still alive when looking at this photo. I appreciated their beaming personalities from their attire to the colour they are edited to be. You can tell what they might be like if you were to meet them. The Johnstons look like a lovely duo! I wonder if its people that the artist knows. I wish them well!
Michael Winchester from Illinois (USA) brings us ‘Left Brain to Right Brain’ (2023) using paper applied to little globes that are set on a frame with wire going through them allowing them to spin still. I loved seeing the shift from mathematical equations to language to music – left brain to right brain! What a great way to show the shift, especially the choice in language being the middle point between the two. It definitely makes sense.
Another look at the ‘Left Brain to Right Brain’ piece.
Michael Winchester also created this second piece, and it is a beautiful globe filled with multiple Rorschach ink blot tests. Titled ‘How Do You See The World’ the ink blots make sense. What do you see in this? I see lots of creatures like beetles, lions, a skeleton + hip bones, a dragonfly, an octopus, a butterfly…what a fun piece! I love art that calls into question what you see or what your beliefs are. It’s interactive and great to come across. Nice work!
‘Castoffs 12, 2022’ by Karen Jayne who hails from South Carolina created this awesome piece made of what looks like concrete and formed into the shape of seashells and other curly natural pieces from the ocean. I absolutely love this piece’s construction and how Karen formed such natural looking pieces out of something you’d think is hard to sculpt with. I love the imperfections in this medium too, it makes it so unique.
‘Postcards to Nowhere (Swamp, Lovingly) 2022 – 2023’ by Adrienne Simmons of Texas is a super phenomenal set of two photographs capturing different moments crystallized in time by the use of borax on the paper used to hold the photos. I absolutely adore how these came out with the natural crystallization making these special moments feel ethereal and permanent. Plus crystals evoke a fantasy feel, so it’s another reason I love this set piece.
Jordan Scott crafted this enigmatic Egyptian jewelry piece entitled ‘You Are Egyptian’ out of sterling silver and brass. It must relate to her heritage and history. It is a unique embellishment with hieroglyphics and a scarab beetle on the back end. Inside is a script text portion that folds open like a book. It’s a very beautiful metal piece and would mean a lot to the wearer. It has an air of an important history that is preserved and revered within this piece.
Another piece by Jordan Scott, entitled ‘Sensing Confidence as An Antidote for Anxiety’ from 2023 using brass and sterling silver. This one is awesome and very bright and happy with the bubbly texture. I love the balance of the three prongs of gold petals complementing the cold silver too. It’s a statement piece for someone who might be anxious, helping them confidently stand out. Awesome work!
Jalon Isabell is a Texas creative who made the work titled ‘Dissection of a Hollow Man.’ It is such a cool illustration showing his insides, completely hollow and void of anything. With little numbers denoting certain parts of him, this illustration takes on a medical look and feel. It’s a great self portrait and really captures all the appealing aspects and beats of a medical illustration but keeping a personal touch to it. Love it!
Julie O’Connor from Connecticut (USA) contributed ‘Strike A Pose (on an Erwin Wurm,) (2017)’ which is a really quirky scene showing the artist on a suitcase with two different scenes of people behind her in the background. What could the story be between all of these interesting characters? What goes on in their lives? I love all the things you can wonder from this weird scene taking place. Maybe this is the inside of her mind? There’s many possibilities. It’s great!
‘Throwing Back the Apple’ by Diego Bacerra shows an impeccable painting skill put to use to bring us this eccentric clown character that I love so much. This is my favourite piece from the entire showcase. I absolutely adore this design, whether it be a self-portrait or an original character. The smirk and energy is superb. The wrinkles and folds in the leather of the jacket and glove, with the slight shimmer to it, is painted with great expertise. The red background is also awesome, really bringing out and together the bright red nose, lips, and brow decoration. Diego is a Texas based artist and did the work in acrylic paint with coloured pencil additive on wood panel.
Madison Smith paints a lovely and moody ‘Devotion’ (2023) depicting a woman deep in thought and draped in sheer cloth that appears heavenly or religious in a way. She looks deep in prayer or contemplation about her life and what she is devoted to and how to carry on that path. I love the emotion present here and how we feel right there alongside her in her mind. Devotion is a large part of the human condition. Impressive work. Madison is a Texas based artist and did this work using acrylic paints on a 16 x 20” canvas.
‘Quinn and DD in the Clouds’ provides a look at a beautiful scene with two young figures high up in the clouds looking off into the distance. The small animal before the child looks fondly at them. I wonder about the lives of these two and how they might have been close to not only each other but to the painter. Marcy Lilley painted this piece in acrylic paints on an 18 x 24” canvas.
