Why do we need art in this moment? What art sustains both practitioners and audience in difficult times? These urgent questions pulse at the heart of curator and artist Olivia Baldwin’s extraordinary exhibition at the Kniznick Gallery, part of Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Center—and the answers she’s assembled are luminous.
In an era where artists grapple with creating meaningful work amid political turbulence and global fragility, Baldwin has curated something rare: a collection that doesn’t merely respond to our moment but transforms it. Drawing from her own artistic sensibilities, she sought work defined by materiality, color, and above all, care. Through studio visits and intimate conversations with artists from New England and New York, two words emerged like a mantra: community and care. The result is a provocative gathering of contemporary works that pulse with urgency and tenderness in equal measure.
The exhibition reveals how younger artists are breathing revolutionary life into abstraction, transforming the mundane into the profound. Destiny Palmer’s installation O Rage stands as a masterclass in this transformation. An old orange shag rug becomes archaeological evidence of domestic life, while cotton bolls—still clinging to their stems like memories—mingle with coral hair curlers and assorted plastic items in a constellation of home accessories. The overall orange palette blazes with ambiguity: Is this the color of warning or warmth? Danger or comfort? Palmer leaves us suspended in that space between safety and threat that defines so much of contemporary existence.
Throughout the gallery, metaphorical caretaking emerges as both subject and practice. Lu Heintz’s blue and black sculptural canvas works spring from the humble act of folding t-shirts—domestic labor elevated to high art. The meditative precision required to transform clothing into sculpture mirrors the daily acts of care that sustain us all.
Dara Benno’s moss-crowned plywood bench extends a quiet invitation, its living surface suggesting that art itself can nurture growth. Meanwhile, Kate Holcomb Hale’s I Want to Climb This But I Know It Can’t Hold Me commands the gallery’s center like a dare made manifest. This ladder-shaped soft sculpture, suspended from overhead pipes, transforms the warning “be careful” into a meditation on desire and limitation. Here is childhood’s eternal tension: the yearning to ascend versus the wisdom that knows some structures cannot bear our weight.
When the world feels fractured, artists turn to nature not for escape but for healing. Orli Swergold’s Antidote exemplifies this impulse—lushly pigmented paper pulp on wood that thrums with organic energy. The piece acknowledges our planetary despair while insisting on possibility: even in darkness, we can still plant gardens. The work itself becomes what its title promises:edicine for our ecological grief.
Sometimes the most radical act is simply falling in love with the medium itself. Kevin Umana’s surfaces are deliciously textured with oils, acrylic, gouache, watercolor, sand, flocking, ink, pastels, and ceramics. Liza Bingham’s terry-clothed Pattern Emoji works exude an immediacy, the paint dances with freshness.
And then there’s Lavaughan Jenkins, an artist so deeply in love with paint that his passion for it seduces even before the punch of his content reveals itself. These works must be experienced in person, where tactility becomes a language more eloquent than words.
The work in this exhibition refuses to separate aesthetic pleasure from social responsibility, beauty from meaning. These works don’t just reflect our fractured moment—they offer repair. In showing us art that emerges from care and creates community, the exhibition becomes what it celebrates: a space where vulnerability and strength coexist, where the everyday becomes sacred, where the act of looking becomes an act of love.
Photo credit: @elizabeth_ellenwood
A Gathering: Gardens, Portals, Protests
Curated by Olivia Badwin
Featuring: Bhen Alan | Liza Bingham | Dara Benno | Marisa Finos | Lu Heintz | Damien Hoar de Galvan | Kate Holcomb Hale | Kristy Hughes | Lavaughan Jenkins | Crystalle Lacouture | Destiny Palmer | Orli Swergold | Kevin Umaña | Eva Zasloff
Kniznick Gallery, Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center
515 South St, Waltham, MA 02453
June 25 – August 21, 2025
@brandeis_kniznick_gallery @brandeis_wsrc
Adria Arch is a Boston based sculptor, painter and educator. Her work has been featured at Brattleboro Art Museum, the Fitchburg Art Museum, Danforth Museum and the Boston Sculptors Gallery. Arch recently completed a commission for Google. Her large scale suspended work will be on view at Boston City Hall in November and at the San Luis Obispo Art Museum in December of 2025.