In this new body of work, Faith Gay applies her signature treatment of vivid colors, repetitive shapes, and sense of whimsical delight to an exploration of reclaiming and reconfiguring found materials from daily life as well as from her own previous work. Trained as a naturalist and inspired by the living world, Gay renders natural forms as iconic pop culture symbols. Rainbows, clouds, mountains, and lightening bolts are primitively rendered in varying thicknesses and compositions out of commonplace materials such as tape, stickers, colored paper, and ribbon. Fundamental to Gay’s process is the use of these undervalued or leftover materials, which she states, “allow (her) to make art more naturally and with fewer limitations.” While expressing an enduring joy, these works investigate notions of excess, consumer culture, and artistic freedom in the midst of economic pressures.

Gay earned a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin.

Raymond Uhlir creates personal mythological vignettes which combine the bold visual aesthetics of vibrantly colored cartoon worlds and the compositional elements of traditional allegorical painting. Employing the same set of characters throughout this body of work, Relatively Epic, Uhlir constructs a loose narrative reminiscent of religious or folkloric tales while commenting on “the repetitive collision of ideologies (as) a source of unending conflict in our civilization.” Bringing together disparate visual and contextual devices from popular, historical, and sacred culture, Uhlir’s work is “designed to critique and question the hierarchical status quo of our society, the conflicts between religious belief and rationality, and the mythologies our culture is built upon.”

Uhlir recently received his MFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara.