Daydreamers & Other Nightmares

Biography
Hassan Abu-Judom is a queer Palestinian-American visual artist based in Simpsonville, South Carolina. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she specializes in traditional visual art such as acrylic and gouache painting, marker with ink illustration while exploring core themes of sexual and gender identity, memory and dreamscapes, and middle eastern culture and language. Abu-Judom is a self-taught artist with some educational knowledge that was taught at the Fine Arts Center (2020-21) in Wade Hampton, South Carolina and from a few classes at Greenville Technical College (2022-23). Their work has been featured in Upstairs Artspace exhibitions in Tyron, North Carolina (2021), Queer Arts Initiative’s Second Pride Showcase (2024), FAC alumni exhibitions, Awita New York Studio exhibitions (2025) based in Brooklyn, New York and more.

Artist Statement
My work is inspired by a strong connection to color psychology, middle eastern culture, memories, and overall identity. As a self-taught artist, I approach art as a way to understand myself and the world around me through vulnerable experiences that I want to create as a puzzle for viewers to piece together. I’m especially drawn to themes of iconography and putting on a persona to tell my stories while I often let my intuition lead the creative process. My work isn’t about perfection, it’s about honesty, experimentation, and storytelling.Through my art, I aim to create a space where people can see parts of themselves, feel something deeply, or ask questions they hadn’t considered before. Art has always been my first language, and I use it to communicate what I can’t always say out loud.

Biography

Artist Statement
I grew up in Pittsburgh where my world was filled with heavy industry and a rich tapestry of first and second generation Americans who worked in the mills. As much as my family wanted to be removed from those humble lives, our heritage clung to those hills like soot on weathered bricks.

A few years ago, I discovered that my heritage was predominantly Slovenian. To understand more about my family, I read Slovenian folk tales. One character, the Krivopeta, or the “wild woman of the woods”, can control the weather and determine the success of those who seek her help. They have green hair and backward feet. If a Krivopeta is respected, she bestows good results. If she is angered, she’ll fallow crops, send storms and even kidnap children.

My Krivopeta portraits consist of public domain photos taken during the 1930s for the Works Progress Administration to showcase poverty in America. The women in these portraits are often not identified, or the photos are given descriptive titles such as, “Woman in front of a shanty” or “Farm woman in the cotton fields”. I feel that this type of treatment degrades them even more.

Although the original intention of the field photographers was to document poverty during the Great Depression in America, there is often a lack of sympathy for the subjects. These women are showcased in, what most likely, was the most difficult period of their lives. Hungry, overworked, overwrought and hopeless, their lives were effective in enacting anti-poverty aid programs and legislation throughout the country. However, these portraits also show how devastated many families and individuals were at the time, but they remain frozen in that space. A great deal of these women were alone while male members of their families were off looking for work in other areas. Often they were living on small incomes, taking in boarders, working in or outside of the home and trying to provide for their children, parents and siblings without little or any help from others. They were strong, powerful women in their own right.

By removing the backgrounds of the original images and transforming them into green-haired Krivopete, I am changing these women’s stories. I embroider their photos to reveal their strong personalities and faces and to empower them beyond time.

Biography
Rae is a native of Greenville, SC. They graduated from the Fine Arts Center in 2010, and from Anderson University in 2014, with a BA in Visual Arts and a concentration in Painting and Drawing. Rae is also a self-taught musician. They started writing and recording music under the name ∆ L Y S in 2013, and since then have produced over ten albums, eps, and singles of original music as an individual or in projects such as The Parlor Pinks, The Third Service, and collaborations with Indrid Mold, Rögg Collins, and Mvtchi.

Rae spent two years as a studio artist at Greenville Center for Creative Arts, where they had the opportunity to participate in shows and events including Open Studios and Flat Out Under Pressure. In 2016, Rae joined Tempo Arts Collective as a co-director. For three years, Tempo hosted shows, critiques and community events all around Greenville.

In 2019, Rae joined with Ash Foster-Lee (The other half of The Parlor Pinks) to create TPP Events, a music booking agency focusing on alternative music and art events in the downtown Greenville, SC area. In 2023, Rae started working with Rattlesnake Press as curator, graphic designer, and event coordinator. They also accepted the title of Vice chair of the Queer Arts Initiative, and are lead art curator for this organization.

