We Feel Our Way Through When We Don’t Know

October 22, 2022 - February 12, 2023 @ The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center

We Feel Our Way Through When We Don’t Know features the works of Mariel Capanna, Cheeny Celebrado-Royer, Oscar Rene Cornejo, Vessna Scheff, Gerald Euhon Sheffield II, and Lachell Workman.

Feeling is a mode of study through which we can understand both our internal and external experiences. A gut feeling describes an inner intuitive experience used to maneuver many kinds of circumstances. Joy, wonder, fear, doubt, and grief are all emotional responses to external events that we carry and process as part of our interior life. To physically feel something is to experience that thing through touch. As we come to know objects and materials through touch, we become better aware of ourselves.

With environmental collapse, sociopolitical upheaval, and the effects of global health crises ever-present in our daily life, what opportunities do we create to slow down, feel, reflect, reimagine, and recuperate together? This exhibition is motivated by that question, with the understanding that one constant of the human experience is change. In Parable of the Sower Octavia Butler wrote, “All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you. The only lasting truth is change.” Brought to fruition with a sense of urgency, this exhibition is a survey of six artists who are invested in making work that asks deep questions about the transitory nature of being and the internal and external realities of the human experience catalyzed by change. 

Each artist’s contribution demonstrates a particular set of visual strategies centered on forms of abstraction and material process used to realize these works. Liquidity and stain, landscapes built from the accumulation of active marks and tape, logic systems colliding with acrylic medium on a surface, and meticulously selected materials assembled into objects to hold the spirit of a place and/or memory are just some of the moments present to behold. Each work serves as an example of commitment, resourcefulness, and resiliency made through touch and, in return, touching us. The space and conversation generated by bringing together this diverse group of voices and perspectives are not intended to be a prescriptive reprimand, but instead an offering. This offering invites us to commune together and contemplate a way to compose ourselves, connect, and emerge with strength in the face of an uncertain and rapidly changing world.

— Michael Jevon Demps, Curator

Photos by Erin Jenkins of the exhibit "We Feel Our Way Through When We Don’t Know" Courtesy of Brattleboro Museum & Art Center