Migrations
Works by Michael Gilbert
“Life is a terminal progressive march toward death, a series of ebbs and flows, all the way until the end. The daily struggle is of acceptance, maintaining emotional control, feelings of usefulness, initiative, and the little things that create joy. The creative act is a rebellion against chaos and meaninglessness.
In creating this work, my goal has been to find ways to embrace the ebbs and flows, to translate them, in a way, into new languages, and to create work that can speak to many different kinds of joy and loss in the human experience.
The imagery derives from quilt patterns, references to cubism, abstracted shapes in the art and architecture from my visits to Thai temples, and from looking at medieval mystic illustrations. The use of symbolic visual language is intended to open up the mysterious and the underlying fabric of spiritual being.
The work is often done in stages with the end result never immediately visualized, and it can often follow illogical or unusual progressions- with starts and stops and sideways pathways, reversals, erasures, abandonment and rediscoveries. This allows the pieces to offer resistance to the artist’s efforts. It can be like a conversation, with the artist telling the piece what to do or be, and the artwork offering its own input and debate. I have found that the complexity of life demands comparable complexity through its portrayal.”
Join us for the First Friday Opening Reception: March 6, 2026
On view: March 6-27, 2026 in the Project Space
Remember Yesterday A Long Time Ago
Works by Noah Miller
“Noah Thomas Miller is an interdisciplinary artist from Illinois, who works within film, painting, woodworking, or a combination of materials, to preserve memories and tell stories. He attended Memphis College of Art, and have worked as an archivist, designer, and art director for museums in Tennessee. He has had multiple solo and group exhibitions between Memphis and Nashville, and exhibited a video installation on Time Square in New York City through the ZAZ10 Gallery. This past year he was a recipient of Arts Memphis' "Arts Assistance" award, and participated in Fiskars Artist in Residency this past spring in Finland.
Most of his work has to do with the space we occupy & places we interact with. The subject primarily being about "home". He started to construct these paintings as a way to connect myself to the physical places before me. He constructs many of my pieces out of materials that would typically be used in the assembly of a house - baltic birch plywood and house paint, tying himself and his practice to a space as closely as he can, but also as a way to connect the viewer to the physicality and craftsmanship in these places as well.
These places and pieces are also meant to house what’s inside us. Some are based truly on a feeling, or a dream / ideal landscape that he hopes to see. Others possess imagery like a house on fire, which reflect and illustrate the unexpected tragedy that has happened within his own life (or collectively our shared lives).”
Join us for the First Friday Opening Reception: March 6, 2026
On view: March 6-27, 2026 in the Project Space