Artist Statement
Hecate Unwinds draws its reference from the Greek goddess of magic, characters from Adventure Time, and the turmoil of the feminine experience. The idea of the “maiden, mother, and crone” has always been a reminder to me of the progression and expiration of femininity. But as I’ve grown into and beyond that side of myself, I’ve learned to appreciate all the phases of life and growth as they pass through us. In all kinds of media, I am fascinated by powerful characters with multiple, often conflicting, characteristics or traits. I found this in the Adventure Time characters “grob” “gob” “glob” and “grod”. They are a deity that has magical powers with a four sided head, not too dissimilar to hecate. Some of the visual elements were inspired by this character.

Another noteworthy visual element of this piece are the sigils I designed, carved into the chest of the figures. As part of my recent creative/spiritual practice, I have started to incorporate elements of magic into my work. This often informs my choices of color, symbolism and intentional choices like the use of sigils. I found that this inclusion was particularly fitting for a piece that is heavily influenced by the goddess of magic. The goal of my work is to take viewers outside of the often bleak reality around us and offer a glimpse into something supernatural, informed by my personal experience. Along with many of my other pieces, this one heavily wrestles with gender and identity. Although these are general themes, I think that makes the work more relatable to those who have a similar experience.

Biography
Orlando Corona (he/him) is a professional visual artist specializing in painting, printmaking, murals and teaching. After finding his passion for printmaking in his high school art class, he became captivated by art and began exploring printing and painting. In 2022, Orlando was accepted into the Brandon Fellowship program at the Greenville Center for Creative Arts, providing a pivotal catalyst for his career, and becoming a full-time artist shortly after leaving the program. Orlando has a passion for being involved in the community and helping others, often working with local non-profits, artists and organizations.

Originally from Guanajuato, Mexico, Orlando moved to Greenville, South Carolina at the age of 10 with his family. Orlando draws deep inspirations from his roots as a first-generation Mexican immigrant, often sharing stories and memories of his childhood in rural Mexico. His intentions are about creating artwork that captures personal elements through his unique style, while sharing his culture, telling stories and making fine art everyone can enjoy. He aims to inspire others through his work and be an integral part of his community and the world.

Artist Statement
My artwork will always be mutually personal and for others. I feel that my art allows me to be an ambassador for my country and culture, and show people that Mexicans are more than just the cliche image of blue-collar workers. Art can be educational, build bridges and safe spaces, and connect humans. I am blessed to be able to do that through my printmaking, painting and projects with non-profits and my community. Community is a big part of my work wether it be through teaching, exhibitions or public artwork. My mission is to expand horizons, inspire, educate, and be a contributing member of society. I see myself as a part of something bigger and hope to leave a great legacy for future generations. You never know who’s life you may be able to touch.

Biography
As a French American ceramist and printmaker residing in Greenville, South Carolina, I thrive on the fusion of two-dimensional and three-dimensional art forms. I like to navigate between my 2D and 3D works, to bring my drawings and paintings into my ceramics pieces and vice versa. I am committed to exploring diverse techniques, including both conventional and contemporary approaches.

My introduction to printmaking and monotyping was guided under the mentorship of the esteemed Marty Epp-Carter. Monotypes are created by transferring an image from a painted plate onto paper, resulting in entirely unique prints. The specificities of the process necessitate the swift printing of the images before the ink dries, capturing the essence of spontaneity that I endeavor to explore. I am deeply passionate about thematic art that challenges conventional perspectives and historical narratives, independent from the male gaze.

Artist Statement
My work is revisiting some of the Greek mythological stories of the creation of monsters, by focusing on those of Circe and Medusa. Those characters are famous for being villains and monsters in our founding stories. Circe was a powerful witch, exiled on an island, who transformed unfortunate sailors into pigs. Medusa was one of the Gorgons, a winged woman with snakes for hair, whose appearance was so hideous that anyone who looked at her would turn to stone. Both female characters are antagonists of our male heroes, Odysseus and Perseus respectively. However, if one interprets them as protagonists instead, the story changes completely.

Circe is a nymph, daughter of the sun god Helios. Greek mythology depicts nymphs as vulnerable creatures often assaulted. Exiled on an island for using magic against a romantic rival, Circe welcomed a group of lost sailors, whose captain raped her. This violation triggered Circe to change the crew into pigs.

Medusa used to be a beautiful woman but after she was raped by Neptune in Minerva’s temple, the goddess punished Medusa by turning her in the monster we know. Both women are rape survivors, who refused the passivity expected from their gender, and rose to become powerful avengers. Men feared them and deemed them monsters to vanquish.

