Casselberry Sculpture House Presents: "Homebodies"

New Works by UCF MFA Emerging Media Candidates- Kaitlin Kirsch and Lenee Peterson

On view through March 13, 2026, Monday through Friday, 9 AM - 4 PM.

The Casselberry Sculpture House is proud to present Homebodies, a new two-person exhibition by Kaitlin Kirsch and Lenee Peterson, current third-year candidates in the University of Central Florida’s MFA in Emerging Media, Studio Art & Design Track.

Working across painting, sculpture, embroidery, mixed media, poetry, and film, Kirsch and Peterson each explore the emotional terrain of domestic life—its memories, tensions, hauntings, and the personal mythologies that grow from home. Their practices intersect through themes of family dynamics, childhood, innocence, nostalgia, and the psychological imprint of place, while diverging into distinct visual worlds.

This exhibition marks an important stage in their MFA journey, supported by thesis committees of three UCF faculty members, including artist and educator Bobby Aiosa, who serves on both.

Homebodies examine the home as both sanctuary and battleground—a site of comfort, contradiction, secrecy, and transformation. Through intimate materials, domestic objects, Southern Gothic influences, and immersive installations, the two artists construct environments that are at once familiar and unsettling.

The exhibition includes:

• floor- and wall-based works

• sculptural and textile-based installations

• paintings rooted in memory and myth

• embroidery, altered linens, and found domestic materials

• video art and mixed media objects

KAITLIN KIRSCH

Domestic Surfaces · Embroidered Tension · Memory as Architecture

Visual artist Kaitlin Kirsch creates domestic environments shaped by the loss of relationships, places, and time. Through painting, embroidery, sculpture, and poetry, she crafts mood rather than narrative, aiming to create “something out of place”—a subtle rupture that exposes the psychological atmosphere inside a home.

Kirsch alters readymade objects, transforms curtains and linens, and uses color palettes tied to her personal history. Her work explores how individuals attempt to exert control over their environments during moments of emotional instability, transforming the interiors of home into spaces of introspection and symbolic storytelling.

Her practice examines the shifting dynamics of her life and the homes that have held her—physically and emotionally—over time.

LENEE PETERSON

Southern Gothic · Familial Lore · Cycles of Power

Lenee Peterson works in the immersive visual language of Southern Gothic and folk horror, drawing on motifs such as deep woods, grotesque figures, rural mythologies, and unsettling landscapes. Their paintings, sculptures, and video works explore the complexities of family lore, generational patterns, and cycles of power.

Peterson describes their artistic aim as cultivating radical empathy, inviting viewers to confront how childhood experiences and subtle moments of imbalance reverberate through adulthood. By evoking eerie atmospheres reminiscent of American backwoods folklore, Peterson creates emotionally charged spaces where vulnerability and tension coexist.

Although Kirsch and Peterson’s visual vocabularies diverge—soft domestic interiors versus uncanny Southern landscapes—they meet in their exploration of:

• memory and its distortions

• complicated family histories

• the unspoken tensions of home

• innocence, rupture, and reconciliation

• constructing new stories from old wounds

Homebodies offer two parallel yet entangled perspectives on how environments shape identity—and how art becomes a way to reclaim, reinterpret, or unravel those spaces.

UCF’S MFA PROGRAM

Both artists are in year three of UCF’s three-year thesis-based MFA program. This third-year thesis exhibition will be followed by a thesis defense held within the exhibition space itself. Homebodies serve as a critical development phase in their research, offering a platform for community engagement and experimental presentation.

Also check out other Arts events in Casselberry, Exhibitions in Casselberry, Fine Arts events in Casselberry.

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