Dinner for Two Leftovers | Artist Talk

---

NOVEMBER 23, 2025

SUNDAY, 4:00 PM

Abel Contemporary Gallery

524 W. Main Street, Stoughton, WI 53589

My solo exhibition Dinner for Two Leftovers traces the charged space between presence and absence. At its center a twenty-foot table stretches into the distance, flanked by two gestural chairs awaiting imagined diners. Gut Punch Chair and Fall Over Backwards Chair embody the gestures their names suggest as if grief itself shaped them.

Plates and silverware are replaced by large bowls of water that shimmer where nourishment might once have been. A two-way mirror serves as the table’s centerpiece, dividing the space in two. One side offers a reflection of the self and on the other a wavering view of reality where perception slips and coherence dissolves.

Within the bowls, cell phones lie submerged. Their screens flicker with images of fire. In this time when phones are rarely set aside and often intrude even at the dinner table, these devices now rest silent and unreachable. Fire and water, forces that both sustain and destroy, hold the illusion of connection just beyond touch. The table becomes a landscape of longing, where conversation falters and silence gathers weight. A dropped connection is suspended in the stillness between screens and selves.

Nearby, ash paintings extend the language of grief. Torn paper mended with gold thread and ash painted on mirrored glass speaks of fragility, resilience, and repair. While the ash, salvaged from a winter hearth, carries memories of survival and care.

Through these gestures, I transform domestic grief into a wider lament, an echo of our collective mourning for what has been lost. Dinner for Two Leftovers invites viewers to inhabit this distance, to feel how private sorrow and planetary harm mirror one another in the reflective surfaces of the everyday.

I look forward to seeing all of you!