Jackie “Juba” Davis creates a wonderful ink illustration on paper titled ‘Eyes of Providence.’ This piece shows a great understanding of light and shadow at play and how it interacts with the human face. I love the stylization of the person, whether it be someone they know or the artist themselves, they look onward with wonder in their eyes. I love the scratchiness of the medium too. It makes it feel so real and grounded in experiencing life itself.
Printmaking is how ‘Sunshine After the Rain’ (2023) was created, by JooEun Seo who hails from Arkansas. Printmaking can be done multiple ways including carving of stamp rubber or cutting of stencils used to make a print with paint applied. The style of this crying character is very appealing and fun. They are sad clown-adjacent so that’s a plus. I love the little sapling growing on their head. The tears becoming a root system is also a nice touch. Great work!
‘4/23/15’ (2022) features a painting of a photograph from long ago then printed on metal. Tyler Evin created this digitally and got it printed on metal. It shows a memory from the artist’s life, and the moment of three people hanging out that mean something to each other. Perhaps this memory takes up a good place in the artist’s mind. They might desire to go back to this time and place, forever a memory pinned to a bulletin board in their mind’s eye. Awesome work. I appreciate how it captures the slightly out of focus look to show how memories are a fuzzy feeling or thing unable to be grasped in perfect detail usually.
Another great work from Tyler Evin, employing the same style of painting a photographed memory and printing it on metal again. This one depicts a more surreal looking situation. ‘Through the Swell’ (2022) evokes a certain weird mood, it sort of lingers just on the tip of your mind. It has the uncertainty of a moment from the artist’s memories roughly remembered. Tyler is a Texas based artist.
‘Bubblegum Spring’ from 2023 is a piece done in graphite, gouache paint, and watercolor paint on paper. Olivia is a Texas based artist. This piece evokes a wonderfully weird world the character is living in, filled with flying and floating disembodied lower halves in pink or yellow. She looks exhausted to be around them and totally done with everything. Her attitude is shown well in this character art piece.
Silvia Felizia, a Texas based artist, provided ‘Crossing the White Door’ from her 2021 work. It shows an aerial view of homes and streets that have been abstracted in an acrylic paint and modeling paste mixture on a large canvas. One home in the bottom center has a bright white door. Will you cross into it? I absolutely adore the textures developed here and strokes of paint and modeling paste built up to create this map-like world.
Valentina Nguyen took many different photos using infrared heat maps to show the warmth of lights and things in many different scenes captured. ‘I Can Finally Feel What I Cannot See’ is from her 2023 work.
The prints of these photos were done on Fuji Silk paper. It evokes so much of the world unseen but felt, and shows it visually. Heat and warmth in all these objects, or the remains of the presence of people.
This piece has a very powerful type of energy to it.
Marcy Lilley returns with even more awesome work, featuring sunny beach scenes with colour blocked in and simple while the rendering is spent more on the human subjects. I appreciate their style and approach to capturing the bounced light on each person. I also adore the animal with herself in ‘Self Portrait with Willow’ from 2018.
Chloe Parsons shows us an entanglement of ‘Weft’ – in weaving, it means the crosswire threads on a loom over and under which other threads (the warp) are passed to make cloth, as in: weft threads, which go sideways across the vertical threads in a cloth. She (the subject and possibly the artist) is stepping through the weft (which reminds me of a spiderwebbing too) as she connects a strand of thread to another with her handiwork. I like the visualization of the self in the internal mind here, as if it is cloth being currently made. I figure with this analogy, the cloth being fully made is symbolic of the past forming to solid cloth after it happens and how it’s stored in our memory. Every event is a new thread of life tangling together with others to create the fabric of fate. This great piece was painted using watercolor on paper at 18 x 24”.
This is a very unique piece by Ruth A. Keitz entitled ‘Looking High and Low for That Jet’ from 2020 showing a captured moment of an evening sky where we might be looking for a ‘jet’ as the title implies. I personally think the structure of the arrangement of window envelopes makes a ‘jet looking’ thing itself, so I will assume that is where the jet we are looking for is! Where do you see a potential jet? A mind game like this is great fun for a show about the human condition.
Another piece, a diptych – ‘28 Harrison Ave Diptych, View from the Kitchen Window’ (2018) features two distinct looks at different times of day, morning and evening, with dreamy feeling evokes from the way the sun plays with the natural world outside the window structure(s) built on top of the canvas and photos. I love these portals to another world just outside the kitchen window.
Haleigh Brown provided superb and exciting collage done on various things. Canvas for two and a vinyl record for the first one. ‘Blurry’ shows us a place in time that isn’t so certain, affixing on the memory or vision of the woman depicted, she is in pieces with her eyes departed from each other. She sees double and everything is spinning. Will she make it home safely? One can only hope. This piece did a great job at showing the danger of the situation and how it feels to be in the mind of that current moment.
