Zachary Naylor
On Becoming Capable of Love
April 22 - May 28, 2022
On Becoming Capable of Love is an exhibition comprised of twelve drawings that reflect on how ‘I’ came to be as I am and the potential for evolution.
The drawings are intimate in scale, which coupled with the subtlety of black ink and vacancy of color necessitate prolonged attention to discern what is being looked at. The compositions are dense, portraying a nonidealized landscape teeming with thick gnarled vegetation, wriggling worms, and protruding bare branches. Entrapped within the impenetrable flora of this environment an uncannily human-like figure peers out in anguish. Their bodies are swollen and stretched, brittle nails protrude from elongated fingers, and unblinking eyes drape loosely over aghast featureless faces. Exposed flesh is pierced and torn by the lifeless branches that solidify their hopeless confinement. Immobilized and isolated they are unable, or unwilling to seek escape. Remaining motionless, while detritus piles up, serves only to exacerbate their predicament. The isolation depicted in the work illustrates an imagined lack of power to enact change, and realize new possibilities.
Flowers are held out, a gesture expressing a desire for love, support, and understanding. Yet the suspicion that this gesture will be left unrequited leads to inaction. The wilting rose is a recurring image in the work that signifies the collapse of the values and expectations that have been projected onto the self through socialization, consumerism, and domineering power structures. In this way, the work begins to embody hope. The cultivated, and controlled garden made beautiful through the idealized rose loses its vitality in these drawings. In its wake, an abundance of life, and new growth follows.
As the figure becomes nearly indistinguishable from the landscape, with the wriggling worms, and vivacious weeds, they are no longer trapped but have been embraced into this new environment abounding with life. When considering the dominant societal values that shape the formation of the self, and how adherence to these values shapes the world around us, what might happen when they are rejected? What has been deemed unworthy, in need of weeding out can now flourish. What was once repressed, kept deep down in the earth, may now flower, and become capable of knowing love.
Thyra Heder
Night Animals
January 28 - March 5, 2022
My series of drawings Night Animals began in 2019 as I stepped out of my picture book comfort zone and began to write a novel. The story, about wild animals in Los Angeles, was to be mostly prose and the writing process felt impossibly hard in the beginning. The benefit of picture books is that if I tire of writing I can draw, and vice versa, but this wasn’t possible in the same way while writing this novel. I found myself procrastinating constantly, and I spent a lot of time watching night vision footage from wildlife cameras. Perhaps as a way to avoid writing, I began to draw memorable compositions from those videos.
Normally when I make an image for a picture book, there is a tension or stress related to needing the image to do something very specific for the narrative. But these charcoal drawings were not characters in my book, and these weren’t emotional scenes I needed to capture. They were a way to spend time in the atmosphere of my novel. The tactile and messy nature of charcoal is always a glorious escape for me, and I discovered that making an image adjacent but not beholden to my narrative kept me in an imaginative flow state that propelled my writing. My novel is not yet finished and neither is my interest in these Night Animals.
Dedalus Wainwright
Offshoot Sculptures
January 28 - March 5, 2022
When life gives you a chance to return to something you love, despite the obstacles, you take it, right? Some years ago while doing my MFA in Design for Theatre and Film at NYU, a professor asked our group of 6 set designers if we thought we would be willing and able to make a body of art (rather than a set design). One of the few, my arm shot up, confident from the prior years I had worked to do just that. During this recent collaborating with Clara, I’ve remembered that day often as it had been about 8 years since I invested significant time in image and sculpture making. I approach visual art with many distinctions from how I approach set design but it is also interesting how the design experience has fed the renewed image and sculpture making. I’ve grown rusty in some ways and have relaxed in others. Sitting at my sculpture desk (do you have one too?) there are no collaborators, no primary text source. What I do have is a renewed curiosity, some familiar tools & materials and a set of questions & experiences I’m exploring through these intimately scaled painterly sculptures. I initially set out to reflect upon the Elder Luge idea, but the conversation with each piece took its own direction. I enjoy the way they invite your eye to explore their forms and relations, trade ideas between themselves and strike out on their own. Time to stop reading and look at them!
