SUNLIGHT & CANDLELIGHT: Grace Hager, Liah Sinq, and Sophia DeJesus-Sabella

During August 29 – October 4, 2024, the NewAlliance Foundation Art Gallery at CT State Community College, Gateway Campus is proud to present the work of Grace Hager, Liah Sinq, and Sophia DeJesus-Sabella in our first exhibition of the Fall 2024 semester, SUNLIGHT & CANDLELIGHT.

This group exhibition features a colorful mixed media installation of photographs, textiles, and ceramics. This show combines three artists individual practices to create a colorful and quiet examination of light and instance. In this vibrant condition, our senses are simulated or condensed into objects, distilling singular features from complex origins. A sense of heat is created in Grace Hager's ceramic campfire sculptures through color and immobilized flame. This same motionless flicker of the flames can be felt in the intense colorful arrangements of Liah Sinq's photographs. A similar, but more distant warmth, is reflected in Sophia DeJesus’ Hoping Machine, which illustrates a sunset through a chain link fence. While Hoping Machine presents a literal meaning, the effect it has on us is much more ethereal and mysterious. Hoping Machine is a textile made on a loom and is materially different than the imagery on its surface. Upon closer inspection of the chain link fence, the viewer is able to investigate deeper into the work to discover a gradient referencing a sunset through the fence. The journey through the layers of the weaving is both narrative and illuminating to the artist’s process. We can experience the piece as a replica as much as a composition, and this play between tactility and the perception of the material is further investigated in other works. Grace Hager's Waxing, Waning ceramic sculpture, through its charming scale and tone, invites us to experience the distance between ourselves and the crescent moon at its center. These imagined distances, frozen circumstances, and replications of light make up the main themes of SUNLIGHT & CANDLELIGHT

Host or Publisher NewAlliance Foundation Art Gallery at Gateway Community College