AURA radiates in this astonishing exhibition at Kai Lin Art
featuring 21 female & non-binary artists
by Yu-Kai Lin, photos by Valentin Sivyakov
AURA is defined by Merriam-Webster as ‘a luminous radiation; an energy field held to emanate from a living being’.
In this collective of 21 female and non-binary art makers creating works that now adorn our gallery, we’ve assembled a talent of luminous artists investigating what it means to create in our contemporary landscape.
This gathering of generationally diverse and stylistically varied artists is broad in its scope. Examining aura through a vast spectrum of mediums - oil on canvas to ballpoint pen on paper, quilted fiber art to woodcut on fabric, cyanotype to lithography, watercolor on paper to acrylic on canvas, photographic collage to monoprint on cradled shaped canvas, glass mosaic tile to hand-built porcelain - this exhibit offers an alluring excess of eye-candy.
The exhibit begins with the adorably wise Westie with Voluminous Scarf {hand-built porcelain, copper leaf} by professor/sculptor Krista Grecco. This diminutive yet sturdy earth dog created to scale is irresistibly charming with it’s shaggy snout, perky pink-hued ears finished off with a cartoony bulbous copper scarf.
Equally as compelling are the two other pieces by Grecco, Leaping Rabbit {hand built, press molded porcelain, 23 karat gold leaf} which captures a bunny chasing four porcelain diamonds and a Whale {hand built porcelain, gold leaf} whimsically wafting across the wall.
Along the gallery entrance is Kaya Faery’s Be The Light and Catch A Fire {photography, wood, gold leaf, diamond dust}. These self portraits represent day and night, fragility and fire, balance and bloom. In Be The Light, Kaya explores self-care in the gentle brush of her dreadlocks as humming birds perch above a gold leaf halo. Complimentarily in Catch A Fire, Kaya quite literally holds fires in a gaze of confidence, with cat-like amethyst stalactite ears pointed toward the moonlight.
Lisa Hart’s Stone Mandala I, II {watercolor on Arches paper} are two radiantly meticulous drawings, symmetrically balanced in their beauty and repetitive presence. Shifting tones in each stone and vibrant celestial circles capture the counting days of life cycles.
Further along the exhibition we have Lisa Hart’s quadriptych works: Storks, Starling, Doves, and Geese Murmuration {watercolor, gouache, colored pencil}. These fantastical drawings of birds in mid-flight capture hundreds of flecks of swarming, swirling particles feathering across the deckled edges of the paper. They are as exacting as they are sublime.
Two silhouetted Moroccan sumaya (translation: high above, exalted) figure in Tracy Murrell’s Sumaya Moroccan Dreams I & II {High gloss enamel, terraskin paper, chiyogami papers, glass, resin on birch panel}. Patterned mosaics of glass and resin delicately dance atop layers of hand-cut patterned dresses in an overflowing cape of intricate forms. Murrell’s work is a mesmerizing dream for contemplation and meditation.
The three photographic works by Florida-native Mallory Brooks, Solo Palm, Pink Palm, and Rainbow Frond {35mm film photographic print on archival paper} are exotically delectable and tropically delicious. These palms stir the soul in their gleaming saturation and resplendent sensuality.
Growing up queer and black in the South has given Kiara Gilbert a unique perspective on culture as it relates to black diaspora, colonized narratives and reclamation of identity through ancestral linkages. The two works, Darn 2 and Pecan Season {woodcut print on fabric} explore generational connection and loss through mystical imagery.
Christina Kwan returns to the gallery with three works: All I Wanted, Give Me Time, and Boundary Play I, II, III {acrylic ink and paint on canvas}. Calligraphic strokes meld with meditative plumes, contrasted with frenetic marks on muted color field canvases. These three works present a dynamic universe of exploration, botanically inspired surroundings, and intentionally haphazard wonderment.
Four of Stacie U. Rose’s works Fount of Glitchery, The Secret of the River, No Such Thing as Time, and Fill Your Cup {acrylic, ink, graphite, screenprint on wood panel} investigates the interplay between form and flow, structure and chaos, permanence and transience. Color and shape play a part in these abstractions based on the fluidity of water and the dream-like state of the subconscious as Rose embarks on ruminations of meditative expression.
Valentina Custer O’Roark returns to Kai Lin Art in her two pieces, Remember The Future and Candy Christmas Lie {acrylic on canvas}. As an astute observer of life and a practitioner of art and architecture, Valentina’s fresh new works are a dynamic and magnetic departure from her previous black & white drawings. They are symphonic in their exhaustive layering of swirls and twirls, lines and circles, pluses and minuses. It’s as if she’s embarked on a complex geometry dialogue as it bridges patterned reality and illusory fantasy.
