All's Fair in Love and Lore 

Curated by Etta Harshaw

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Great works of art change and adapt, they undulate, they play tricks, they are intimate yet unknowable, much like myths. A juxtaposing balance, specifically of interior and exterior, is also essential to storytelling. Myth is used to express that the greatness or purpose that lies within anyone is found and unleashed through a culmination of external experience and the resulting internal adaptation. Joseph Campbell proposes that myths are meant to bring us to a place of spiritual meditation through which we can better understand ourselves and our function in the world, ultimately illuminating the purgatory between interior and exterior: a transformation of consciousness. 

 

Myths allow humans to bridge our minds and the universe around us, they are how we begin to reconcile our inner and outer realities. Through their use of storytelling, the three artists chosen for this exhibition express different forms of this journey. Gabriela Kramer uses abstraction to express the interior, hidden emotions behind various stories, emphasizing our relationship to our conscious mind as it responds to experiences. Lucinda Gold depicts dreamlike scenes that illuminate human connection and the small moments that can have a profound impact, both actively and subconsciously. Laura Benson creates mythological vignettes of creatures and environments in conversation, adapting to one another, she explores how symbols carry multiple meanings. Benson looks at the complex relationship between the self, the natural world, and society. As your TikTok tarot reader advises, take what resonates and leave what doesn’t … but if this prospectus came across your FYP, this booth is meant for you. 

 

Gabriela Kramer works discreetly; she creates abstract works that, unbeknownst to the viewer, tell a specific narrative. Using colors, shapes, and intuitive, automatic, gestural abstraction, Kramer visually depicts her psyche. She re-creates a moment or story in a deeply personal way, recounting memories non-linearly. The order of events flips and folds, seconds expand, and hours contract. Her amorphous translation of inner truth is splayed on the canvas. To know oneself and to make oneself known, one must revel in one’s emotions, good and bad. In her secret mythologies, Kramer helps the viewer unlock the ability to do what mythological heroes must: feel, react, and grow.

 

Lucinda Gold uses printmaking to explore the place where our delicate yet primitive minds see interpersonal relationships impact personal identity and emotion. Gold depicts dreamscapes that encourage viewers to project whatever they wish, to discover the overlap between life and fantasy. Imagination and reality meld, time stands still, and one is allowed to see where personal feelings and universal experiences meet. Campbell says myths and dreams are essentially the same; a place where realization occurs through symbolism. Gold shows the viewer that fantasy, dreams, and imagination hold truths. Gold begs us to consider the impact small, intimate moments can have and to grow from them. By translating her prints into works of tattoo art, Gold solidifies these internal realities into external embodiments.

 

Influenced by several spiritual practices and belief systems, Laura Benson takes classic mythological symbols and recontextualizes them, to look at what objects have represented to different cultures, like pre-Christian Ireland and the nation of Palau. She appropriates these symbols, accepts their paradoxes, and adds new meanings to explore the complex relationship between humans and the earth. Viewers are asked to reflect on themselves, their experiences, and their biases; they create personal meanings and explore their ability to create myths.

 

Self to self; self to other; self to world. Kramer looks at emotions, an internal phenomenon, Gold explores dreams, a flux state between the inner world and outer experience, and Benson dissects myths, collective stories that outlast us by adapting and mutating. 

 

In this presentation, I, the curator, project my own beliefs and experiences onto the works and ask viewers to do the same. Behind the art, before the pieces are installed, blank paper is hung. I scribble madly my own interpretations of the symbols and stories at play in the style of a crazed conspiracy theorist. I include brief insights to which the artists have made me privy, to offer the viewer the narratives and symbols in the works. I invite viewers to add their own thoughts by providing markers and allowing guests to jot them down alongside my own. Viewers enter the myth, they are asked to take in their surroundings and react, they are given the opportunity for a transformation of consciousness … or to deface the booth, spill their guts, whatever they need.