By Grace Lawson
Outside, in the museum’s courtyard, visitors mingled while enjoying drinks, food and playing cornhole on the grass.
But inside, visitors admired the art– including Macramé (a decorative textile created through knotting) intertwined with stained glass, a 9-minute audio visual film set on loop and a multitude of other abstract pieces exploring themes of indescribable experiences like senses and the nature of thought.
On Thursday, Feb. 20 the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum held an opening reception for its Spring 2025 exhibitions including; “Inner Vision: Abstraction and Cognition,” “Jodie Mack: Glistening Thrills,” “Brittany Mojo: A Vocabulary of Objects” and “Laurie Steelink: A Love Supreme.”
Visitors pose admiring art (from left to right) “Birthday Series #16” by Bridget Mullen, and “Cosmosis.com” by Angeline Rivas during the Kleefeld Museum opening reception. Photo Credit: Grace Lawson
Lasting from 3:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., the event included some of the artists who created pieces hanging in the gallery, who walked around, greeting visiting friends and strangers.
The gallery featured artists whose pieces displayed mixed media elements to create dynamic compositions for the viewer, meant to look into the “complexities of inner perception and sensation,” which are usually seen as indescribable.
“What are things that we feel and we know, but we can’t necessarily put into words?” Kleefeld’s Chief Curator Erin Stout said. “For some reason, form and color and movements [are] a better way for some people to be able to express what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling.”
The gallery’s own promotional material describes the “Inner Vision” exhibit as “a range of abstract representations of cognition and sensation including emotional states, dreams, hallucinations, mystical experience, and neurological phenomena.”
Displayed title text for the “Inner Vision: Abstraction and Cognition” exhibit painted on the wall of the Kleefeld main gallery on Feb. 20. Included is an art piece to the right titled “Boutonniere” by Robin Mitchell. Photo Credit: Grace Lawson
Featured artist, Laurie Steelink created the piece titled, “A Love Supreme,” currently hanging in the Constance W. Glenn Court Gallery.
For Steelink, there is often no part of the creative process that follows a specific direction.
“[I like] kind of following that lead that may have been mostly unintentional.” Steelink said. “That part is my favorite period, when I recognize that and when it shoots something, knowing when to say it’s done. Is enough enough?”
Steelink finds that putting specific goals or expectations on a piece often limits the scope of what she is able to create, harming potential for “happy accidents,” as she calls them.
Though she often goes into a project with some parts of the outcome specifically thought out, she still likes to keep the direction non-strict.
“And for me to be able to be free enough and open enough to like, I say, recognize that and go with that,” Steelink said.
Steelink often finds that though the boundaries of a canvas or piece of paper are uncompromising, she attempts to expand beyond that.
While developing this specific exhibition, Stout said the museum spoke with various artists and in having conversations with them about their works, she noticed an invisible string connecting them.
Stout recognized the reappearing questions of “What is consciousness?” and “What is the nature of reality?”
With themes surrounding abstraction, artists are easily able to personalize their work specific to their own perceptions of these ideas. Stout recognizes that each featured artist’s approach is different and unique.
“More and more, I realized that a lot of artists, particularly the ones who are represented in the show, are thinking about how to [show] things that we can’t so easily represent in concrete language, or representation,” Stout said.
These new exhibitions that challenge conceive notions of the abstract are available now until May 8.
