Archive
Fall 2025 - Spring 2026
The 2025 Eclectika Invitational
September 20 - 21, 2025
About the show:
Coming up in September to open The Eclectika's Fall 2025 season, ‘The Eclectika 2025 Invitational'! This year's show was curated in collaboration with Gallery Director Derrick Hamm and Eclectika Assistants Lauren E. Allen, Breanne Schwarz, and Christina Vasquez.
The participating artists are Hadi Asgharpour, Bianca Bisej, Dust Bunny, Lauren Fleniken, Jordan Funk, Anna Galluzzi, Jack Hein, Mikey Hernandez, Assandre Jean-Baptiste (HUEYDYNAMITE), Carla Hughes, Verónica Ibarguengoitia, Alicia Parham, Robyn Rozelle, Breanne Schwarz, Ryan Semegran, and Jason Thing.
The opening reception will be held Saturday, September 20 from 6-10pm. The Eclectika is located at 711 N. Britain Rd Irving TX 75061.
Eclektibition 2025
October 18 - 19, 2025
ABOUT THE SHOW
‘The Eclektibition 2025’ was our first annual juried exhibition. The call was open to all North Texas artists over the age of 18 practicing in any visual medium. The juror for this inaugural exhibition is artist and educator Joshua Steven Bryant.
SELECTED ARTISTS
Aileen Khuu, Ali Hasan Adatia, Allison Wentworth, Amanda Gallo, Amber Escalante, Cait Elizabeth, Cam’ron Goins, Chloe Renee, Court Broussard, Giuseppe Tranchida, Jalen Colton Sanchez, Janette Davalos, Joseph Schuler, Katie Harris, Kaylyn Grace, Khadeeja Lamin, Matthew Solon-Lee Weimer, Nadia Velasquez, Nuran Tever, Serisu, Scout Lee, Talbot Kenney, TBD/TBA, Tommy Stidham, Yasmine Muhammad
ABOUT THE JUROR
Joshua Steven Bryant is an interdisciplinary artist working out of Denton, Texas. They received their M.F.A. from the University of North Texas in 2022 and has been working as a professor since. Joshua’s processes include found object sculptures, installations, and paintings. Pulling from their experience as a queer disabled person, chairs are often used as a stand-in to investigate how individuals and community occupy metaphorical and literal space. Joshua has shown in group and solo exhibitions across Texas at galleries such as the Rockport Center for the Arts, Arts Fort Worth, the MAC, and the Greater Denton Arts Council.
A Gallery Most Grim
November 1 - 2, 2025
ABOUT THE SHOW
‘A Gallery Most Grim’ with juror Allester Vinteers was a collection of strange, mysterious, metaphysical, dark, and macabre works by Dallas - Ft.Worth artists. The opening reception was held Saturday, November 1 2025 from 6-10 pm and coincided with the opening of ‘Labyrinths’ curated by Opal. An open viewing was held Sunday, November 2 from 1-4pm.
SELECTED ARTISTS
A.S. Vincent, Anna Muñoz, Aubrey J, Chloe Turner St Pierre, Derek Bernsen, Hollie Johnson, Jesse Sutton, Mar Velazquez, Micaela Enriquez, Minerva Maximilian, Nick Teller, Rosie Lindsey, Sarah Mixon, Shawn Storer, Sumaya Rahman, Sydney Lewandowski, Victoria Maldonado
ABOUT THE JUROR
I'm Allester Vinteers, a Dallas-Fort Worth-based alternative Latino visual artist. I earned a BFA in Studio Art with a minor in Art History from the University of North Texas. My work has been featured in several international juried art exhibitions, museums, art fairs, and biennials, including The Hallowed Canvas Juried Art Exhibition by Gothe Residency of The Arts, the Fl3tch3r International Juried Exhibition at the Reece Museum in Tennessee, The Other Art Fair in Dallas, and the 214 Biennial at the Dallas Cultural Centers. I've had the honor of showcasing my work in solo shows with respected art institutions like Art Tooth in Fort Worth. I have been published in Canvas Rebel Magazine, Shoutout DFW, and About Place Journal. My work is in the Tarrant County College Trinity River campus’ permanent collection, as well as at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in the Executive Director’s office, among other notable public and private collections.
