Exhibition Reception: Bellwether: Works by Clara DeGalan and Shanna Merola

Bellwether runs from September 18th to October 19th at University Gallery in Eastern Michigan University’s Student Center. A reception with artists in attendance will take place October 5th from 4:30 to 6:30pm.

This semester’s first exhibition on view, Bellwether is a two-person exhibition combining the photo collage work of Shanna Merola with Clara DeGalan’s landscape paintings. While DeGalan focuses on the spiritual and phenomenological aspects of humanity’s relationship to land, Merola’s work examines its socioeconomic impacts and ramifications. Through surrealist meditations on our broken ecosystems, Bellwether invites the viewer to walk through landscapes on the cusp of transition and chrysalis. Across various mediums both artists investigate the mythology and cultural significance of soil remediators like milkweed and mullein that have long been cast aside by Eurocentric societies as irrelevant weeds.

The healing properties, folklore, and mythology of these plants are explored across the artists' combined genres of painting and photo collage. Bellwether runs from September 18th to October 19th