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The Shortest Distance Between Two Points: Wilson Commons at 50 Years

Dates: March 26 - April 9, 2026 

Artist Statement:

Every Absence

Artist: Diana Jean Puglisi
Dates: February 5 - March 9, 2026 

Artist Statement:

Dirty Laundry

Artist: Cary Adams, Stephanie Ashenfelder, Joshua Enck, Aaron Delehanty, Heather Layton, Evelyne Leblanc-Roberge, Mizin Shin, Allen Topolski, Aster Topolski-Diaz, Emily Tyman & Renee Yu Jin
Dates: November 6, 2025 - January 26, 2026 

Interiors

Artists: Dustin Paden & Madylan Coleman
Dates: September 19 - October 24, 2025

Artist Statement

You’re invited in. Literally and figuratively, Paden and Coleman use projection and distortion to personify objects in the home. These objects become an intimate and vulnerable visual language to investigate the past and present. They recite moments of connection and disconnection, seeking catharsis through their production. The work debates itself: what do we reveal and what do we obscure? How do we filter? Through manipulation of found and familiar artifacts, they shine light on the unsaid, and hope you’ll exit with newfound connection.

Dana Sherwood

Artists: Dana Sherwood
Dates: February 27- March 28, 2025

Artist Statement

This exhibition of painting, sculpture and video unite around the interwoven ideas of ecology, ecofeminism and mythology in the age of the Anthropocene in order to reimagine these stories in relation to our planet and its current ecological and social crises. The mythology that has been passed down for millennia, that we hold deep in western consciousness, is a narrative of the dominant voice of conquering powers. I am interested in a different story, a story of the Other, one gleaned by listening to the plants and the animals in order to hear their tales and garner messages from their subtle voices. Anchoring the installation will be a new video collaboration with forest animals eating from ceramic vessels reminiscent of classical amphora or kraters in a woodland clearing. For the past decade, a large part of my practice has been to spend time in “the field”, crafting elaborate banquets for the non-human inhabitants living in our midst, and filming the feast on infrared video. Each night, while filming, I am presenting offerings to the natural world that build connection and companionship via the act of breaking bread. This video marks the first time I am offering the feast within the sculptural form. My video and the companion paintings and sculpture weave the stories together, crafting, retelling, and sharing rituals and mythologies, to investigate new ways of “staying with the trouble”. The ceramic sculptures, reminiscent of ancient vessels used to contain food and drink, and here, offered to the animals of the forest, record use in the form of wear and tear, cracks and fractures, in turn becoming relics that have been touched by them. The resulting exhibition creates a multisensory wonderland experience of sound, video, and image. Alongside traditional practices of painting, sculpture and video, the creation of this work relies upon intuitive, magical and ancestral practices that aim to reorganize and reinvent myth and folklore in a way that begins to create a new conversation and connection with the more than human world.

Sex/Labor

Artist: Antonia Crane, Barbara Nitke, Chichi Castillo, Sasha Waters Freyer, Alyssa Wood, Weixin Zhuang, Katina Bitsicas, Lena Chen, Maggie Oates, David Kim, and Emily Broad
Exhibition Dates: November 21 - December 18, 2024

Artist Statement

When describing the feminism of Lizzie Borden's Working Girls (1986);as defined against her two preceding films Regrouping (1976) and Born in Flames (1983) the critic So Mayer commented:Feminism itself has been curtailed, and made newly urgent, by the need to work within capitalism. Sex/Labor was conceived of in the spirit of Borden's Working Girls, which traces the everyday activities that occur across a day in the life of sex workers. This exhibition brings together contemporary art that elaborates on Borden's depiction of sex work as a job taken up to pay rent, put food on the table, and make art.

The artworks featured in Sex/Labor;made by Antonia Crane, Barbara Nitke, Chichi Castillo, Sasha Waters Freyer, Alyssa Wood, Weixin Zhuang, Katina Bitsicas, Lena Chen, Maggie Oates, David Kim, and Emily Broad;represent both the physical and emotional forms of labor that sex work entails. This labor is constituted by: exhaustion, establishing boundaries, moments of joy and play, and kinship with clients and fellow sex workers that extend beyond the nuclear family. This exhibition does not claim to fully capture all the complexities of sex as a form of labor. Rather, it proposes three things. First, that the history of sex work has a clear significance in contemporary visual culture. Second, its significance can be found in Rochester's local history. The Portable Channel Archive, managed by the Visual Studies Workshop, documents the sex industry's presence in Rochester's downtown area in the 1970s. And third, that the sex workers' rights movement is an urgent matter of our time that relates to larger complications in the distribution of wealth and labor in late capitalism. In a moment when many of us struggle to buy groceries and pay our bills, the decriminalization of sex work could herald a new era for understanding how we work to live.