I am an active participant in the art community with a strong commitment to promoting the importance of creative self expression through art education. The work I create is a personal exploration of self-discovery, metaphysics, myth-making, drawing from what I find truth and power in, as it resonates with my core values. Creating art is my way of acting as a magician to enact change or as an alchemist to transmute a particular state or experience. Through the deliberate selection of subject matter, symbols, marks, textures, and colors, I create a unique energy and visual language that resonates with my artistic vision. The dramatic mood and whimsical nature of my work immediately draws the viewer in, sparking their imagination and inviting them to explore the art more deeply. As they engage with the piece, the hidden symbolism reveals itself, seeping into their subconscious and activating their senses. This creates a powerful connection between the viewer and my art, as they become active participants in the transformative experience.
‘Labyrinths’ curated by Opal
November 1 - 2, 2025
ABOUT THE SHOW
Labyrinths is an experimental show featuring a select group of artists who were given the prompt word “labyrinths” to create a piece of artwork inspired by their personal interpretation.
In the occult and psychological realms, labyrinths are known to represent one’s inner journey towards the subconscious. Opal selected the artists for their aesthetic fitting the surrealist motif. Surrealism is a dreamlike creative path that explores symbolism and archetypes, connecting the artist with their psyche. Revealing aspects of one’s unconscious can lead to healing and transformation of trauma, allowing for transcendence. Through curating this show, I invite everyone to enjoy the freedom of unbound expression.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Adrian Aileen, Brian K. Jones, Brian K. Scott, Will DeShazo, Opal, Brandi Lee Porter, John Stillings, and Christopher Tranquino
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Opal is a self taught multi media artist, native Texan growing up in Fort Worth. Though she credits her artistic ability to her matriarchal bloodline tracing back both to her 3rd and 4th generation of painters, she deeply believes that it is her calling to channel her passion as an artist into an energetic medium. Her works typically consist of contrasting color pallets and heavily symbolic esoteric transpositions. All with intentions to mystify her audience, meanwhile also wishing to invoke the viewers with intrigue. Previously she has shown across DFW galleries such as Ephemeral Space, The Eclectika, Arts Fort Worth, and Plush Gallery.
Intrepid, Still
Curated by Kate Arrows Enoire
November 15 - 16, 2025
ABOUT THE SHOW
Intrepid, Still brings together artists whose work explores survival and resilience in the face of intersecting historical, contemporary, and emergent traumas. It foregrounds the ways that inherited social structures, systemic oppression, discrimination, environmental collapse, and intergenerational wounds are intertwined, rendering networks that shape both individual and collective experience.
Now more than ever, it is crucial to recognize the common lineage of such traumas. In assembling this collection, I hope to illuminate these acts of resistance and explorations of survival as both intimate and urgent.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Magaly Cantu, Kate Arrows Enoire, Narong Tintamusik, Robyn Rozelle, Jeremy Bunda, Carla Hughes, Noah Broomfield, J Robynn Armevida, and Kael Alford
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Kate Arrows Enoire is an interdisciplinary artist from Northwest Indiana and currently living in Dallas, Texas. She recently earned her MFA in May 2024 from the University of North Texas. Her work explores the intersections of anthropogenic and girlhood survival via tactics of speciations and symbiotic collaborations with the animals of abandoned cobwebs, yielding a delicately discernible space between existence, disintegration, and resilience: a space emblematic of girlhood survival that further serves as a locus for an intimate intercross of resuscitation and becoming with animals. Encasing cobwebs with her own genetic material, she reconstructs and reconnects webs with embroidery, intertwining her work with that of the animals while offering a conjecture of the possibilities of the emergence of a new and distinct species upon an animation of the work beyond reality. Seeking to unsettle conventional ideas of existential concerns, she aspires to spark reassessments of animal kinship and Earthly perseverance.