My images represent the confusion, in-between the terror these women must have felt, and their subsequent rage. I am trying to make the viewer uncertain: is “the awakening of Medusa” show her being terrified - or terrifying? Are the backs depicted show vulnerability or impenetrability? My work encourages the viewer to embrace our myths from our modern perspective. How do we understand these stories when we switch our gaze to a contemporary one? And how beautiful is it that the strength of these women survived millenniums to finally get understood!

This work is a first exploration on the topic. I intend to explore more of our foundation stories and including stories outside of the Greek ones. I was inspired by the art of Artemesia Gentileschi, a 17th century Italian baroque painter who revisited Christian stories with a female gaze. A perfect example is her painting “Susanna and the elders” from 1610.

Biography
Brooks Harris Stevens is an artist and Professor living in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She received her BFA in Fibers from Savannah College of Art and Design and an MFA in Textiles/Fibers from East Carolina University, School of Art and Design. Brooks is an interdisciplinary artist who focuses on creating work that reflects our human experiences deeply rooted in textiles. Her creative practice finds solace in the mending of cloth, land and the built environment as well as using her voice to highlight societal issues using textiles as a form of activism reflective of cultural and political complexities in the United States. She has lectured on textiles practices in Europe, Asia and the U.S. while exhibiting work in solo, group, and juried exhibitions nationally and internationally.

Recently, she had work in exhibitions at Echo Contemporary, Atlanta, Georgia, The Cultural Center of Cape Cod and at the QiPO Artfair in Mexico City, MX. Brooks has exhibited work in the following selected locations Textile Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Robert Hillestad Textile Gallery at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln Nebraska, Kent State Museum, Kent, Ohio, Frontviews Gallery in Berlin, Germany, Teshima Gallery in Paris, France, Textile Quilt Museum in San Jose, CA, New England Quilt Museum, and the Hangaram Museum in Seoul, South Korea. Harris Stevens maintains a dedicated artistic career working to expand her studio practice as she approaches making work that intertwines her personal history and challenges we face in the United States.

Artist Statement
In my latest work, Porch Talk, explores the misconceptions around sex, pregnancy and what body autonomy actually means has been wrought with lies, lack of ownership, gaslighting, holding the female body hostage front and center in the political realm. Born the same year as Roe v. Wade legalized a woman's right for privacy under the 14th Amendment, I stand today with less rights as a woman in the United States. I stand as a mother, friend, aunt, daughter, wife and advocate for women's rights fearing how long this nightmare will last. These pills were made in response to a story my mother told me on several occasions of how a friend's mother told a handful of her girlfriends how not to get pregnant in the early 1960's, " You hold an Aspirin between your knees". As I anxiously wait for the laws to make sense, I will make my "Aspirin" in support of my health, my daughter's health, niece, sister-in-law, students, friends and any other woman in the world to hold their body's as their own untethered from law or any other person.

Artist Statement
Formed from my erotic daydreams and fantasies, my painted ceramic vessels depict positive homoerotic sexuality as a form of activism. They both validate gay men and advocate for the acceptance of their sexuality. My forms mimic the historical artifacts of classical antiquity by depicting either historical daily events or by metaphor through a constructed mythos.

I create ceramic vessels that resemble amphorae, kraters, pyxi and pictorial plates from classical antiquity, and upon these vessels I paint homoerotic scenes discussing modern issues, acting as a cultural scribe. My subversive imagery undermines and criticizes Christian nationalism while portraying gay men sympathetically. By juxtaposing my strong love of craft with my sexually charged, irreverent subject matter I create art that is both humorous and sincere.

By placing present-day concepts of queerness in the medium of a pre-Christian civilization, I recontextualize the subjects involved and reclaim a lost history. Ceramics is an enduring medium, and as my work invites its viewer to imagine it as a relic of the past, it also invites the viewer to imagine what it might be like to view our own culture from millennia in the future.

Biography
Anna is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the intersection of technology, religion, and theater. Drawing from her religious upbringing, Anna weaves disquieting tension between beauty and deception as she explores the commodification of spirituality in a digital landscape. Anna holds a BFA in sculpture from the Maryland Institute of Art (MICA) and started out as a furniture maker. She has exhibited work nationally and internationally, most notably at MICA, Wilhem DeKooning School of Design, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, ArtFields, and Rattlesnake Art Foundation. She currently works at the Metropolitan Arts Council in Greenville, SC as the programs manager and gallery curator.

