The Missing

Shaun C. Whiteside & Sidra Kaluszka

May 5th through June 22nd, 2023

Gallery Hours - Wednesday through Sunday: 12-5pm

ARTIST STATEMENT

One of the most important functions art can serve is to provide to us with what is missing in our lives; whether that is something physical like a sense of place or visual beauty, or something more intangible like our hopes and ideals, or a feeling of belonging. In the days of quarantine, perhaps we are all more acutely aware of such deficits in our lives.

These works each celebrate what we have, or mourn what has been lost. Whiteside's acrylic paintings feature dark voids in juxtaposition with lighter values, conveying not only a distinction between these opposing values, but also a sense of interlocked inseparability. Kaluszka's cyanotype photographs have a similar quality, with flat white silhouettes that both represent natural elements, as well as suggest a void where that same thing is missing. This is combined with hazy atmospheric qualities, as well as more traditionally photographed elements, resulting in imagery that is both recognizably physical and yet intangible, with familiar elements from a variety of contexts spliced together into mysterious dreamscapes. Kaluszka's sculptural ceramics and watercolors compel us to relish in the natural beauty that is perhaps accessible to many of us, but often overlooked and unconsciously missed.

SHAUN C. WHITESIDE

My work explores the metaphysical or emotional realm through a painting process that employs physical forces.  I depict emotional energies such as grief, despair, isolation, and anxiety by utilizing physical energies such as gravity, water erosion, and sedimentation.  I use gravity itself as a medium to develop imagery that is dictated by natural law.  Water erosion and sedimentation also determine parts of the visual outcome, as pigments are swept away from certain areas, and deposited in others where water accumulates and evaporates.  I use the visual forms that develop to depict emotional forces and energies that are unseen but very real powers in the world.  My creative process acts as a metaphor for the themes of powerlessness that inspire my work.  Moreover, by incorporating natural forces into my drawing and painting process, I am simultaneously exalting natural order while decrying the iniquities created by human order.  

SIDRA KALUSZKA

The natural world is continuously inspirational.  Nature exists to live, sustain life, and repopulate. Its driving forces are simple, yet the multitude of organic life that is found on our planet is, simply put, awe-inspiring.  I build a voice for the natural world through my work to share with the viewer.  Often we all go about our busy lives so absorbed in the present, we overlook what we coexist with.

My work is an exploration of the organic, and an embrace of the unexpected.  My body of work continues to grow and expands the range of mediums I work with.  As I learn new techniques and processes, I look to incorporate them across my spectrum of work. In short, letting one influence the other in order to grow and expand as an artist. 

The stories are there even though the words are not.  I seek to create visual dialog.  Despite the absence of the written word I create a space that invites the imagination to wonder. 

Watercolor is a particularly beautiful medium that is frequently underrated. The organic marks and fluidity achieved with watercolor are like no other. My work showcases the paint's ability to move, fade, lift, imply texture, and produce intense colors.  Many of my watercolor techniques I have woven into one of my new found loves, cyanotypes. 

I have three distinct bodies of work.  However, they all use the same expressive voice.  My representational paintings and cyanotypes are more literal depictions of the natural world.  In my ceramics I now look more to nature for inspiration, rather than to other ceramic works, with a strong interest in fungi, barnacles, coral, and sea sponges. While I still love bowls and tea cups for their open, inviting qualities, I now focus on making non-utilitarian ceramic works.

These are footprints of my visual evolution.  They will not fade over time.  They are building blocks of self-expression that will expand and flourish.  Each new page turned will have traces of the one which preceded it.  The natural world will continue be there for me to draw on in its literal forms, as well as conceptually.