Request and Recoil
Co-Curated by Nailah Otunba and Ella Salerno
November 15 - 16, 2025
ABOUT THE SHOW
Request and Recoil examines the complication of intimacy through a queer lens. This collection of work responds to the shame engrained in the queer experience created by the labeling of one's identity as unnatural or perverse. The work expresses queer sexuality and desire as being innate and complex, stemming from a yearning for connection that everyone shares. The show is examining a constant need to prove one's own intention as pure. Through works of mainly painting, photography, and small scale sculpture, Request and Recoil aims to illustrate the constant tug of war between desire and shame.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Nailah Otunba, Ella Salerno, Ally Wentworth, Lo, Ashlan King, and Jiji
ABOUT THE CURATORS
Nailah Otunba is a mixed media artist currently based in Denton, Texas. They were born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin but spent the majority of their life living in North Texas. Nailah attended the University of North Texas and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics in May of 2025.
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Ella Salerno (b. 2003, Brooklyn, New York) is an artist based in Austin, Texas. They received their BFA from the University of North Texas with a concentration in painting and drawing in 2025.
As a painter and sculptor, my main interest is how memory and experience can stain a space or body. In distorting the figure’s form, surface texture, and space it inhabits, a confusion is created between where the figure begins and the setting ends. As a queer person, the work questions how my identity affects the way I interact with the world, drawing narratives from my own life and relationships. My practice consists of acrylic and oil paintings, textile sculpture, ink and graphite drawings, and small scale metalwork.
We Are The Visuals
Co-Curated by De'Ane Kennedy and Taylor Fitzpatrick
December 13 - 14, 2025
ABOUT THE SHOW
Throughout history, queer folks have always been tasked with self-preservation. We host our own gatherings where we can feel safety and taste freedom. We invent signals to find each other in a world counting on our disappearance. We etch our own stories into history for those who come after us.
“We Are The Visuals" explores the methods and technologies with which queer Black and Brown folks have built in the name of self-preservation. Through portraiture, sculpture, visual art, and sound, we have utilized these art forms as powerful means of expression, reflection, and storytelling. The show will bring them together to display the infinite ways queer Black and Brown artists experience our own identities and reach for preservation. It will explore our survival, our joy, and our resistance in a world actively trying to erase us. History is currently being written, is this our hand in writing it.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Tiara Unique Francois, Chinem McCollum, Sugar Kane, Ruthy, arisetal, Luna Wallace, and Jalia S’Mone.
Get Bit
December 13 - 14, 2025
ABOUT THE SHOW
This exhibition invites you to Get Bit and experience the artificial hive mind of social media. We explore the impact of contemporary technologies and algorithms on the traditional family unit and the domestic space having their perceptions contrived and contorted based on what they consume.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Talbot Kenney, Noah Steely, Kenni Pham, and Bianca Bisej
Happy Birthday
Presented by the Steady Hands Artist Cooperative Curated by Syd Campbell
January 31- February 1 , 2026
ABOUT THE SHOW
