Dominique Porter Gallery is pleased to present Soon You Will Be Home, the gallery’s inaugural group exhibition featuring work by Vanessa Chow, Josh Cloud, Rose Dickson, Nancy Friedland, Hopie Hill, Michael Hilsman, Raina Lee, Jeremy Shockley, and Sarah Smiley.

Taking its name from the poem “For a New Beginning” by John O’Donohue, Soon You Will Be Home casts a soft focus on the imagery and sentiment of that which is figuratively just around the corner: already felt, currently anticipated, but not yet knowable. The exhibition marks both a beginning and an ending—the opening of a new space in the wake of the gallery founder’s loss of her family home in the January 2025 Eaton wildfire. Engaging temporality across multiple mediums and visual vernaculars, Soon You Will Be Home presents studies in the conspicuous frailty of a moment whose full significance is often revealed only after the fact.

Like a photograph that memorializes its own exposure, the finished ceramic vessel is a record of the motion and force that shape it. In this exhibition, ceramics by Josh Cloud and Raina Lee bear the markings of the past, remain grounded in the present through their materiality, and gesture toward the future in their subject matter. Remixing art historical discourse and illustrative pop culture, both artists carve new paths in the contemporary moment.

The breadth of wall-based works in Soon You Will Be Home is unified by a shared commitment to the sublime. At once evidence of their own making, these works explore natural splendor, otherworldly abstraction, and surreal still life. Nancy Friedland, for instance, captures fleeting moments of reflection, where flashes of white light become focal points—dazzling the eye and drawing it into surrounding, serene landscapes. Using wool and cotton chenille to construct her abstract compositions, Rose Dickson creates meditative scenes in a novel medium, imbued with a spiritual resonance akin to that of Paul Klee or Hilma of Klimt.

Awash with wonders both gleaming and profuse, Soon You Will Be Home captures a particular elation that cascades alongside life’s many unknowns—both welcome and unforeseen. The exhibition activates a sense of emotional familiarity, inviting viewers to contemplate these feelings from a gentle remove. Its message arrives just in time, for, as ever, none of us can know what tomorrow may bring.