Opening Reception | Two Solos | Shelli Langdale and Judd Mercer

Join Us! For the opening reception of Dissolution, a solo exhibition by Shelli Langdale, and Close to Home: A Year en Plein Air, a solo exhibition by Judd Mercer. The opening will take place January 7th, from 6 - 8 PM. Dissolution will also feature the work of guest artist Ashley Folkner. All three artists will be in attendance.

Shelli Langdale Artist Statement:

Grief, a response to loss, doesn't diminish over time. After the acute stage, chronic grief permeates our breathing. To be still in the falling pain, we struggle. We attempt to manage and live in a reality absent a loved one, a perennial search for purpose and meaning requiring movement. It’s immersive. And it manifests differently for everyone. Dissolution, in part, is motion, my practice in constructing meaning out of loss.

I began creating the paintings for this exhibit long before my anticipated loss, changing the name and the storytelling of Dissolution's final form as the loss transpired. The works symbolize pieces of me in a storyline of love and pain. They are fragments of grief personified. Memories conflated from a life once lived, a life in dissolution.

It has been a challenge to articulate here what the art is expressing. I could not achieve this with oil paintings alone even. I've become an unexpected storyteller, of sorts. Experiential pieces support the narrative of what (I think) this body of work is incapable of conveying. These additions assist in descending the viewer into melancholy, languishing there in a rain of grief.

Artists / Speakers: Shelli Langdale, Ashley Folkner, Judd Mercer

Category: Arts