Shel Silverstein's brief, five-line poem "Happy Birthday" creates a story of someone who decides to celebrate themselves without waiting for anyone's permission. Despite the unfortunate outcome of their birthday party, they choose to enjoy the day with their own company. This is the core of our exhibition by the same title; "Happy Birthday" is about resilience and self-confidence. For this show, the members of Steady Hands Artist Cooperative have banded together to seek works from emerging artists in the DFW area that embody a resilient attitude and a strong sense of self in the face of obstacles, such as loneliness, gender identity, social expectations, cultural tensions, misogyny and violence against women, trauma, and mental illness, to name a few of these artworks' very nuanced messages. Much of the work our curators have selected uses birthday and party iconography, such as cake, candles, piñatas, and confetti. Our goal is to create an immersive exhibition that makes the visitor feel as though they are attending a birthday party where something has gone amiss, and their exploration of the artwork can give them insight to the complicated issues at this celebration. We hope this exhibition can provide a sense of being seen to anyone who has felt like this birthday boy, as well as an energizing invitation to appreciate and celebrate yourself.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Ali Estelle, Anelise Hurst, Bryce Gray, Elijah Link Robbins, Ella Salerno, Gannon Shaffer, Jenna Wesson, Lauren Fleniken, Sera Rose, Steven Santamaria, Syd Campbell
ABOUT THE CURATORS
Syd Campbell grew up in Dallas, Texas and has been creating artwork since childhood, specializing in figurative oil paintings and collage. She completed her BFA in Studio Art with a concentration in Drawing and Painting at the University of North Texas in 2024. Since graduation, she has been a part of numerous group shows and has also begun mural-based work both independently and as an assistant. She founded Steady Hands Artist Cooperative in August 2024 and has since planned, managed, and executed several events that combine live music and visual art in an innovative way. She plans to continue organizing art exhibitions and musical performances in Denton and, in the future, plans to pursue a graduate degree in art therapy.
HISTORICAL NOTE
Show was postponed due to the January 2025 ice storm that hit North Texas. Original dates were January 25-26 2026
Beyond Maiden Mother Crone
January 31- February 1 , 2026
ABOUT THE SHOW
Beyond Maiden Mother Crone is a multi-artist collaboration that explores the myths regarding femininity, passed down from mother to mother, and how our experiences exist within them. We interpret how these myths can relate or contradict us through our artistic practices. We utilize classical retellings such as Greek or Christian mythology, but we also storytell through our personal narratives. Beyond Maiden Mother Crone shows that there’s more to femininity than a three faced archetype, our experiences cannot fit into a box. But most importantly, it is a celebration of our different life experiences.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Jojo Chenet, Lauren Hill, Lera Watts, Lucy McGrath, Rae Flores, Ray Thomas, and Sydney Lewandowski
HISTORICAL NOTE
Show was postponed due to the January 2025 ice storm that hit North Texas. Original dates were January 25-26 2026
The Eclectika's 10th Anniversary Show
February 21 - 22, 2026
ABOUT THE SHOW
Curated by gallery director Derrick and co-organized with Assistant Gallery Director Lauren E. Allen, this exhibition featured works by some of the hundreds of artists that have shown and worked with us over the past decade.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Lauren E. Allen, Bianca Bisej, Jacqueline Blanco, Court Broussard, Joshua Steven Bryant, Syd Campbell, Jojo Chenet, Mcat Davis, Kim Wasson Eagan, Kate Arrows Enoire, Maria Esswein, Rae Flores, Brigid Fox, Jordan Funk, Alejandra Gamez, Randall Garrett, Shirin Ghoreshi, Steven Hector Gonzalez, Anonymous Heir, Carla Hughes, Clayton Hurt, Ida Yavari, Talbot Kenny, Alex Khraish, Aileen Khuu, Taylor Kirkhart, Sydney Lewandowski, Daniel Martinez, Opal, Brooke Opie, Nailah Otunba, Breanne Schwarz, Ryan Semegran, Nora Soto, Jesus Trujillo, Vahid Valikani, Christina Vasquez, Shannon N. West, Taylor Wright
SPECIAL PERFORMANCE
‘Christening’ by Bianca Bisej
“With this performance I will be examining these feelings of self-betrayal and safety through obscurity by covering myself in layer after layer of t-shirt, obscuring my form that I’ve worked so hard to achieve in an attempt to show the audience what so many in the trans community go through as an event akin to christening our new bodies in shame and fear.
