. . . into this honeyed presence strewn Solo exhibition at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise Gilliam Center for the Arts, August 20 - September 24, 2010 EXHIBITION STATEMENT The forms that pierce into or out of the walls and floors are playful and elegant, but also grotesque and potentially threatening. They take on distinct personalities that can become stand-ins for people and the strange, idiosyncratic worlds we create between and through each other. The idea of “presences strewn” suggests the accumulation of life experiences: connections forged, memories made, and ghosts of past and present encounters. Such allusions point to the fleeting, transitional nature of life, and the notion that strange beautiful "growths" can emerge even in a mediated institutional setting.  In that sense the forms pulling out from or pushing into the wall celebrate mystery, sensuality, humor, the unexpected, and the pleasure and poetics that bind these. Their peculiarity becomes a fight against sameness and capitulation whether between people, within an institution, or in a single mind. To enter the exhibition you must first move through the institutional spaces of a university arts building where arguably the focus is on rationality, pedagogy, syllabi and grades, bureaucracy and rules, tuition and promotions. As you enter the gallery, however, the mood shifts from functional into something more intangible. This interior is less familiar, understandable, or utilitarian, and is more akin to dreamscapes, emotional states, or unfolding thought processes. The exhibition’s title, created by combining Seamus Heaney’s poem “Good-Night” with a phrase from Shakespeare’s Richard II, juxtaposes unrelated verses to create new meanings that suggest entering into something lovely (“honeyed”) but chaotic (“strewn”); a space that is different and less comprehensible from what is just outside it.