Alternator exhibition essays respond to the artworks presented through our Main Gallery exhibition series, and add another layer of interpretation to the exhibitions on view. These essays take a variety of forms: formal essays, Q&As with the artist, interpretive responses, and other types of creative writing pieces.
Read the essay supporting our current exhibition below, or review the essay archive going back to 2019.
Interested in writing for us? Learn how to join our roster of writers here.
In this interpretive essay, Andrew Stauffer poses that despite global crises, art remains vital by functioning like ritual. Ritual and art both foster meaning, connection, and collective will, countering the effects of societal paralysis. I Hear a Silent Dissonance by Woojae Kim exemplifies this theory by offering immersive experiences that blur self and world, nurturing relational awareness and hopeful resonance.
Read MoreIn this interpretive essay, Michelle Weinstein explores how Weather, Window, Echo, Hum by Katherine Pickering, unsettles the binaries of abstract painting: form and content, blur and solid, mind and eye. Through sanding, stitching, and weathering, her process fuses memory with material, transforming abstraction into an excavation where beauty, loss, and perception quietly converge.
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