The psychedelic painter Sophia Sabsowitz returns with the luminous Planet Caravan {mixed media on canvas}. This captivating piece is evocative of planetary surfaces, other-worldly geologies, biomorphic abstractions. Sabsowitz pours and layers paints and oils and resins to create a fusion of mediums and pigments.
Sandy Teepen’s hand-quilted fiber maps are fascinating. Where is she going? Where has she been? These are her journeys.
The two circular acrylic on wood works by Colombian-born graphic designer/artist Angie Jerez, breathing above and breathing under are musings on the integration between flora and fauna wherein plumes of floral shapes meld into fish gills and fins. This interplay resembles windblown feathers flowing freely in a round while eyelets peer through elemental shifts.
Chloe Alexander’s two linocuts on kozo paper, Catch & Release and The Binds That Untie Us are a pair of deftly precise and masterful printmaking works. These pieces document two children in a moment of playful solace, as they catch butterflies in a mason jar in the former and a stringed game of cat’s cradle in the latter.
Printmaker/professor Stephanie Smith created four monoprints, Trapping Time, Tangled Nets, Across The Universe, and NetEscape for AURA. In this series that encompasses techniques of linocut, woodcut, screen print, and cut paper, each work compels the viewer to investigate the space where nature meets emotion. Nets and teardrop shapes interplay with confetti’ed droplets and abstracted woven baskets in a harmonious medley of alluring contemplation.
Stephanie Kolpy returns to the gallery with three dynamic monoprint mixed media works Follow The Bees, Fear Entropy, and Penultimate Giant / Blue Whale. The viewer is compelled to take a closer look at the gleaming growth and rebirth of mother nature as she dances through glimpses and hints of architectural elements. Kolpy distinguishes her primary subject matter in each of these pieces by highlighting gorilla eyes, butterflies, hummingbirds, bees, bugs and a array of nature’s gifts on a ground of blackest black. It’s a lovely respite from the frenetic energies of the surrounding foliage.
Four of Heather Deyling’s Invented Hybrid {ink, watercolor, acrylic, and colored pencil} artworks observe nature and it’s relation to eco-fiction and climate change. There’s a Seussical nature to these pods and roots, leaves and nodes as Deyling’s whimsical hand and precise cuts create a harmony of organic shapes, akin to perhaps what the inside of a tree would be should it have intestines.
Painter/professor Alice Stone Collins broadens her art practice by creating large scale hand-cut gouache, flashe, and acrylic wood panels that represent chairs, plants, a bookcase, a refrigerator, and the documentation of google search engine screenshots. Collins humorously searches ‘house plants i can’t kill…’ in one of the works and ‘how to organize books…’ in another. The viewer is transported to the seemingly trivial charms of fridge magnets spelling out “FOMO” and “I AM TIRED” and “UGH”. If art can be fun, this is it.
Hannah Adair’s three works, Virga, Sylph, {cyanotype, pen, ink} and Redolence {lithography, relief, pen, ink} are sensual ponderings of the ephemeral. Delicate pointillism dances atop luxurious blue hues that lay the ground for the mesmerizing ghostly shapes. These works are luminously radiant in their quiet introspection.
The three paintings from InKyoung Chun, Along The Roses, Red Garden, and Rose Garden {oil on canvas} represent a personal narrative of an idealized space. There is a balance between botanical representation and cloud-like formations. It’s as if growth and bloom exist in a transitory space of the infinite skies.
Jessica Locklar’s three poetic artworks, “We were the candles”, “In these arms I can feel my home, Breaking from inside”, “I wrestled by the sea, A dream of you and me” {oil on canvas} present lush representations of females in rest, in ecstasy, in lighting up. There is a feeling of ominous rapture in these exquisitely defined paintings of the night. Locklar’s ability to capture midnight glimmers and the glow of ones skin is sublimely seductive.
Coki Panda graces the gallery with her two ballpoint pen portraitures, Enigma I and Jeremy. Realism and documentation are transparently conveyed in these astonishingly meticulous drawings as Coki proficiently preserves the lives of each subject in ink. There is a measuredly tempestuous sense of calm in the scrawling lines that make up the values of light and dark, leading to an atmosphere of transitory permanence.
The final artist in our AURA exhibition is watercolorist Jessica Durrant in her two works You Can Never Have Enough Flowers and Internally Blooming. Emotive and potent, magnetic and liberated, these two paintings elevate the art of fashion portraitures. Durrant enriches the viewer by redefining the refinement of one’s aura in full bloom.
Our AURA exhibition is now extended through Friday, October 27th, 2023. We hope you’ll come and visit the gallery to see the show. For more on The Art of Aura or for any inquiries on any of the works from the show, contact the gallery or visit:
KAI LIN ART
999 Brady Ave NW Suite 7
Atlanta GA 30318
info@kailinart.com
404 408 4248
