The Mark ran Feb 17th - April 5, 2025

Thousands of  years ago, human beings went deep into a cave in Indonesia. Using earthy red pigments, they made expressive marks on the walls of the cave, carefully depicting three human-bird type characters surrounding a large pig. Using simple colors and marks that now seem distant , these humans told a story, recording something important  they wanted to mark, to remember, to celebrate, to see. A phenomenon not isolated to a singular Indonesian cave, this kind of mark-making appears in ancient spaces all over the world. In southern France a stampede of animals dance across rock walls. In Egypt figures swim through some prehistoric lake now only desert. We see realistically rendered buffalo in Spain, abstracted cattle in Somaliland, a multicolored rave in northern Australia. In Argentina a throng of stenciled human hands reaches out across 9,825 years; in those marks spray painted through bone pipes we see our own humanity, not so distant. This desire to mark continues; across place and across time, artists everywhere still use simple lines, complex shapes, textured movement to create marks that draw our attention, marks that memorialize, marks that can connect us.

The five artists featured in this show mark time, they mark caretaking , they mark memory.  They mark with the strokes of a brush, rubbings of a crayon , moulding out of clay, and imprints from press and plate. Similar to scripts, fonts, and handwriting, these artists craft a kind of visceral vocabulary that helps them communicate ideas in new ways.  Interpreting these marks tells us something about what each artist sees,  what they care about, what they ask us to observe and reflect on.

Curated by Sarah Bernhardt and Megan Kenyon, The Mark features work by Allison Luce, Anna Schenker, Carmen Ribaudo, Linnea Ryshke, and Summer Zah.