Victoria May interrogates systems of addiction, commodification, and cultural messaging through the visual language of blister packaging. Working primarily in oil paint, she transforms consumer waste and institutional warning systems into painterly dreamscapes that complicate ideas of control. Her work reflects the mundane cycles of daily life and our passive adherence to systems of overconsumption, where themes of illness, gun culture, and mind conditioning begin to surface within immersive large scale compositions. In her studio, numerous smaller works once densely installed across the walls created an overstimulating environment, echoing the visual and auditory saturation of contemporary advertising. Prolific in her practice, she describes painting as a kind of training, like exercise, building the speed and resilience needed to sustain a continuous creative output. Her shift toward working large now absorbs and expands upon these fragments, bringing them into a large, impactful vision of societal aspects we cannot control.

Sarah Jane Barry embraces accumulation, spontaneity, chaos, and silliness through playful works on paper created with mixed media layers of watercolors, pen, alcohol ink, and experiments, to form deckled surfaces where meditative pools of color synergize intuitively with the world and people around her. She reflects on the internal and external struggles shared by artists, drawing connections through the collective of the residency. Throughout her time here, she began to reduce negative space, as fields of color began extending beyond the page into whimsical three-dimensional forms of plaster and acrylic paint. A dedicated luncharian, she spent each midday needing to empty her mind—a librarian who passed lunch breaks sprawled across the floor creating, quietly enmeshing memory, observation, and imagination into free-associative narratives. The raw-edges of her paper hint at continual expansion and discovery, revealing her true desire to work much larger. These abstractions of the mind have cellular, atomic and cosmic elements that create worlds where small human experiences seem to echo larger universal truths. 

This infinite cosmic layering also resonates in the work of Quincy Koscka, as his work reveals patterns within patterns of being. A wood turner by trade, Koczka’s practice bridges industrial woodworking traditions with experimentation and abstraction. He uses historic woodworking tools and methodologies, including a giant industrial lathe, to transform raw materials into rippling forms that feel interplanetary and reflective of nature. While affixing slabs of wood to the lathe he is able to cut in from multiple directions, sometimes painting then cutting back in, sometimes dreaming offcuts into new wall-mounted sculptural reliefs. His process-driven approach embraces unpredictability, fractal elements, and the tension between precision and play. Hand carved elements also begin to finial and flourish in his later pieces. The fact that Koscka started making prints from these woodblocks makes a lot of sense. The prints were then framed and became their own sculptural objects. “As you carve into the wood, it carves into you,” he says. 

Yames Moffitt is a multidisciplinary graphic artist specializing in gold leaf, hand-painted signage, typography, illustration, and murals. During the residency, he began to work with greater freedom in expression and movement, his practice evolving toward more immersive forms shaped by personal transition, grief, and graffiti culture. These works unfold as layered, surrealistic environments built from painted board, gilded touches of gold leaf, and elements on glass layered over atmospheric paintings, which allude to his commercial practice while opening into entirely new visual worlds. His multi-dimensional spaces are populated with hidden characters and celestial forms that invite viewers into his unfolding narrative. Some works hang on the wall, while others float freestanding in space. In one sculptural piece, a single eye peers outward, observing as his small characters pass between these immersive portals throughout the gallery.

Across the way is another eye, a window to a soul that may have forgotten who they are, but will stare long enough until they remember, or forget why. Shanel Kerekes is a trade artist who makes stained glass windows for church restorations. Her luminous mixed media works in this exhibition explore nostalgia and the instability of memory through blurred imagery, illuminated glass, and fragmented reflections to evoke the delicate and fleeting nature of recollection itself. Boards cut into the shapes of a star and moon allow smooth surfaces to evoke distant yet familiar spaces where truth may be reconstructed. These works reveal a subtle shift from her usual realism toward a more painterly, blurred sense of reality. Images of stained-glass clowns and the glow of amusement park lights, part of a shared cultural lexicon we all know from somewhere, anchor her continued interest in vintage memorabilia. She also draws on stereotypical feminine imagery, combining it with gilded gold leaf and stained-glass elements.

Amy Capalbo’s intricate sculptural works also meditate on femininity, from the perspective of motherhood, care, containment, and the passage of time. Through ceramic, embroidery, silk, and beadwork organic forms reminiscent of coral, fungi, and scientific specimens reveal her obsessions with texture, tactility, and the otherworldliness of the sea and nature. Capalbo’s meticulous delicacy embodies both tenderness and resilience, honoring the often unseen labor woven into women’s lives. These silent labors of love are honored by the soft chimes of her ceramic fabric sculptures as they stir gently with the passing movement of bodies throughout the gallery, a sound that resolves into quiet satisfaction.

Together, these artists demonstrate what becomes possible when emotional honesty, technical curiosity, and a collaborative spirit coexist. IX stands not only as an exhibition of individual works, but as evidence of what artists can build collectively when they are engaged with their practices and genuinely connected to one another.

The event also welcomes the newly moved-in Hunt Residencies Artists of Cohort X—Jill Thomas, Shanti Morrissey, Mariah Bush, Sarah Bradlee Townsend, David Blackburn, Christina Francis, Liz Cuminale, and Arker Kyaw. Be sure to check out the studios downstairs at Hunt Art Gallery.