Sparkling underneath the waves

How practice leads the way for emerging artists in "Objects of Devotion" and older ones in "The Long View #2"

Lydia Kern, Seed Saver, 2024, Resin poured on the winter solstice, MRI images of artist’s brain, artist’s tape, queen anne’s lace and blackberry seeds from the Black Forest, descendant of wheat from the agricultural revolution, monarch wing from El Rosario sanctuary, mandorla almond, Julian’s hazelnuts, thistles from Tyhe & Kayhl, split leaf philodendron from Sarah’s 2018 cutting, snake skins, cosmic crisp apple, vintage purse, segment of rosary beads, chains, negative photos printed on transparency, torched wood, ink, 60” x 27” x 1” Photo Grace Dodds. In Objects of Devotion at the Distillery Gallery.

Sometimes I fall into an artwork as I might fall into a deep pool: Backwards, surprised, engulfed. The world I was in a moment ago vanishes. So it was with Lydia Kern’s Seed Saver (top image) a green resin shrine of a sculpture bathed in pink light near the entrance of Objects of Devotion at the Distillery Gallery.

Curator Stace Brandt quotes a poem in their statement about the show: “I came to tell you, we’ll swim in the water, we’ll/ swim like something sparkling underneath/ the waves…” painter and poet Richard Silken writes in Saying Your Names. That’s where Seed Saver took me.

Objects of Devotion explores art practice and spirituality. “Underneath the waves” – that’s where devotion takes place, whether you’re making, looking, or loving.

“What happens when an artist makes their work the altar, the object, and then throws their selves against it, into it, onto it, time and again? How does artmaking entwine with personal life, history, and religious origins to accrete new spiritual grounding?” Stace asks.

My answer: More questions open. Questions pave a spiraling path into the eternal, which can be gained in a moment in the studio work or in the gallery, when you fall beneath the surface.

Objects of Devotion opens the floor for emerging artists. The Long View #2 at Suffolk University Art Gallery shows us what older artists have found on the path. The unknown is still unknown, but as we age our own personal spirals – our architectures of seeking and opening – grow familiar.

Prilla Smith Brackett, Flight #9. High flow acrylic on paper; BFK Rives 15 x 15 inches, 2025. In The Long View #2 at Suffolk University Art Gallery. Photo courtesy the artist.

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