Artist Statement
cathedral.jpeg is a photograph of St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague that has been blurred and distorted to re-create the effect of light casting through its stained glass. The window is not here but the afterimage is, like a digital ghost. In my work, I aim to create tension between beauty and deception. In a religious sense, the desire to believe through disillusionment. I am interested in how beauty can exist outside the promises of utopia or divinity. Or how broken illusions can still hold great significance and awe.

Witnessing religion adapt into online spaces like streaming services, projecting holographic pastors, or holding mass in VR chat rooms, spiritual and digital realities have already converged. In exploring how technological and religious utopic desires mirror one another, both dream of everlasting life in their own cultural visions. Ideas of perfect societies are expressed through ideas of heaven or digital worlds, but at their core are simply critiques of the present rather than tangible futures. Attempts to build utopias inevitably reveal their artifice, exposing them as staged realities—props that gesture toward transcendence but ultimately serve as reminders of its impossibility.

Biography
Lucius Nelson is a South Carolina-based artist whose work delves into the surreal and often contradictory relationship between consumer culture, environmental vulnerability, and human resilience. Drawing on the methods and imagery of Renaissance art, Nelson’s oil paintings explore themes of beauty and decay, juxtaposing the high-class with the lowbrow in ways that are both thought-provoking and visually captivating. His practice reflects a deep concern for the climate crisis and the fragile ecosystems of the Southeast, especially South Carolina’s water resources.

Nelson began his art practice as a child, splitting his time between drawing comic books at night and taking studio art lessons by day. He earned a BA in Studio Art from the College of Charleston after studying Media Arts at the University of South Carolina. Following college, Nelson has dedicated himself to his painting practice, raising crops, and deepening his experience in Zen philosophy. His work has been recognized at major exhibitions, including the SC Biennial at 701 CCA, ArtFields in Lake City (where he won People’s Choice for Plein Air Painting), and the Festival of Flowers Juried Art Exhibit (Best in Show). His art reflects a commitment to addressing environmental issues with nuance and urgency, inviting viewers to consider the ways we coexist with our rapidly changing natural world. Nelson currently resides in Darlington, SC, where he continues to create art that bridges the personal and the ecological, the meditative and the urgent.

In late 2024, Nelson presented his solo show, Don’t It Feel Good?, at Park Circle Gallery, a decadent exploration of late-stage consumer culture, spiritual disconnection, and ecological strain. The show featured intricately executed oil portraits and plein-air paintings, the latter created on-site at public lands across South Carolina. These plein-air works, rooted in the immediacy of nature, counterbalance the surreal and fantastical elements of his portraiture and underscore his connection to the environment. This series emerged from his work as a recipient of the South Carolina Arts Commission Emerging Artist Grant and reflects his commitment to documenting and preserving the region’s natural beauty.

Artist Statement
Madonna of the Pee Dee (after Raphael) reimagines Raphael’s 1506 masterpiece Madonna of the Meadow. In his original work, Raphael depicts the myth of Mary, Jesus, and John the Baptist. A tiny lil’ John the Baptist offers Jesus a cross, foreshadowing the crucifixion. Mary gazes on in sublime acceptance, her hands both stabilizing and perhaps gently restraining Jesus. In this moment, Raphael hints at Mary’s profound humanity as a mother.

Through his visual language, Raphael achieves a miracle of contradictions. His style is delicate and soft, yet it alludes to impending violence. Mary’s physicality conveys both serene acceptance and subtle protectiveness. The natural setting feels simultaneously familiar and transcendent.

Living in South Carolina, we are immersed in the kind of contradictions Raphael revealed. This is a land of gentle people who should not be underestimated. It is a place celebrated for its natural beauty and freedom, yet one you traverse under the shadow of billboards pushing food scarcity and threatening you with Judgment. In a time of mounting climate consequences, our state’s sacred waterways have taken on a new psychological presence as rising waters encroach on once-secure ground.

My painting builds on Raphael’s original by amplifying the discomfort permeating our contemporary landscape. With trust in religion and institutional systems eroded, being human today can feel like a lonely exercise in self-preservation. Meanwhile, the pervasive influence of capitalism and its media infiltrates our mental landscapes, burdening us with tools of fear, vanity, and escapism.

