MIDNIGHT GALLERY LUSH: Group Exhibition

September 27, 2024 — December 30, 2024

Reception: Saturday 28, 2024 from 1:00-3:00PM

LUSH to Transform Midnight Gallery into Verdant Experience

Kathleen Barta

Jaede Bayala

Beth Bobbitt

Macy Burr

Neil Callander

Daniel Coston

Camilla Crittenden

Allyssa Dezaldivar

Benjamin Dobbs

Karlena Fletcher

Forrest Frederick

Abigail Henthorne

Milan Jilka

Molly Martin

Ava Obert

Amelia Peters

Laura Ramirez

Kylie Robinson

Christian Schultz

Kathryn Wilson

Melissa Wise-Miklos

BENTONVILLE, AR — Midnight Gallery is thrilled to host our very first exhibition which includes a group of twenty-one dedicated local artists. Our goal is to provide quality shows for our vibrant and robust local art community.

LUSH breathes. The inhale is a reflection, a reabsorption of a vibrant summer cradled by the density of the Ozarks. The exhale is a release, a farewell, a reminder that nature is both abundant and fleeting, both vast and microscopic.

Our local artists practice in a wide variety of mediums, including painting, drawing, photography, ceramics, and textiles. LUSH invites contemplation on how different artistic approaches reflect and interpret natural phenomena.

The Ozarkian South — Thick With Resources

These resources are both visual and physical. Amelia Peters’ painting palette is deeply connected to her experiences living in the South. By exploring our home state, Daniel Coston develops beautiful paintings from seemingly hidden places. Natural materials exhumed from southern woodlands are used by Beth Bobbitt on a two-dimensional surface. Molly Martin’s process-driven approach is inspired by her childhood spent playing outside in the Ozarks, creating visual ecosystems through playful fabric collages. Abigail Henthorne engages with topics of endangered species and nature’s fragility, incorporating various weaving, tufting, and knot-tying techniques to generate various pile heights and distinct features.

Vast and Microscopic

Intricate layers seen in Neil Callander’s paintings reveal themselves upon inspection.  Interplays of flatness and depth with recognizable yet elusive forms invoke a sense of ambiguity. Large-scale drawings from Kylie Robinson juxtapose vastness with microscopic intricacy. Forrest Frederick’s images create visual portals that teeter between the familiar and the surreal.

Patterns in nature blur boundaries between mathematical precision and organic spontaneity. Milan Jilka’s dynamic compositions reconfigure natural forms into abstract patterns, evoking vitality and depth. Macy Burr’s compositions explore the intersection of music and visual patterns, offering rhythmic perspectives on nature. Utilizing memory or sources from experiences, Karlena Fletcher and Laura Ramirez employ repetitive mark-making to create tantalizing visuals. Benjamin Dobbs’ meticulous stippling has a meditative quality, highlighting the intersection of detailed precision and natural forms.

Our Bodies in Nature

Human qualities emerge as if growing from the Earth in Camilla Crittenden’s inked portraits. Allyssa Dezaldivar and Melissa Wise-Miklos have a close, bodily relationship between the material and process of wheel-throwing, and Jaede Bayala’s cyanotypes reflect intimate moments with the environment. This coincides with Ava Obert’s ceramic human forms that interact with Earthly ground. Layered, rhythmic images from Kathryn Wilson observe the just-too-distant cosmos beyond her own sliver of the Ozarks.

Kathleen Barta’s watercolor paintings are sourced from life drawings; they are loose and organized, intentional and chaotic, and shapes of color seemingly vibrate from saturation. Christian Schultz’s hybrid approach melds physical and digital tools to explore themes of self-perception and virtual worlds. Both reveal unique avenues of our natural world through abstraction.

Together these artists offer a multifaceted view of nature and its intricacies, inviting viewers to engage with its many layers and perspectives. LUSH: Group Exhibition runs from 9/27 to 12/30 at Midnight Gallery, with an opening reception on Saturday 9/28 from 1-3PM.

Written and curated by Emma Nilsson

PETTY NOT PRETTY: Group Exhibition

Petty Not Pretty: Group Exhibition

January 2nd, 2025 — March 31, 2025

Reception: Saturday 1/4/25 2:00-4:00PM

BENTONVILLE, AR — Midnight Gallery features twenty-three local artists in their upcoming group exhibition.

Su A Chae

Camilla Crittenden

Alex Dergazarian

Ben Dobbs

Anna Guillory

Hal Hardin

Lily Hollinden 

Mackey Howe 

Amber Imrie

Emma Johnson

Qwist Joseph

Denise Lanuti Alexander Lashley Noel Lieutard

Emma Nilsson

Ava Obert

Claire Pongonis

Kylie Robinson 

JooEun Seo

Emma Seubold

Deja Snyder

Melissa Wise-Miklos Jingjing Yu

Petty Not Pretty

pet·ty (ˈpedē)

Of little importance; trivial. 

Of secondary or lesser importance, rank, or scale; minor. 

What happens when art refuses to be pretty? When artists reject pressures to soothe, please, or respond nicely to egregious behavior? Petty Not Pretty challenges the notion that worth must be weighed by beauty alone, confronting the idea that art should be palatable in order to be consumed. If we, as human beings, are not palatable— if we speak too loudly, react too strongly, or refuse to shrink ourselves, are we automatically deemed petty? So be it.

Pettiness can occur through silence. It can also manifest loudly. We host artworks that unveil themselves with time, like a heavy sigh after a conversation runs in circles. In contrast, we invite pieces with noisy, vivid color, like a rainbow that slices through a grey, sideways downpour. 

The exhibition is a rallying cry for the dismissed and the exhausted. These twenty-three artists channel their grievances, both personal and collective, that emerge from rigid standards of beauty, the suffocating weight of expectation, and the societal dismissal of strong reactions as “petty.” Their work embraces overreaction, absurdity, and emotional rawness, inviting viewers to sit in discomfort and confront truths that often go ignored.

Like a kaleidoscope of contradictions, Petty Not Pretty teeters between humor and unease, defiance and vulnerability. It’s an electric roller coaster that pulls you in with its aesthetic allure, only to twist and turn through unexpected terrain, provoking laughter in one moment and leaving you unsettled the next. It’s messy, vital, and unapologetically alive.

So let the work provoke. Let it unsettle. Let it be Petty Not Pretty; sometimes the loudest truths lie in what refuses to be palatable.

Written and curated by Emma Nilsson