becoming I, I say You (for Martin Buber)

Charles Matson Lume                                                             

Charles Matson Lume is a visual artist who believes we need beauty every day. This truth was made more real in the pandemic. Beauty emits the immortal scent and sensual manifestation of justice, which is often slow to become present amongst us. When beauty visits, we sense justice might be near.

His art traces the contours of "art is a verb, not a noun" and "the loveliest sounds arise out the deepest silences". He sees light as quicksilver. It’s slippery, ephemeral, and mostly unmanageable. His ephemeral light installations reveal instances when light and materials radiate in a kind of hallucinatory pas du deux.

Didn’t I Used to Have a Sense of Humor? 

Hannah Niswonger

This exhibition brings together four installations: Octopus’s Garden; Cloud—Bird—Place; Poisonous & Carnivorous Dinnerware; and Conversations with My Father’s Paintings. Each is an exploration of complexities of life ranging from personal to global in scale. I use humor to process difficult issues: climate change, loss of habitat, threats to bodily autonomy, the death of my parents. 

“Didn’t I used to have a sense of humor?” These were the last words my mother said to me before she died this April, when she was struggling to retain her identity while losing her battle with age and disease. For me, these words reflect the human talent, and sometimes desperate need, to use humor to cope with tribulation and loss. The works in this exhibition translate humor and grief into social commentary.