"Trying to find and recreate those moments and desires." -Jared Gillett

In November, Obelisk celebrated 15 years, and we want to keep that party going! We asked local and regional artists to submit works that show what ‘celebration’ means to them. Over 30 artists are featured in this exhibition. Opening Reception: December 1st, 2023, 6-10pm Exhibition Showing: December 1st– January 26th, 2024

Creating a fluid art piece is always like an experiment and also a challenge. A balance between “Chaos and Control” and the anticipation of what is to be.

Some of us look back with a sense of longing for simpler times of nostalgia and excitement… Others look forward with awe and wonderment of a future of technology and anticipation with our heads in the clouds. Who we were, who we are and where we will go. This body of work attempts to capture those moments as we travel through our lives.

For this show, we encouraged local artists to break away from their solitary studios and collaborate with one another. Collaborations allow for different backgrounds, experiences, ideas to collide, to ignite new thinking, and to create a sort of visual conversation that couldn’t be possible with a single artist. Opening Reception: September 4th, 6-10 pm, 2020 Exhibition Showing: September 4th– September 29th, 2020

I love color. I am moved and transfixed by COLOR. I can still smell wood chips, sawdust, and the huge green machine that cut wood with a loud whirring sound. Quickly turning the corner in my Dad’s lumber yard, past a green peanut dispenser and red soda machine, I walked softly on the old slats and looked up. My eyes filled with excitement and desire to touch what they saw: THE DUTCH BOY PAINT SAMPLES. Oh my goodness…what a beautiful sight. They gleamed in intensity with a color spectrum from bright to subtle. They rimmed the tops of the wall around the store as they occupied my sight and spirit for hours. Since then, flowers of all colors, shapes, and textures have replaced memories of the little Dutch Boy with painter’s hat and overalls. Not that long ago I took a risk. I bought paint, brushes, and a palette knife. Dabbling in the paint, utilizing hands, tools, and brushes created a rumbling of change deep within. My world took on a different lens through which I would view all things. I painted. Each painting is unique with every stroke, swipe, and drip being its own adventure. COLOR. I LOVE COLOR.

In conjunction with our 16th Annual Bird-home Auction, we invited regional artists to create artworks under the theme of “Coming Home”. This theme encouraged artists to create pieces that embody the visual and emotional aspect of “home”. During this pandemic, we have spent a lot of time at home, but what does home mean? From houses and places to people, things, and scenes of everyday life, home is what you make of it. Opening Reception: August 5th, 2022, 6-10pm Exhibition Showing: August 5th– August 27th, 2022

No matter how long one has been creating, it can often feel like the first time. Finding inspiration and establishing direction can be the most challenging part of creating a collection. Decade: Rewind is a show inspired by a return to my roots and a journey back to revisit the various techniques and aspects of my works over the last ten years with Obelisk Home. Combining the inspiration of new ideas with lessons learned from the past, improved proficiency and gained experience shine through in this new body of work. As always, my ultimate goal is to create conversational pieces which not only warm a space but inspire positivity and imagination as well.

“I have painted large and abstract for my entire career as an artist, but I have come to recognize that life is not just large and abstract. This time around, I have decided to diversify my artwork by going smaller, painting on new surfaces, and including older pieces that I have formed a bond with. I enjoy the freedom a large-scale canvas provides, and the joy that comes with spreading color across it. When I go small, I still cling to color. I have discovered within myself that color is my dominant focus. Beyond that, I can live with a broader palette. I’ve branched into wood and glass, wood because it’s natural feel, and glass with its touch of transparency. Both provide an alternative means of expression. I have also included a couple of older pieces not previously shared because of the personal relationship I feel with each. This is what I present now: DIVERSE”

Paintings, collages, and ink drawings By Rosie Winstead

duet' from the italian, duetto, a little duet. an action or activity performed by a pair of closely connected individuals. To understand someone else, you need to both capture your own thoughts as well as gauge the intention of the other person. Whether you are cooking a meal together, playing a duet or knowing when to take turns in conversation. Interaction changes our brains. Researchers have studied songs of female birds and how they join their mates to sing precisely coordinated duets. Many of these new works have been done together. Tom begins and passes the piece to Jacqueline. At that point often collage is used to create form and structure. The piece is shared until they decide together when to stop working on an image. The viewer can decide which is a Tom mark and which is a Jacqueline. Some of the changes create a rich layering of surface and space.

