The Thinking Hand

The Thinking Hand

June 21-September 20, 2024

Flex Space Gallery

Opening Reception: June 21st, 5-7pm

Gallery Talk with Thinking Hand Artists: Sept. 18th, 12:30pm

Free and open to the public

“The Thinking Hand” presents a broad survey of artworks by local and nationally recognized artists engaging the legacies of craft and the poetics of technique and process as methods of material exploration and storytelling.

Celebrating the “by hand” ethos of artmaking, this show includes fiber arts, woodblock prints, artist books, ceramics, fresco, sculpture, drawing, painting, stained glass and more. The selection of works features various representations of body and embodiment, familiar objects presented in new contexts, and works that harness the metaphorical power of unconventional materials. Many of the artworks explore the rituals of labor-intensive processes as meditations on nature, time, domestic culture and personal narrative, while others engage new approaches to traditional techniques as a language for environmental and social justice activism.

The exhibition borrows its title from Juhani Pallasmaa’s book, The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture. Throughout this influential text, Pallasmaa analyzes, “the essence of the hand and its seminal role in the evolution of human skills, intelligence and conceptual capacities,” and proposes that, rather than the mind being the solitary control center of imagination, “….perhaps, it is the hand that really imagines as it exists in the flesh of the world, the reality of space, matter and time, the very physical condition of the imagined object.”

Participating artists: Cheriese Andrea, Scott Andresen, Diana Baumbach, Layla Billings, Susie Brandt, Diane Bronstein, Kate Buehner, Kristen Case, Katie Delaney, Margarita Fainshtein, Houston Fryer, Sean Paul Gallegos, Cherie Giampietro, Daphne Giampietro, Ronald Gonzalez, Zexuan Jia, Duwenavue Santé Johnson, Juliet Karelsen, Stan Keach, Falcon Laina, Annie Lee-Zimerle, Ryan Lewis, George Lorio, Mary McFarland, Jo-Ann Morgan, Dawn Nye, Jesse Potts, Ellen Roberts, Jan Royall, Barbara Sullivan, Kitty Wales and Brian Zimerle.