Digital artist Leigh Blanchard has partnered with poet Nathan Dennis to present a series of transformed photographic prints that incorporate mixed-media materials with handwritten text. When Leigh came across a selection of her older, forgotten-about photographs, she asked Nathan to create a narrative for the images and help define their meaning. Blanchard’s personal journey takes on many facets in these pieces, including literal travel, the passage of time, and intimate experiences. While visiting family near Lake Michigan, Leigh and Nathan submerged her photographs in the lake and allowed water and abrasion to alter the surface. Afterwards, markings of ink and attached paper fragments of handwritten words were added. In the process, new dimensions were created in artwork that has now been rediscovered and presented anew.

Nancy Lunsford recently returned from an artist residency in Zhujaijiao, China. The portrait paintings that she is showing in the Project Space are part of her series “Extended Family,” a reflection of observations of China’s dramatic transformation since her last visit in 1984. In total, Nancy painted 50 individual portraits within a few months, in a rapid, impressionistic, style using bright acrylics on canvas. This intimate series is also Lunsford’s homage to the Terra-cotta Army in Xi’an—over 8,000 life-sized sculptures depicting individual warriors as part of a burial tomb in 210 BCE.

Watercolorist Joy Makon’s classic landscapes are inspired by trips to iconic locations in Utah and Nova Scotia. “What I remember most about every breathtaking scene is how the light affects me spiritually. Capturing a time and place is best done through painting the light. Color and composition become almost secondary when I have made light and shadows the important elements in the piece.”