“Too Much Caffeine = No Sleep At All”
2000, Mixed media on canvas, 16” x 20”
Martha Wherry ’88
Martha Wherry’s artistic pursuits encompass work in assemblage, drawing, painting, photography and glass blowing. “Human nature is provoking,” she says. “My main impetus is observing life at large — musing over, recording or translating what I see. My favorite role seems to be that of artist as narrator, observer or storyteller.” Wherry’s art can be seen in two upcoming exhibitions in Wichita: “Recycled Karma,” April, CityArts and “The Theory of Chaos,” a one-man show, May, Gallery XII.
“Notes for J.”
2001, Oil on canvas, 36” x 24”
Aaron Brown
Aaron Brown lives and works in Syracuse, N.Y. His current work, he explains, “revolves around the concept of the labyrinth, specifically as it applies to urban environments. The construction of a labyrinth evokes a sacred space — sacred in the sense that existential meaning is nurtured and protected within a psychic and pictorial structure that both conceals and reveals. By converting the anonymous city streets and interiors of institutional spaces into zones of invention and abstracted symbolism, I can preserve my interior life and hopefully share it with others.” Brown’s artwork, “Arrangement,” was judged Best of Show at the WSU Alumni Art Exhibition, which ran through Jan. 27 at the Ulrich Museum of Art.
Milagro
Miracle is a word like healing
that only the healed can know.
It is a prayer in the shadow
of the valley that comes from blood
and bone, given to the bright, red
stone people. It burns on the way
out, burns in a way that tears
the prayer from palms of feet,
the groin, the solar plexus, escapes
the tender place at the back
of your neck. A miracle terrifies.
Gone is all you understand; everything
twisted begins to straighten. The shriveled
starts to blossom. After all, there is nothing
left. All the ghosts have flown away.
Everything you know is taken. You
are the hollow Grand Canyon, a desert
aliens have abandoned, a desert alone
with the wind, with the crawling lizard,
silent sand. The only thing left to feel
here, in this place, is the gentle,
persistent voice of God.
— Jodi Drinkwater '96/00
