'WINDSWEPT' Curated by Genie Davis

The exhibition explores each artist’s own unique vision of wind, from lush oil and acrylic to potent abstract neon art and otherworldly mixed media. While you can’t see the wind, you can envision what it creates: sand and soil, propagated flowers and seeds, the sails of ships, ocean currents, kites soaring aloft, magical balloons, tossing tumbleweeds, birds drifting on warm ocean currents, the ominous wreckage of storms both natural and societal, or the ungovernable spread of fire and ash.

Wind has always played an enormous role in both the world’s ecology and in the lives of humans. Wind is a mood and a feeling, a part of our culture, our literature, and our desire for change. In the novella Red Wind, noir writer Raymond Chandler describes the wind in Los Angeles as “…one of those hot dry Santa Ana’s that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch.”  Kahlil Gibran writes in The Prophet, “The breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind.” South African philosopher Mokokoma Mokhonoana says, “To most human beings, wind is an irritation. To most trees, wind is a song.” And of course, we all know that when we question our situation in life, as Bob Dylan sings, “The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind.”

 The works in this exhibition are all about the pull of wind, encompassing images that traverse the seasons. Conceived as a group exhibition, while not conventionally collaborative, the artwork swirls together in a wide range of mediums, examining how this natural phenomenon and its symbolism affects all aspects of life on this planet.

 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin says, “Matter is spirit moving slowly.” But in the matter of wind, it is spirit moving rapidly, coursing through the world, the mind, the heart, and art.   - Genie Davis, curator