Inspired by magical realism, the Decadent movement, and surrealism, my paintings range in subject from the onceglorious but now dilapidated buildings of Baltimore to imagery that explores the complexity of Nagasaki, Japan. I also make figurative work that investigates ideas of transformation, identity, subversive behavior, and the individual’s place in society.

In highly developed nations today there is a widespread alienation and loneliness that engenders fear and distrust, a restrictive self-righteousness of thought, and a dread of what-comes-next that has created broken societies. This can be traced back to a number of factors: racial discrimination and fear of fading privilege; growing wealth gaps; an increasingly inhospitable natural world; technological advancement surpassing our capacity to adjust.

In my practice, I explore accessible materials, primarily from the domestic context, by reimagining the ways in which they are commonly used as consumer products: I use house paint mostly through it's disposal. As a result, I began to consider our larger relationship to material consumption and the incontinent exchange we forge in this relationship. I am driven by the potential of this material to transform into an art object.

Robin Jayne Henderson is a mixed-media artist with an archival impulse. It is important to note that this impulse is not about scientific sorting and classifying, but about the childhood habit of keeping treasures in a shoebox under the bed. It is about finding wonder in the everyday detritus of life. She is a collector of castoffs: objects, images, and indexical marks left behind in the world.

When I lived in New York, I made paintings that took the form of shaped sculptural paintings and paper constructions and had to do with geometry, flatness, and dimensionality. When I accepted an R1 Research University position at the University of South Florida in 2015, I unexpectedly began working with clay. My new work is a direct extension of the previous paintings and paper constructions, and embodies my journey from New York to Florida and to Turkey, where my husband is from. I think of these ceramic works as shaped paintings.

Round wooden forms and a wonky sense of humor distinguish Kyle Falzone’s work as playful and inviting, while their seamless construction tells also of his intentional precision in craftsmanship. Crisply painted starbursts and radiating lines pair with organic dark woods in cryptic abstraction with a unique sense of character.

I chose migrancy because it privileges movement and process, in both space and time, over stability and fixity.

Shapeshifters: bold, brave, and fearless beings able to change their physical form at will. Nonfictional and mythical figures who assume different forms, often, but not always, as acts of survival. Synonyms: Spirit, Love, La Mujer Salvaje, Black folk, Blackness, Womanness—particularly Black Womanness.

I often hear from observers of my work that they resemble “weavings” or “tapestries,” and, in fact, the many lines do act like “threads” that have intertwined themselves on the paper just as the threads of cloth do in a textile product.

I embrace improvisation and negation as I engage with seemingly insignificant details. By formulating strategies within my process, my work becomes a continuation of the resilience and innovation of African diasporic people. I look to call-and-response, poetry, and various forms of communication as a protective sensibility. I honor this sensibility while recontextualizing familiar media such as drawings, paintings, prints, performance, and video. I mine my own experience and relationship with history and media as a suggestion for viewers to take on their own investigations.