The performance itself will be a restrictive experience. Actually making myself more visible to the audience through the layering of shirts, restricting my movement and embarrassing myself, exemplifying the “double-edged” nature of concealing oneself. You may be safe from people on the outside, but from my own experience, you also feel inauthentic. The piece shows the audience the harmful nature of not being true to yourself and the toll that the slow build up of insecure emotions takes on your mental state.”
‘Matter, Made’ with Juror Brooks Oliver
March 14 - 15, 2026
ABOUT THE SHOW
'Matter, Made' is a material focused show, seeking works made in metal, ceramics, wood, textiles, glass, papers, or plastics. From functional to the ephemeral we want to see how you use matter to create, construct and craft contemporary art.
SELECTED ARTISTS
Dania Bayan, McConnell Brown, Julie Covington, Marina Earley, Diana Fortin, Cristi Frye, Amanda Gallo, Lucas Gustafson, Carla Hughes, Aileen Khuu, Emme Landes, Yen-Yu Lien, Isabel Martinez, Sarah Mixon, Corin Moores, Ryan Dee Nevill, Georgina Padilla, Kate Petrin, Serena Ramirez
ABOUT THE JUROR
Brooks Oliver is a ceramics instructor and Program Coordinator at the University of North Texas and a studio artist based out of Dallas, TX. He recently completed a long-term residency at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana. He received his MFA from The Pennsylvania State University, his BFA at Southern Methodist University, and completed his post baccalaureate studies at Syracuse University. He taught in Jindezhen, China in 2016 with West Virginia University and regularly teaches workshops in and out of university settings.
Inversion
March 14 - 15, 2026
ABOUT THE SHOW
Inversion’, was a group show by Noah Broomfield, Courtney Broussard, and Tamara Rafkin featuring work created during their shared residency at the Taoxichuan Art Center in Jingdezhen, China.
‘Inversion presents work developed during a shared residency at the Taoxichuan Art Center in Jingdezhen, China, the birthplace of porcelain. The exhibition reflects moments of looking again, reversing perspective, and allowing material and place to quietly reframe understanding.
Jingdezhen’s long history of porcelain production is inseparable from labor, industry, and ecological cost. Working alongside local ceramic artists and laborers, we experienced making as a shared language shaped through repetition, observation, and care.
We were drawn to the name Inversion not only for its meaning of reversal, but for the ceramic process itself. As clay becomes ceramic, it passes through quartz inversion, a permanent material shift. In the same way, this time in Jingdezhen changed how we see value, labor, and support systems, sometimes in ways that cannot be undone.
This exhibition is presented with gratitude to Taoxichuan Art Center and Eliza Au for their generosity, guidance, and support.’
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Noah Broomfield, Courtney Broussard, and Tamara Rafkin
Subconscious as Interface
Co-curated by Christina Vasquez and Alex Khraish
March 28, 2026
ABOUT THE SHOW
‘Subconscious as Interface’ brings together new media artists based in Texas working across formats, from monitor-based installations to time-based video works. The show explores altered perception through the use of mixed media works that touch upon psychic residue, digital systems, and dreamlike worlds. Together, these works suggest that in an era shaped by digital mediation, the subconscious has become a primary interface through which we process, reinterpret, and navigate technological life.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Diana Rojas, Xia Garcia+Stephanie Jantzen, Julia Caswell Freund, Gracie May, Kristina Smith, Brenda Vega, Rodney Jumah+James Droptop, Iris Yves Vincent, Eric Trich, Jiatong Yao, Zack Nguyen, Maryam Ashkaboosi, Tina Vahed, Virginia L. Montgomery, Taylor Cleveland, Shannon Gaudard, Chris Wicker, Laura Hyunjhee Kim, Zak Loyd.
Up Near The Roof, All Our Thoughts Are Clear
Solo Exhibition by Tamara Rafkin
March 30 – April 4, 2025
ABOUT THE SHOW
Up Near The Roof, All Our Thoughts Are Clear, Solo Exhibition by Tamara Rafkin comes to The Eclectika Gallery this March 30th – April 4th, as one of the three UNT MFA shows the Eclectika is hosting this spring.
