Seems radical to promote optimism when the air is thick with grief and worry, but thinking hard about the role one artist, like me, can have in the center of something so enveloping, it feels like it’s all I have to offer. I am hopeful in the coming weeks that we will be able to create new work—however we best express ourselves, in whatever field we excel in—with the deliberate use of the knowledge gained during this period.
It is with this in mind that I take my first trip to create artwork site specifically as part of a summer exhibition at the Galveston Arts Center.
Xochi Solis’ exhibition, Rooted by invisible means, includes collage-based works that reveal underlying layers of the artist’s environment and influences. Constructed in two dimensions from layers of paint, paper, and plastics, Solis’ abstract forms play with dimensional space and the circular shape of portals or ellipses. This exhibition includes monoprints, works on paper, and large-scale wall works created specifically for the Galveston Arts Center Brown Foundation Gallery.
The shifts that the art center and its curators have made to keep this project and its entire exhibition calendar and commitments going are herculean. I begin this new chapter of artmaking with an open mind, stay tuned.