BLOOMINGTON– The Waldron Arts Center is excited to present four new shows in the galleries for February and March. In the Miller Gallery, Soulaf Abas presents a collection of paintings in her show, Linger. The paintings featured a range of mediums, from watercolors and pastels to oils. In each work, Abas focused on stilling herself until she became witness to her subjects, whether memories and observations or her psychological terrain. The works examine how grief can help us construct meaning and investigate loss in an emotional sense.
The Treasury and Vault Galleries will be filled with works from the show Local Phenomena by Emily Wilson Gillespie. Her colorful and playful landscapes feature a composite of Wilson Gillespie’s own memory, observation, and imagination of places she’s witnessed while living in the same 45-mile radius for most of her life. In each of these paintings, viewers will be given a moment of escape and encouragement to reflect on what places they find meaningful.
Inheritance, a show comprised of paintings from two series, Sky Paintings and Neoclassical Suite, hangs in the Spotlight Gallery. Here, artist Ben Pines invites us to reflect on our natural and cultural inheritances. The works portray skyscapes painted from imagination and memory and work based on nineteenth-century portrait sculptures, respectively. The separate series complement one another beautifully and work to create an atmosphere reminiscent of a light-filled European museum.
In the Educational Gallery, Katha Soens presents her show, Color Play. Soens uses techniques like cold wax, encaustics, and wood assemblage. These works are rich in texture and color. Each piece is a visual delight, bringing to mind natural occurrences like the horizon and the view through clear water and providing enough structure to feel grounded in reality while still being wholly abstract.
These four new shows will open with a reception during Gallery Walk on February 2 from 5-8 pm. There will be an additional reception during March’s Gallery Walk, March 1, from 5-8 pm