Despite this weight of impending doom, my Madonna embodies mixed but hopeful perseverance. There is solace in the softness of her form, her faint smile, and her gentle yet guarded demeanor. Her landscape, though overgrown with the excesses of civilization, still offers flowers, pastures, and—perhaps—soft rains. The hope my painting seeks to evoke is one of positive Revelation. Awareness of societal ills is the first step toward transformation—toward a people becoming their own Messiahs. Here, Judgment Day is not a threat of mystical and unthinkable Hell but an invitation to Reason.

Biography
Eleanor Ingrid Rose is a sculptor, metalworker, and tool maker with a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from UW-Madison. Using scale, the body, architecture and liminal space, she dives into the innate horror of existing as a transwoman in America. Eleanor has been crafting tools to make tools to make art for more than ten years. This journey has turned her into a specialist in casting, machining, and a chaotic array of other skills.

Artist Statement
The central component to my practice is the exploration of queerness, transness, and horror. My sculptural jewelry draws on motifs from gothic literature, cinematic horror, and liminality alongside themes of psychological trauma, memory, and the uncanny. These conceptual elements merge with materials traditionally associated with elegance and high craft—polished metal, gemstones, and enamel—to create visual tension that straddles the line between beauty and the grotesque.

This interplay extends beyond traditional jewelry design into how I conceptualize bodily interaction and form. Wearable ornamentation and architecture typically serve as structures that surround the body, providing adornment and protection while defining actions within them. Conversely, my current work reimagines jewelry as architecture that has the body and gesture exerted upon it, reversing the typical paradigm. This shift not only challenges typical notions of space and interaction but also aligns with the subversion of boundaries central to my existence as a queer woman and artist. By intentionally evoking disorientation and discomfort my work compels viewers to confront their assumptions and implicit biases.

By embracing the unsettling, I reclaim the power that the world often seeks to exert over me as a queer woman. My work reflects how queerness and transness intersect with themes of and the uncanny, compelling viewers to inhabit an unfamiliar or unwelcome space. To that end, my studio practice fosters a cultural dialogue around identity, transformation, and misplaced societal fears. This validates my personal history and challenges perceptions of beauty, power, and existence.

Biography
Born in Greenville to Catholic Ecuadorian immigrant parents, Nic attended the Fine Arts Center. I was also part of the Questbridge program but was always split on leaving my parents and staying close or fulfilling some vicarious dream for them farther away. With the support of the Fine Arts Center community, I ended up committing to Macalester College (2018-2022), where I graduated with a BFA in Art History and American Studies, as well as a minor in Education. 

Artist Statement
Artistically, I center my own ancestral history, story-telling, and radical dreams to imagine an ideal world and to question our current one.

As an Art Historian, I make work to join the bigger conversations surrounding colonialism/post- colonialism. I draw inspiration from everywhere, but Coco Fusco’s writing and Ana Mendieta’s performances have critically informed my own work. As Latina women, I empathize with how they respond to violence, especially in instances perpetuated by white men (and the sometimes the same white man, Carl Andre). Through my own work, I hope to find and embody that same resilience.

Currently, I explore the theme of loving despite, drawing from Butler’s Precarious Life and Surrealist thinking. My identity (queer, Latinx, and female, among other identities that have shifted throughout the year) and the tenuous relationship with my mother have been crucial factors in creating my own beliefs about love. I have used creation as a purging process and would like to have a space where I can create with safety, as I currently live with my parents. Although I could argue that all my work has been made out of love in retrospect (love for the environment, love in highschool, love for my ancestral history), I would use this opportunity to hone in on moments where love has felt precarious and loving despite the conditions and environment. With the current year and the overall history of education (especially education in the South), I embody my own theme that I have set for myself (precarious love and hope). I have seen a lot of love and hope in both my work environment and my own life.

Biography
Jackson Shaner was born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina. He received his BA in Studio Art at Furman University in 2022, where he also completed a teaching fellowship in ceramics. Jackson has spent several years working as a production potter, and he spent a year teaching pottery classes at Hollowed Earth Pottery. After completing an artist residency at the New Harmony Clay Project, Jackson was accepted into graduate school at the University of South Carolina. Currently, Jackson lives and work in Columbia, SC, pursuing his MFA and teaching ceramics at UofSC.Statement:

Artist Statement
In my work, I explore interactions with strong emotions and how they are held within the body. I find that emotional experiences often somaticize physical symptoms like tension, discomfort, or even pain. I often reflect on these felt experiences and attempt to make them tangible. My studio practice allows me to create space for my emotions, process them, express their sensorial effects, and explore facets of my identity in a cathartic and healing way.