Thank you to our generous sponsors: The Humanities Center Project; The Little Theater; The Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies; The Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women Studies; The Hartnett Gallery; Visual Studies Workshop; and the Departments of Art and Art History, Anthropology, English, Film and Media Studies, and Health Humanities and Bioethics

Hold Still Life

Artist: Eric LoPresti
Exhibition Dates: September 26 - October 18, 2024

Artist Statement

Eric LoPresti graduated from the Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ with a BA in Cognitive Science and received his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. His exhibit hold-still-life features a mixture of paintings and video art and deals with imagery from America's deserts. Playing off the artistic term "still-life," LoPresti explores how oftentimes "static" scenes may not always sit as still as they appear to be.

Time Tripper

Artists: Alex Pixley Young
Dates: March 7 - March 30, 2024

Artist Statement

Nature is a shifting concept defined and redefined by the culture and time that writes, observes, documents, pollutes, builds, and burns it. The politics of visual culture expand as we experience the trauma and sublimity of our world amplified by media. In the 21st century, the skyline of dying industrial technologies gives way to newer technologies from cell phone towers to solar and wind farms. Today our wilderness is cultivated, engineered, bounded and bordered. Our interest in understanding nature is often constrained to media screens and the poles of beauty or terror; where we swing wildly from blissed-out imagery of travel log sites to the never-ending news of oil spills, deforestation, wildfires, tsunamis, and floods. Yet, from the primal to political, haptic to hallowed, landscape is the void, the space, and the ever-thrumming vibration of life that moves us forward. In Time Tripper, Alice Pixley Young uses the confines of darkness and the art of shadowplay as a timeless medium, capable of weaving narratives that stretch across epochs. Time Tripper invites viewers to embark on a journey through deep time, where shadows cast echoes of primordial landscapes, contemporary realities, and future uncertainty. Yet, the scene she pulls us into is seductive in its dreamlike state and the primal elements of shadows draw viewers in to become complicit actors in her world.

Merging Dimensions

Artists: Anna Reed
Dates: January 25 - February 19, 2024

Artist Statement

"Merging Dimensions," invites viewers to consider the intricate relationship between technology and humanity, focusing specifically on the transformative impact of social media and personal devices. Through digital photographs, mixed media artworks, and assemblages, this collection explores how these ever-present digital companions shape our identities, relationships, and perceptions of self.

Employing her own body, Anna Reed interrogates the boundaries of personal and digital spaces, challenging the notion of the "self" in an increasingly interconnected world. Mixed media assemblages seamlessly blend tactile elements with digital components, blurring the lines between the physical and virtual realms. These artworks act as visual metaphors, reflecting the complexity of our contemporary existence and the fluctuating nature of our digital lives.

Digital photographs, captured through low-tech devices, create intimate moments where technology and humanity converge. Vivid color and fragmented images both draw the viewer in and obscure information. They evoke emotions of connection, isolation, closeness, and vulnerability, prompting us to question which of our versions of self are complete. "Merging Dimensions" invites viewers to reflect on the effects of social media on mental health, privacy, and interpersonal relationships. The exhibition provokes conversations about the privacy of personal data, personal agency, and the nebulous boundaries of our digital identities.

Mortals and Gods

Artists: Benjamin Entner
Dates: October 6 - November 2, 2023

Artist Statement

I create works that are the result of play or experimentation, and that range conceptually with my
many interests: children’s literature, Classical sculpture, fire, Roman history, Michelangelo,
patterns, sea life. Often the only constant is the importance placed on an imperfect and obsessive
craft, whether seen or not, and a sarcastic sense of humour. Additionally, within the gravitas of
the art space, I often try to inspire a childlike nostalgia and wonder by engaging the viewer with
an object or environment that is fun, funny, playful, awesome, and/or rad.

Recapturing Nostalgia

Artists: Sarah Woodams
Dates: April 17 - April 28, 2023

Artist Statement

Sarah Woodams is a photographer and graphic designer based in Rochester, New York. She attends the URochester, majoring in Studio Arts and Environmental Studies as well as minoring in Digital Media Studies, and Sustainability. She is also a Take Five Scholar studying Gendery, Sexuality and Society and will graduate in May 2024.With an academic background in the environment and a passion for the outdoors, Woodams focuses primarily on landscape photography and utilizes her graphic design skills through her marketing job with Facilities Team Green at the University. Her work has been featured in group shows in the Hartnett Gallery and AS/IS in Sage Art Center.