Rafkin’s work explores the emotional and physical ways we relate to spaces and our sense of belonging, asking how place, time, and memory shape the structure of the self within the spaces we inhabit.
Using architectural forms as a vehicle for the idea of self and relationship to place, this exhibition reflects on how memory can both anchor and erode a sense of being. While allowing the viewer to occupy a liminal space between the realities of knowing, shifting boundaries of identity, the places we call our own, and a psychological landscape created over time.
This exhibition is Rafkin’s MFA Thesis exhibition as part of her final studies at the University of North Texas. Rafkin invites the public to join her at The Eclectika to experience this sculptural installation of her ceramic, cement, and steel works that culminate her time within the MFA program in Denton.
HISTORICAL NOTE
This is the first of three MFA Thesis shows hosted by The Eclectika that moved off campus in protest over the removal of the Marka27 exhibition ‘Ni de Aquí Ni de Allá’
Ceremony for Creative Care
MFA Thesis Exhibition by Noah Broomfield
April 5 - 11, 2025
ABOUT THE SHOW
Ceremony for Creative Care is an active practice through which Noah is currently reconfiguring his relationship to the objects, things, and ecology that surround him. This MFA thesis exhibition is a showcase of the tools that Noah uses to achieve this relational shift. Noah is pleased to invite the public to his oral thesis defense and reception to participate in this ceremony for creative care.
Noah Broomfield was born and raised in Berea, Kentucky where he received a bachelor’s degree in studio art from Berea College. After working as a production potter for five years, he arrived in Denton to pursue an MFA at UNT focusing on using his studio practice as a mechanism for care. Noah’s thesis work is heavily informed by a summer of travel and study in China, and exposure to the ‘Gongfu’ tea ceremony. By merging his southern Appalachian upbringing with historical tea practices, Noah offers tea as a form of care for the people, objects, things, and ecology that surround him.
HISTORICAL NOTE
This is the second of three MFA Thesis shows hosted by The Eclectika that moved off campus in protest over the removal of the Marka27 exhibition ‘Ni de Aquí Ni de Allá’
'EclectikAdemy 2026
with juror Jordan Funk
April 18 - 19, 2025
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Eclectika’s first annual juried college exhibition ‘EclectikAdemy’ with juror Jordan Funk. This exhibition featured a diverse offering of works by 22 college students from the North Texas region. The opening reception was held Saturday, April 18 from 6-10pm followed by an open viewing on Sunday, April 19 from 1- 4pm.
SELECTED ARTISTS
Ailyn Lazaro, Allison Bell, Anastasiya Shyvilka, Audrey Hatter, Eleanor Hall, Elise Sheffield, Ellie Martinez, Emma Camp, Jalen Colton Sanchez, Janice Montes, Jody Farmer, Julianna Rangel, Lisbeth Villalpando, Mary Aufforth, Nathan Basset, Rebecca Jinyoung Park, Ruben Reyes, Sevie Eagan, Shanelle Ashouri, Sydney Lewandowski, Vanessa Guajardo, Vidhi Jadeja
ABOUT THE JUROR
Jordan Funk is a photographic artist based in Denton, Texas. She received her BFA in photography from Texas Woman’s University in 2019 and earned her MFA in Photography and Related Media from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2021. She is currently in Cohort 5 of The Cedars Union Cohort program in Dallas, Texas, and teaches photography courses at Texas Woman’s University and UT Arlington.
Wear Well
MFA Thesis Exhibition by Calvin Yuan
April 20 - 25, 2025
ABOUT THE SHOW
Calvin Yuan is DFW based metalsmithing artist creating wearables that mixes metals with LEGO. He draws inspiration from architecture and the forms of LEGO itself to create jewelry pieces that blend high class jewelry with the joyfulness of LEGO. Yuan currently teaches at the University of North Texas. Yuan is now focusing on more ways to challenge the idea of LEGO of not being just a toy but something more valuable.
