Essays

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.

Untethered Abstraction: Weather Window Echo Hum // Michelle Weinstein

In 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.

main GalleryAlternator Centre for Contemporary ArtFebruary 13, 2026Weather Window Echo Hum, Katherine Pickering, Michelle Weinstein, 2026, Untethered Abstraction: Weather Window Echo Hum

and a Rag in the Other // An Interview with M.E. Sparks

On December 3rd, 2022, Katherine Pickering met with M.E. Sparks over Zoom to discuss her exhibition of new work at the Alternator Center for Contemporary Art. This is an excerpt of that conversation.

main GalleryAlternator Centre for Contemporary ArtMarch 7, 2023essay, Katherine Pickering, M.E. Sparks