My Escape Jars explore themes of emotional containment and compartmentalization. They act as metaphors for how we can choose to interact with our emotions: We can either bottle them up and hold them in, or we can take the lid off, let things out, and allow ourselves to be vulnerable. Over the past year, I have noticed myself holding in strong waves of emotions linked to loss and grief. But growing up as a gay man in the South, I have always contained parts of myself as an act of self-preservation in a political environment in which I often feel unwelcome.

I hope that my use of constrictive imagery creates a haunting quality with a mystery as to what lies inside. With visual traces of Pandora’s Jar, I want to create a timeless quality that references ancient narratives. By merging the ancient with my own contemporary practice and meaning, I hope to convey that humans have always struggled with emotional conflict; thus, letting the self-contained know that they are not alone.

Biography
Brad Silk (b. 1984, Danvers, MA, USA) is a figure and portrait artist based in Taylors, South Carolina and is the curator for this exhibition. Working primarily in oil paintings and ceramic builds, Silk’s work draws heavily from mythology and art history, serving as a powerful medium to celebrate the Queer community's resilience, strength, and beauty. Silk explores themes of identity, transformation, and narrative through their art, embedding historical and mythological references to evoke a sense of timelessness and cultural continuity.

Artist Statement
My work celebrates Queer bodies as resilient, strong, and inherently beautiful, aiming to foster empathy and appreciation for the diversity of experiences. By centering these narratives within the frameworks of mythology and art history, I create a corrective dialogue that reclaims visibility for marginalized individuals and asserts their rightful place in our shared cultural consciousness.

Rooted in a solid understanding of anatomy and traditional methods, my practice bridges the classical and the contemporary, blending historical reverence with a bold, personal perspective. I draw inspiration from classical figures and mythologies, challenging the notion that non-conforming identities are new and situating them as an enduring and integral part of human history. This juxtaposition underscores the universality and timelessness of these identities while offering a visual testament to the strength of marginalized communities.

In a time of increasing global conservatism—marked by threats to bodily autonomy, restrictive legislation, and divisive ideologies—my work provides a space for reflection, resistance, and hope. Through both painting and sculpture, I weave atypical narratives into familiar historical and mythological contexts, challenging the confines of heteronormativity and the binary. This effort not only pushes societal boundaries but also advocates for a more inclusive and equitable world, emphasizing the unifying power of Queer stories and their ability to inspire empathy and cultural evolution.

Biography
Lindsay Smith Gustave lives and works in Greenville, SC. A multidisciplinary artist, she frequently utilizes objects found or inherited from family–beads, vessels, and figurines–and explores connections with those common objects to preserve relationships with family and depict the intergenerational lineage of inherited traits like trauma, mental illness, beliefs in social institutions, cultural constructs, and norms. Explorations of specific moments, vague memories, and the stories we tell ourselves challenge the division between past and present experience. Gustave was awarded a Master's in Art History and received a BFA with Honors, both from the University of Denver. She has exhibited in Germany, Colorado, Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee. She served as a member and Co-Director of the artist-run curatorial collective, Tiger Strikes Asteroid Greenville. She is currently an adjunct professor at Furman University.

Artist Statement
My work expresses the remnants of daily existence through visual artifact. I explore connections with common objects, found or inherited from family, to preserve relationships and depict the intergenerational lineage of traits like trauma, mental illness, beliefs in social institutions, cultural constructs, and norms. Collective memory is represented through images gleaned from the mundane, pop culture, and especially visual elements used throughout the history of art. These images function as connectors of place, memory, and stories that endure beyond a specific time and serve as a reminder of how they subconsciously construct our realities. My work explores how these reinterpretations offer a shift in our understanding of social institutions, cultural constructs, inherited norms, and our own related identity.

Project Statement
In my current body of work, I explore the persistence of ancient mythologies in connection to contemporary political agendas and societal perspectives on gender dynamics. The roots of democracy, as embraced by some, lie in the stories of Greece and the Roman Empire. The appropriation of these foundational narratives not only laid the groundwork for the shaping of modern Western nations, notably the United States, but also entrenched gender dynamics that, although outdated, persist today.

I draw upon art historical imagery and tropes depicting these myths to explore their relevance in our current era. My work questions how these age-old myths can be applied to present-day contexts and how they perpetuate these destructive narratives. Through themes of death, grief, rebirth, and reinterpretation, I seek to challenge accepted norms of dominance and the narratives that continue to define us while I encourage the creation of new mythologies better suited to our contemporary reality.

Biography
Joseph Smolin, born in Birmingham, AL, is a painter and multimedia artist. He has shown work in numerous spaces around the SouthEast. His duo show with Virginia Russo, Invisible Planet, was created for the main gallery at the Greenville Center for Creative Arts. He also worked with Griffin Cordell to create NO SLEEP THEME PARK, an interactive and immersive art exhibition that debuted in the Metropolitan Arts Council Gallery. He co-founded and contributes to the nonprofit art magazine Rattlesnake, which aims to highlight a diverse set of underground voices living in the South. When he’s not painting, Smolin takes pride in building community as a curator, live painter, and teacher. He currently lives and works in Greenville, SC

Artist Statement
My work focuses on warping and reframing cultural myths and archetypes, primarily the symbols of Western Christianity and American television. Through this work I aim to create new readings of our most commonplace cultural narratives. Readings that challenge power and question the moral hegemony implicit in American imperialism.

REAL LIFE ANGEL II & REAL LIFE ANGEL III
Ezekiel’s infamous vision of the ophanim, or many-eyed angels, begins: I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was human, but each of them had four faces and four wings. Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. (Ezekiel 1:4-8)

In REAL LIFE ANGEL II and REAL LIFE ANGEL III, I borrow both from Ezekiel and from the image of a spiralling dragon, embracing the otherworldly nature and power of these symbols. Each of Ezekiel’s angels had four faces: that of a human, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. There are similarly chimeric visions of dragons in art history, such as St. Michael killing the Dragon by Josse Lieferinxe and Saint George and the Dragon by Raphael, where the dragon has the head of an eagle, lion, or other animal. In these paintings I’m interested in exploring chaos, knowledge, and human limitations around knowing and judgement. I’m interested in subverting the contemporary American stereotype of angels as peaceful children, nice guys, and other benign figures. The angels I depict instead serve as a warning to those with power who would use it irresponsibly, those who see but do not understand.

Childhood Landscape #1
This piece is heavily inspired by the folk art tradition. It seeks to build a private mythology around my childhood and family history. The burning church is a reference to a piece of family history on my mother’s side. The story goes that our Scottish family clan, the Clan Moffat, was locked inside their church one Sunday morning by a rival clan and burned alive. Afterwards, the remaining members adopted the motto: Spero meliora (I hope for better things). My great-grandmother, who I knew as a child, had a tartan with this motto stitched into it. This story connected with my sense as a child that my family was uniquely cursed in some way. The lack of a door on the church is a reference to The Church at Auvers by Van Gogh. For Gogh, the lack of an entrance was most likely symbolic of his rejection from the priesthood. In Childhood Landscape #1, the intention was to speak to a sense of being trapped both inside and outside the church. My father is Jewish, but converted to Calvinist Christianity before I was born. I was raised in a tiny Presbyterian church, but still participated in Jewish traditions. There was conflict and distrust between the two sides of my family in regards to the religious and cultural conflicts at hand. Also pictured in this piece are a triad of horned sperm, a reference to shame around sexuality, a weeping cow in reference to my biblical namesake’s dream interpretation to the Pharaoh, and a depiction of Satan as a snake with an exposed brain.

Judgement Day Show and Tell
This piece is a reframing of the Last Judgement, as stated in the book of revelation: And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works. Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire. (Revelation 20:11-15) As a child I was often anxious about how exactly I would justify my misdeeds when it was “my turn” at the last judgement. This piece finds equal parts humor and dread at the idea of having to morally justify your life in front of God and Humanity as an anxious classroom presentation expanded to cosmic levels.

Nite Flite
In Nite Flite a devil-cherub rides a dragon-wolf through a night landscape made of a kind of chalkboard of alchemical scribbles. This painting investigates technological progression and its human cost. The imp’s angelic wings drip as if melting, like those of Icarus. Drawings on cardboard hang from the canvas of three figures: a man in a depression-era hat, a robot, and the man again, this time farther away, as if leaving.

Biography
Leah Smolin is an artist, writer, and curator. She serves as Editor-in-Chief of the art magazine Rattlesnake and recently curated the exhibitions Velvet Air for Warehouse Theatre and Creature After Me for Tiger Strikes Asteroid. You can read her story “The Hundred Year Period” online in X-R-A-Y Magazine.

