Artists’ Reception Thursday September 13th In conjunction with the Downtown Art Walk

This exhibition focuses on four artists, Loretta Bourque, Hazel Collins, Jessie Henson, and Johanna Byström Sims. Each artist uses narrative in her paintings or drawings, each in a subtle, personal and idiosyncratic way. Each uses very different types of painting and drawing to arrive at her destination. Loretta Bourque uses a very traditional looking vessel, oil on canvas, to contain unmistakably contemporary notions of gender, culture, sexuality and humor. Hazel Collins uses more industrial materials - mostly wood and enamel - to make paintings that are somewhere between religious icons and stage set pieces. Jessie Henson employs materials traditionally associated with folk art, such as embroidery and yarn, to explore a very personal territory of meaning, memory and loss. Johanna Byström Sims uses spare, austere, means—black ink on white paper—to build cityscapes and dreamscapes that are familiar yet startling and new. The result in each case is a highly inventive pictorial world that follows its own set of rules. These artists invite the viewer to take the time to look as the specific narrative unfolds slowly before their eyes.