Sarah Woodams’ work explores her relationship with the world around her through digital photography and graphic design. She spent her childhood exploring Rochester’s many greenspaces with her family, leading to a great appreciation of the outdoors. With a major in Environmental Studies and a longtime passion for history and the natural environment, Woodams focuses primarily on landscape photography and capturing unique perspectives. Her graphic design work takes a more informational approach, creating brochures, park posters, and incorporating text into photographs and collages. Both aspects of her practice allow Woodams to return to what she grew up with and gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of her home in Greater Rochester.

Recapturing Nostalgia features landscape photographs of locations along the Erie Canal, a place closely tied to her childhood spent outdoors with her family, and a booklet featuring writings connected to each spot. Woodams uses a drone to capture previously unseen points of view, inaccessible with her camera on the ground. These new angles reveal shapes within the landscapes, heavily influencing her image composition and revealing that art is everywhere when you start looking for it. The booklet contextualizes the photos for the viewer, allowing them to better understand Woodams’ childhood connections and hopefully think back to their own memories.

Pulling on Strings

Artists: Emma Bentley
Dates: April 17 - April 28, 2023

Artist Statement

Emma Bentley is a multidisciplinary artist whose primary focus lies in prints and textiles. The many transitions she has experienced in her life, from her time living in Florida, Hawaii, North Carolina, Alaska, and Oregon, have shaped her art practice. She is currently a senior student at the URochester, where she is pursuing both a B.S. in General Biology and a B.A. in Studio Arts. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at Frontispace Gallery and ASIS Gallery at the URochester.

Emma Bentley struggles to identify as an artist. Her academic pursuits have driven her in various directions. As a results-oriented individual, she pursues experiences outside of the studio with a specific outcome in mind. In her practice, Bentley uses a multidisciplinary approach to examine her process of making art. By concentrating on the art of creation rather than the result, she is able to be present in the moment and immersed in her thoughts, something she has not found in other areas of her life. This is what gravitates her toward making art. Bentley’s works rely on materiality, frequently incorporating personal symbols and consistently invites the viewer to explore their pieces under their own interpretation.

Pulling on Strings is motivated by Bentley’s desire to maintain control and follows her development of learning to relinquish oneself to uncertainty. Growing up as a part of a military family, she constantly moved around and had little autonomy in future transitions. She is exhausted by the overwhelming feeling of constantly needing to be in control. To reduce cognitive dissonance, she takes action to lessen the magnitude of her incessant need for order. By concentrating on the act of making rather than the end-product lends itself in Bentley’s practice of disengaging from being in a position of control. The use of strings is labor intensive and requires Bentley to focus on the process in which she surrenders oversight into the results. The various printmaking techniques Bentley uses provides her with different degrees of authority over the resulting prints. With CMYK printing, the process is highly regulated and produces identical prints which allows her to have power over the final prints. In contrast, collagraph prints are profoundly variable which provides Bentley with less regulation over the resulting print. These mixed-media works embody Bentley's introspective reflection through embedded personal information and scale. This new approach to minimize authority over the results documents her progress made in renouncing control over the outcome, both artistically and personally.

In/Traction

Artists: Trey Duvall
Dates: February 2 - February 25, 2023

Artist Statement

IN/TRACTION continues Trey Duvall’s examination into underlying absurdities of doing and non-doing. The exhibition features a single, gallery wide kinetic work from the IN/TRACTION series that will unfold over the four week exhibition period. This durational installation will be running continuously and in sustained tension, with each movement or action isolated in time by the extraordinarily slow speed of the installation. Work in the exhibition is simply ongoing, with the effects of the gesture residing in expectation, projection, or anticipation of motion. Duvall’s practice is driven by a desire to examine our relationship with agency, futility, and absurdity. The situations, objects, and gestures presented by his practice facilitate an uneasy and ongoing negotiation between concepts of actualization or achievement and the disconnects in our collective desire to create permanence. Trey Duvall received his Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Houston in 2017 and currently lives and works in Denver, Colorado. Duvall’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions including RedLine Contemporary Art Center, Denver CO, The University of Wyoming Art Museum, Rice University, Houston, TX, Triumph Gallery, Chicago, IL, Galerie des Beaux-Artes de Nantes, Nantes, France, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY. His work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Southwest Contemporary Art Magazine, The Denver Post, ABC News, the Houston Chronicle, and Art In America.

Finding Strangeness

Artists: Scott Espeseth
Dates: October 28 - November 19, 2022

Artist Statement

For Espeseth, drawing is about transparency, the most direct route from an idea to the paper. Watercolor pushes back on Espeseth’s obsessive tendencies, requiring Espeseth to make compromises, and not lose the forest for the trees. The drawings are inspired by chance encounters with objects, spaces, or events that trigger moments of clarity, where they suddenly appear to be intensely strange, or intensely beautiful. Espeseth attempts to stage these moments, either on site or in the studio, but inevitably ends up making changes. Through the process of careful setup and sustained looking, measuring, and drawing, Espeseth finds a new clarity in the act of making. The images are animated by a consciousness lurking in the atmosphere, as though the membrane between two worlds has worn thin. Espeseth’s subconscious seems to be trying to tell him something through the choices he makes in the studio, and he watches themes emerge, of memory, loss, change, and the fantastic. Scott Espeseth (b. 1975) earned an MFA in printmaking from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he worked with storied print artists such as Frances Myers and Warrington Colescott. His work has since evolved to focus mainly on drawing, usually with commonplace media such as graphite pencils and ballpoint pen. His drawings have been described as “clairvoyant,” often depicting familiar spaces charged with a sense of dark presence, or other instances where planes of existence clash: the future sending messages to the past, memory intruding upon the present, or the subconscious bleeding into consciousness. He has exhibited nationally, including solo exhibitions at the James Watrous Gallery of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, and Alcove Gallery in New York, NY, and numerous national and international group shows. Scott has been on the faculty of Beloit College since 2002 teaching all levels of drawing and printmaking.

socio-tecture

Artists: Grace Sachi Troxell
Dates: September 29 - October 22, 2022

Artist Statement

Socio-tecture addresses the relationship between building worlds and building selves. It takes a surrealist touch to make sense of our everyday lives - it’s a messy process of trial and error, bricolage, and appropriation. Socio-tecture touches on the labor and craft it takes to build identities which suit ourselves while revealing similar energy to conceive ethical spaces. At the root of the work lies an ongoing inquiry of the problems of individuality as perpetuated through capitalism. By exploring the similarities between ‘selves’ and ‘scapes’ the hope is to reveal the importance of relationships over narratives of autonomy or singularity. Sculptures included in the exhibition are made with this tectonic force in mind - they are collages of both material and genre. These works, whether wall hung or standing, reveal the similarities at the conceptual core of architecture, geologies, objects or culture. With reference to landscape production in art history, as well as ideas from human ecology and geo-humanism, this body of work explores the fraught nature of our everyday lives through the manipulation of construction materials, ceramic sculptures, and images. Owen Marc Laurion grew up in New Hampshire where he developed an early and broad interest in the arts and visual culture. Owen earned his BA from the Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ in Anthropology and Philosophy and later, his MFA in Sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute. Exhibiting nationally, Owen’s work has also been included in the permanent collection of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. A multi-discipline artist, Owen presented a Co-Lecture at NCECA 2018 titled “Seeking Ethical Craft” and has completed residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, The North Carolina Pottery Center, Starworks and the Iowa Ceramics Center and Glass Studio. Owen and his wife recently moved to Iowa City, IA and in Spring of 2023 Owen will be participating in a short term residency at the Red Lodge Clay Center in Red Lodge, MT

Potato Seance

Artists: Grace Sachi Troxell
Dates: September 29 - October 22, 2022

Artist Statement

Potato Séance is composed of sculptures in various states of growth and decay. Throughout the sculptures in this exhibition, there is a sense of fraught entanglement resulting from unexpected material collisions and collaborations as well as forms morphing into one another and coexisting according to different timescales. The other sculptures play with devices of hybridity through revealing and concealing their interior and exterior materials. These sculptures are robust, but to human scale. They take their form from vessels, but quickly diverge as they are made with steel rod armatures and a skin of clay on top of that. Within the sculptures there are rectangular plinths secretly and not so secretly acting as the physical cores. Fire Baby and Venus Ovulating are the only salt fired sculptures in the group. Similar to a belly button or kiln, Fire Baby is the origin story for the rest of the sculptures. The chartreuse is a mason stain mixed with frit, but the variations come from mica, avocado pits, cabbage, banana peels, one week’s worth of compost, as well as salt forming a bumpy clear “glaze” over the shell. This juxtaposition gestures toward a noncontinuous sense of time, one in which industrial and organic materials are learning to be at peace with each other and rely on one another. Grace Sachi Troxell is a sculptor based in Ithaca and Brooklyn, New York. In her current work she uses clay and found objects to explore entanglements between organic and inorganic materials, form and deformity, and digestion. She received a BS in Studio Art from Skidmore College, a Post-Graduate certificate in painting from the Glasgow School of Art, and her MFA from Cornell University. She has been artist in residence at MacDowell, Yaddo, Sculpture Space, the Studios at MASSMoCa, Woodstock Byrdcliffe, Willapa Bay AiR, The Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China, Dumfries House, Scotland, and The International Textile Art Symposium, Daugavpils Rothko Center, Latvia. She is a 2022-2023 artist in residence at Sharpe-Walentas in Brooklyn, NY. She teaches at Cornell University and Ithaca College