A duo exhibition by Jared Gillett and Jane Troup. In Jared's paintings, he wanted to "notice the simple pleasures in life." From yummy treats to childhood toys, he invites the viewer to reflect on life's simple pleasures. Jane Troup: “ My new work comes from an in between place. In the last years loved ones left and new ones came. The ground shook. Life goes on and I create to stay at peace and in gratitude for the beauty around us.”

This body of work is born out of my intense love and reverence for nature. It is a love letter to earth, a melancholy response to the growing threats to our natural environment. I hope to reveal a particular beauty and fragility imbued with an encroaching possibility of loss. Photography has played an important role in informing my paintings. I use photography to capture that moment in nature that stops me in my tracks. I try to distill that feeling while referring back to that moment while painting. I feel as though it all comes full circle as the photos then become an extension of my paintings.

An ephemeris is a table or data file giving the calculated positions of a celestial object at regular intervals throughout a period. I love astronomy and find painting inspiration in the spectacular images of celestial objects and systems that NASA provides. But for this body of work, I have been creating an internal ephemeris that tracks my moods, emotions, and mental state during the pandemic. The patterning and brush strokes are based on celestial phenomena, but the sucking darkness that eats away at the canvases, the fraught palette clashes, the sweeping swathes of calm tempered by deep sadness, the lively bursts of frenetic joy—all of these feelings personified in color are my internal ephemeris.

While creating these new pieces of work, my mind and soul have been consumed with beholding the splendid emergence of youth as I watch my six year old daughter transform from my baby to a young independent girl. Seemingly, I feel passively frozen in time as she speeds into her future with delightful curiosity. Simultaneously, I am struggling with the human experience of aging and feeling helpless against the relative physicality of time, as I watch my ninety-three year old Grandmother gracefully approach the next spiritual level of becoming. These artworks reflect my reactions to these most human experiences. Neutral whites, whispers of gold, silver, gray, and greens seem to be crucial colors of expression. Three-dimensional forms frozen in beeswax and resin echo my memories. Escaping Neverland is an endless journey in which we all symbiotically travel. Occasionally, we are able to catch wonderful glimpses of this enchanting existence.

Abstraction has become one of the most formidable challenges on my art journey. Using a reference, it’s easy to see the destination; with abstract, you must create your own world. Why this shaped over that one? Why here and not there? Why this color and not that one? I’m fascinated by the decision-making process of it all. As a future-minded, self-diagnosed planaholic, the intrigue lies in letting my intuition guide me, trying not to overthink, and allowing chance to take its turn. As a result, there have been many reroutes and pit stops along this nearly four-year exploration, but I might just finally be starting to get somewhere.

Flowers for Winter (to get us through) is a deeply personal series of abstract works inspired by the garden my husband and I nurture each year. In a time of profound stress, grief, and anxiety, related to familial illness and death; and the genocide, destruction, and environmental catastrophe in the greater world, this ongoing garden became a symbol of resilience and transformation. What if the flowers didn’t wilt? What if they continued to grow, mutate, and evolve, becoming more abstract, vivid, and strange with each season? This concept drives the imagery in my work, where the natural palette of magentas, violets, periwinkle blues, and greens mutates into neon pinks, lime greens, and hazy, atmospheric whites. The colors warp and blend in a pastel sfumato, creating a tension between nature’s familiar beauty and something more unsettling—a grotesque joy that emerges from the distortions of grief. This mutation is not just visual; it is emotional. The warmth in the paintings feels almost radioactive, at times comforting and at times overwhelming. The flowers become surreal forms, both growing and decaying in the same breath, a reflection of the paradoxes of love and loss. I want the viewer to feel this intensity—the simultaneous sense of decay and persistent beauty woven into an emotional entropy. Accompanying the paintings is a playlist of music that I curated while working on this series, which will play in the gallery during the exhibition. This music, rooted in the moodiness of Shoegaze (reflective of both comfort sought and impotence felt in the face of tragedies personal and global), explores themes of love, heartbreak, nature, and the cosmos. Through QR codes available around the gallery, visitors can experience the playlist for themselves, deepening the connection between sound, color, and emotion. In this way, the exhibition becomes a multi-sensory experience, inviting the viewer to engage with the warmth, distortion, and sometimes uncomfortable beauty that can emerge, even in the face of winter.