HISTORICAL NOTE
This is the last of three MFA Thesis shows hosted by The Eclectika that moved off campus in protest over the removal of the Marka27 exhibition ‘Ni de Aquí Ni de Allá’
Earth Speaks
Solo exhibition by Rachel Rector presented in collaboration with AFPA Gallery
May 16 - 24, 2025
ABOUT THE SHOW
From AFPA Gallery:
In "Earth Speaks," Rachel Rector embraces a slow, elemental approach to image-making, using cameraless photography and historical processes to create works in direct collaboration with nature. Sunlight, water, and organic materials leave their trace, resulting in images that feel both intimate and ephemeral.
This exhibition centers on collaboration rather than control. Rector relinquishes authorship to the elements, allowing nature to imprint and shape each surface—creating works that are at once fragile and enduring, evoking memory rather than documentation.
By blending photography with poetry, collage, and textile elements, Rector expands the medium into a tactile, sensory experience, inviting viewers to pause and reconsider their connection to the natural world.
We are especially grateful to Lauren Allen and The Eclectika Gallery for this meaningful collaboration.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Rachel Rector is a fine art film photographer whose work utilizes experimental film, cameraless photography, and historical printmaking techniques to evoke the ethereal, daydream quality of a nostalgic moment in nature. She often adds poetry, collage, and textile elements to her hand-printed photographs to convey the sentiment of the natural space. Her images have been published in Polaroid, Huffington Post, Lomography, Love Watts, Fault Magazine, Something Curated, Structured Mag and displayed in galleries throughout the U.S. Rachel has developed educational workshops believing that teaching 18th century processes like cyanotypes and anthotypes captivate students' senses and encourages them to become more engaged with their environment. She is currently enjoying living in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Earth Speaks is a photographic installation rooted in the language of nature, and the quiet, tactile process of cameraless image-making. This process is slow and intentional. Created through direct collaboration with nature. Using sunlight, water, chemistry, and organic materials, this exhibition captures the deep stillness of our Earth, made visible through a slow, elemental process. Each of these historical processes were developed outdoors using the power of light rays from the sun and a darkroom.
HISTORICAL NOTE
This is The Eclectika’s first collaboration with an out-of-state arts organization and our first solo exhibition by an out-of-state artist.
Ether/Light
Juror: Lauren E. Allen
May 16 - 24, 2025
ABOUT THE SHOW
From AFPA Gallery:
‘Ether / Light’ was a photography exhibition dedicated to historical, alternative and traditional photographic processes and their exploration of light, time and materiality. The opening reception was held on May 16 from 6 to 10pm in conjunction with the opening of ‘Earth Speaks’.
SELECTED ARTIST:
Æ Escalante, Ailyn Lazaro, Cameron Flores, Jordan Funk, K.R. Hallberg, Kaleb Shields, Kim Wasson Eagan, Kylie Henk, Laidric Stevenson, Lauren Grega, Mary Aufforth, Rebecca Jinyoung Park, Selene Bianka, Sophie Knox
ABOUT THE JUROR
Currently residing in Dallas Texas, Lauren E. Allen graduated from the University of North Texas in 2024 with a Masters of Fine Arts in Studio Art with a concentration in photography and Cum Laude from Texas Woman’s University in 2014 with a concentration in photography.
Lauren’s work is an exploration of the psychological aspects that influence our ideas of self. Utilizing abstracted photographic imagery and fiber, viewers are encouraged to reflect on their own conscious and unconscious identity. Their work has been included in exhibitions at the Deland Museum of Art (Deland, FL) Arlington Museum of Art (Arlington, TX) and Strata Gallery (Santa Fe, NM) among others. With solo exhibitions at The Jung Center (Houston, TX) and Cora Stafford Gallery (Denton, TX).
