WoskobFamily Gallery

After years of global uncertainty, Catie Dillon’s mural, Remain in Light, is a turn toward new beginnings.

Dillon choreographs a dreamlike dance as playful shapes and riotous colors set the stage for exploratory looking. Repetitive forms and patterns — invoking ideas of meditation, continuation, and growth — echo, evolve, and entwine. Referencing architecture, stained glass windows, and the facades of tiled buildings, Dillon reconfigures existing environments into newly invented spaces. Piece by piece, this space is constructed like a sprawling map serving as a guide to a brighter future.

Like the light from the sun, Dillon’s whimsical wall painting is an energizing force. It is a place to bask, explore, reflect, heal, and feel joyous rejuvenation. It is Dillon’s wish to remain here, in light and in hope, forever.

Bio

Catie Dillon (B. 1996) is from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She graduated from the Pennsylvania State University with a BFA in painting. Dillon has been an artist-in-residence at Open Wabi Residency in Fredericktown, Ohio, Fish Factory Residency in Stodvarfjordur, Iceland, and PADA Studios in Barreiro, Portugal. Her work has been exhibited in a recent solo exhibition at the McDonough Museum of Art in Youngstown, Ohio, and in group exhibitions in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Italy, and Portugal.

Field Guides is playful and boisterous exhibition exploring the artist’s belief of spirit guides. Spirit guides are believed to be supernatural beings that provide support, guidance, and love when we need it most. This abstract idea is translated into layers of texture, pattern, and color. Utilizing textiles, paper, and plastics; aspects of personality, aura, consciousness, and spirit are made visible. Each being borrows the form of celebratory objects, like piñatas, paper lanterns and pom poms. These playful forms are combined with ornamentation inspired by the growth of plants and flowers.

Materials are dismantled and reconfigured into layers of a new imagined being, a soul without the body. Through this interpretation, the immaterial is made tangible. The formation and complexities of spiritual growth are similar to the formation of each figure, sculpture and drawing. Through play and experimentation, the figures appear. Instead of an overarching plan, each decision informs the next. Each layer builds upon the one before it, focusing on the present moment rather than anxieties of completion. There is a parallel between the unpredictable growing of the spirit and the materialization of each piece, both occurring through freedom, patience, and play.

Bio

Harper holds a BFA in Art & Technology from The Ohio State University, she lives and works in Columbus, OH. Recipient of The Bunton Waller Fellowship from Penn State University, where Harper received her MFA in 2013. Harper has been the recipient of an ArtPrize Artist Seed Grant and The ArtFile Emerging Artist Grant, Ringholz Foundation Award, OAC Professional Award and Manifest Prize.  She has had solo exhibitions across the US, most notably at The University of Kentucky, Front/Space Gallery & Museum in Kansas City, MO, Manifest Gallery and ROY G BIV.  Harper has been an Artist in Residence at Kutztown University, Teton Art Lab, Bunker Projects, Second Sight Studio, Sculpture Space and ArtSpace Raleigh. She was awarded a scholarship through The NEA to attend Women’s Studio Workshop in 2015 and has received a fellowship to attend in Vermont Studio Center in the fall of 2022. Harper has made public installations in collaboration with The Columbus Museum of Art as well as The University Arts District in Columbus, Ohio. She will exhibit at Sculpture Center in 2022.

“How are you doing?” is a very common question that has become difficult to answer since the pandemic began upending our lives in 2020. This installation, kaleidoscope answers, is an attempt to respond to that question.

For myself, the answer means I have to process a myriad of conflicting emotions. Am I happy or am I sad? Yes. Am I coming together or am I falling apart? Yes. Do I feel like dancing or crying? Yes. Am I present in my body or am I worried about the future? Yes.

The video installation titled “interrupted self-portrait” shows myself caring for the Penn State Community Garden plot, and moments between my visits. When visiting the garden every day, it can seem like it is barely changing. However, when my mental health declines and I do not visit it for weeks, the unruliness of the plants within it mirrors the way I have cared for myself. I created the sculpture “keep it light” to encapsulate holding opposing feelings at once—like wanting to share your feelings honestly, and not knowing how it will be received. It was inspired by a tomato nibbled by a rabbit in my garden, freezing rain, a lonely disco ball waiting for dancers, comets, and craters. Preserved flowers from my garden are also featured in the sculpture.

This work was created as a monument to everyone who is experiencing overwhelming and complicated feelings right now that they feel unsure about sharing. I hope it can offer a gently reflective space for viewers to answer the question “How are you doing?” honestly, even if it is just inside their own hearts, and even if they can only reply “Oh, fine. How are you?”

Bio

Alex Russell is an MFA Candidate in Drawing and Painting at Penn State University. Previously a health researcher and sustainable arts educator, Russell alchemizes local and personal landscapes, patterns of connection, and resilience into artworks that are navigational tools in the face of uncertain futures. Russell creates these tools by drawing on gardening, sculpture, installation, performance, and social practices. She is a Penn State University Sustainability Institute Teaching Fellow.