Not too unlike a DJ's “digging in the crates” to pull together seemingly disparate musical styles and sound effects, many contemporary artists mine various mediums for their individual art production. This exhibition explores the creative drives and experimentation of mixed media abstract artists from DC, Maryland and Virginia who have often chosen to combine untraditional painting and assemblage materials (acetate, plant pods, metal components, pumice) with more straightforward acrylics, pastels, and oils to create their both energetic and powerful visual "mashups". As curator one of my goals is to expand the understanding of what abstraction is and can be as expressed by these eight artists.