Opening: Material Message

Material Message
On view: September 26–October 19, 2025
Opening reception: Friday, September 26, 5:00-7:00 pm

Across a variety of mediums including clay, wood, scrap, various types of paint, found objects, antique dolls and earth, Material Message seeks to demonstrate how artists use personal connections to their mediums to inform their artwork.

At first glance an artwork usually reads as a representation or an expression of imagination, while at the same time there is also a physical reality of some sort, quietly existing in space and time. The physical aspects have a specific history, and structural aspects can have unique physical characteristics not apparent at first, but still adding or making meaning.

For example, painter Lori Schappe-Youens embeds African soil from her adopted homeland into paint. Aris Georgiades is reassembling barn wood and trim from the rural area in Wisconsin where he lives, while Ginnie Cappaert engages in “slow art” by choosing materials that force her to work at a more contemplative pace.

Other artists in the exhibition include Stacey Hardy, working in clay and ephemera, Oliver Polzin who is obsessed with gouache, Ernst Gruler who repurposes and remanipulates his materials to showcase their integrity, Blair Vaughn-Gruler, for whom paint is an ointment, and Christopher Willit-Crane who is literally bringing new life (and a new wardrobe) to broken and abandoned dolls from the last century.

With Material Message, Materiality celebrates the diversity of how we all make meaning in artwork, and in life.