Artist Statement
Choices (Sonnets I-IV), inspired by Raymond Queneau’s 1961 book, A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, is an interactive sculpture made from an infinity cube—a toy that was mass-produced in the 80s and 90s. On each of the 48 individual faces there is one line from a set of sonnets, written to be interchangeable and create multiple poems through different combinations. The poems contemporize the legend of Faust as recent and recurring in the context of greed and exploitation carried out by individuals, corporations, governments, churches, and schools.

Outcasts and children abandoned are referenced in the form of Ishmael and Dionysus (through his tutors, the Hyades) along with Faust and Margaretta’s unholy child. These children are the protagonists of this reimagined tragedy. Nótt, the Norse goddess of night, and her horse, Hrímfaxi, observe human folly from above, while the Pleiades bring rain without looking down. These celestial figures suggest hope in times of death and suffering.

The represented poems (Sonnet I - Sonnet IV line 9) in their original order:

Sonnet I

The King of Cash wears silk and blackened grease
So the baby bull’s horns will grow
Rough puff pastry has piled under the eaves
Magazine pages fall apart in rêves beaux
I miss the days you and I were at ease
The doctor takes us to a river of bordeaux
Our legs were bare in the December freeze
We pretended to belong in the metro
I went for a walk with the buckshot
The boy who gathered thistles soon forgot
A gaucho brought out gifts for the manic queen:
A magnificent walnut grandfather clock,
Spanish idols, white and baroque,
And a fossilized jaw from the late Eocene.

Sonnet II

Here is Margaretta and Mephistopheles
Here is your mirror, I want you to know
It’s about this time your personality cleaves
He whistles when he carries his crossbow
Hrímfaxi, crossing the sky, froths dew on the leaves
You roll on the bed “like a bear to its floe”
Commercials play across a hundred TVs
You, poor thing, have the grip of a galago
Faust tucked himself into necromancy’s knot
Gold is heaped under watchful Nótt
From the museum, many things were stolen, unseen:
A thousand pounds of metamorphic rock
One stuffed secretary bird, tall and mid-squawk
Friend, I found the path. So down we careen.

Sonnet III

Ishmael folds a pack of cigarettes in his shirtsleeves
At port, a cherry hovers in the black, aglow.
He married a princess with Christmas disease
Cue my aestivation on the archipelago
Go predict the rains by the Pleiades
We take off our sandals before stepping in your shadow
Thousands were once stranded on this island’s parentheses
You read how to grow your own tobacco.
The conquered become conquerors; souls are traded to rot
Sailors tip their hats back, neutrally chewing qat
You exhibit your things bought on the QVC
Shark and eel and mackerel, smoked
A few achondroplastic dogs, a Pembroke
Yawls sail around lobster towns. They’re collecting, collecting.

Sonnet IV

At five o’clock, it’s a hundred degrees
You are never afraid to lend or to borrow
The pinch runner attempts a suicide squeeze
With the spring came two calves and a farrow
The wind rocks the blade over Damocles
We chew acacia gum, safe in our hollow
Look up at the mothering Hyades
Ghosts of firemen run by the mongoose burrow
Don’t break rules if you intend to get caught.

Biography
Duvall Winns (b.1995) is a multi-disciplinary contemporary artist- based out of Columbia. born and raised in SC. Driven by a passion for exploring the depths of contemporary portraiture, [Duvall] finds profound inspiration in the enigmatic allure of yellow hues. Working primarily with acrylics on wood panel, [Duvall]'s artistry transcends conventional boundaries, capturing the essence of humanity through striking compositions.

Each stroke on the wood panel serves as a testament to [Duvall]'s meticulous craftsmanship and unwavering dedication to storytelling. The choice of yellow men as subjects adds a layer of symbolism, inviting viewers into a realm where color becomes a narrative in itself—a vibrant expression of emotions, experiences, and cultural reflections.

[Duvall]'s journey as an artist is marked by a relentless pursuit of authenticity and a deep-rooted curiosity for the human form. Through the interplay of light, shadow, and the distinct texture of wood, each portrait emerges as a unique dialogue between tradition and innovation, inviting viewers to contemplate the complexities of identity and perception.

His approach of inviting viewers to connect their own emotions with his artwork, seeing them as memories and elements of identity, is powerful. It suggests an intention to create not just visually striking pieces, but ones that resonate on a personal and emotional level with those who engage with them.