‘Notions’ (of the Sacred) features a woman standing stoically adorned with a metallic deer pin, and either plaid or houndstooth pattern on her nice suit. She almost looks ready to go to church. And I think thats meant to contrast with the setting of being in nature, on a bridge overlooking a lake. Surrounded by the sacred land. There is a lot going on in this piece that makes me wonder.
‘Autopilot’ reminds me of when I lived in the city and barely held it together in a manic state most of the time, dissociative and on autopilot. That might not be the case here but it evokes that same feeling in me. Seeing the breaking through the center of the structured city with a chaotic and emotional looking feminine person reminds me of someone trying to break out of the standard structures placed upon us by society, expectations or otherwise.
Benjamin Folsom painted and drew using acrylic paints & charcoal on canvas the ‘Untitled Gendarme’ – ‘gendarme’ meaning “a rock pinnacle on a mountain” of some kind. This natural looking scene is carved out of the canvas. I appreciate the style and way of capturing the density of the stone and rock with scratchy lineart with varied line weight throughout it.
‘Shadow – Bone’, ‘Holey – 2K13’ and ‘Discard – Numb’ are all mixed media pieces by Audrey Jeanes that struck me as impressive. The use of imagery in the background of this deepened small box-canvas evokes the depths of one’s mind and experiences within it. Possibly, trapped back there by the strings that stretch across the compartment we compartmentalize things in within our brains. I might be totally wrong though, but these are my thoughts brought upon by both the visual appeal of these, the titles, and the theme of the show. Great work!! So unique.
Another look at the three stringed pieces.
‘Who She Is’ from 2023 is by Olivia Varnell, another piece from her who did ‘Bubblegum Spring’ up above earlier. This piece is stunning and handles shape and form in such a cool way. There is dripping green and shadowy hair or backdrop to the character. She is unashamed of who she is and proudly sits in all her self-attained power. Great work!
Olivia also has this piece in the showcase, titled ‘I Wish I Were the Moon’ from 2023. It captures a anguished feeling of yearning to be something you are not. To become something more than what you are is a feeling many humans have. Celestial bodies are a great comfort to behold. There seems to be much turmoil in this piece, the raw emotion is present.
Rebecca Merkley is from Washington state (USA) and worked on this large watercolor pencil and gouache paint piece. The art depicts a body part with one side enlarged and in danger it looks like. It is tangled up in plant matter that is symbolic I’m sure, but I could not locate what type of flower they were. I feel like the title, ‘6.8 cm’ has something to do with the size of the enlarged side they most likely had to get help with. Experiences like this can be scary and definitely leave an impact on your life. This piece’s artist renders everything beautifully and brings a fantastical approach to medical situations depicted.
The next three images were all photo collage and beautiful work by Kelley Porter, a Texas based artist.
The collage of ‘Compassion’ brings us a sensuous scene with a person laying on her back absorbing the sunlight amid a mountainous deserted land with a city far off on the horizon. A large figure over top is overlooking her with a look of love and heartfelt compassion. There is a connection between them. It could be herself, her inner conscious I think, perhaps.
‘Dysmorphic’ is definitely a feeling I know many people experience. Where all your body parts feel like they don’t fit each other in a set, and you are depersonalized from your own body while experiencing these feelings. It’s a rather unsettling thing people of any walk of life can and do experience. I don’t wish it on anyone. This piece captures that to a T and shows just how frightening it can feel like. Collage is literally the perfect medium for this topic.
‘Ghost’ is an impressive last piece from Kelley Porter, a collage visualizing an older world in black and white outside being viewed from inside a cozy living space with a fire going. The window this is being viewed from is a house-like shape with bar like structures going through it. I feel like this is two places displaced in time compared to each other. A portal to a previous time, of sorts, ghosts of a bygone era. Great work all around by Kelley.
Adrienne Simmons somehow managed to print off cyanotype photography on found fabric pieces. Cutting it apart, with some blacked out portions, it creates a sort of mesmerizing installation piece strung up from the ceiling. This piece is stellar and really unique.
This piece is stunning and so cool. A rug made to mimic the appearance of a gas station receipt. Absolutely awesome!! This was displayed on a dismembered backseat of a vehicle too, so it was even cooler. Loved this one so much, it was definitely a stand-out piece.
That wraps up the walk-through of the ‘SOJOURN; Focusing on the Human Condition’ exhibit. I absolutely loved the experience of getting to see and write about the beautiful pieces of art within the walls of the UNT CoLAB who lovingly hosted this in June of 2023!
You can visit the UNT CoLAB at from 11am – 6pm Mon – Sat weekly at 207 N Elm St, Denton, TX 76201.
I hope you enjoyed getting to see this exhibit digitally & visit the CoLAB in person soon!
Take care and stay inspired!
