Threads, Folds & Rabbit Holes is a well-received interdisciplinary traveling exhibition featuring the paintings/textiles of Kristy Deetz plus illustrated books with artwork accompanied by the ekphrastic stories of Edward S. Louis (pen name of E. L. Risden). Deetz’s series Through the Veil and Holidays Unfolding combine realistic, surrealistic, abstract, and appropriated elements. Rabbit and Kitty Boy, intrepid protagonists of the stories, take the viewer on many adventures through the artwork and books.
Each painting of the Through the Veilseries begins with a rendering from a closely observed fabric with wrinkles and folds that often recapitulates the compositional structure of a painting/drawing by artists from the past and present. The fabric in these paintings acts as a threshold that places the shape-shifting Rabbit into multiple, often conflicting, layers of space and meaning. The paintings good-humoredly deconstruct imagery from pop, outsider, and high culture to create new “spaces” of narrative and meaning. The paintings use dark humor, visual puns, symbols and metaphors, moments of silence, art historical allusions, cultural collisions, and spiritual conundrums to play with style and pictorial/formal construction.
Deetz’s Holidays Unfoldingseries investigates the historic use of decorative drapery and the artistic category of still life. The paintings examine the contradictory feelings that accompany loss or nostalgia and, as a result, become meditations on both beauty and transience. The series’ surreal imagery also comments on pressing issues in contemporary politics, culture and mores associated with American holidays. The work explores new possibilities between a complex interface of painting, textiles, and digital technology while producing a product that maintains the richness of slow work by hand.
Please use the Dropbox link below for the complete prospectus that includes a full curatorial package and several enticing options for public outreach and programming. Each venue pays for shipping to the next venue. The show will run through 2028.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/nkt8lgk3kkq1by9nsuvxn/h?rlkey=1k2iz1ewmekbwde70pcgo2pg5&dl=0
Curator/Administrator: Kristy Deetz, deetzk@uwgb.edu, 920-819-7334
Categories: Traveling Exhibitions