Get on the list to receive the season-documenting hardcover anthology, the Manifest Exhibition Annual (MEA s17).

Download to save or print the entire season 17 calendar here.

Submit work to open projects here.

Find your way to the gallery, (map) here.

MANIFEST VR WALKTHROUGH — Social Distancing Exhibit Experience (link here to full screen view)

main gallery

OHIO, KENTUCKY, & INDIANA
Regional Showcase

In 17 seasons Manifest's projects have included works by artists representing 50 states and 43 countries. Beginning in our tenth season, we launched an ongoing series of exhibits focusing on works by artists in our three-state region. Six years ago we added projects that also focused on other definable regions outside our own. These Regional Showcases were offered to complement the very wide geographical makeup of most Manifest exhibits with a closer look at art being made here in our own backyard, as well as provide a platform from which we can examine the trends, qualities, and idiosyncrasies of contemporary art within specific geographical areas and compare them to our own.

This exhibit had no specific requirement for type, media, or style of work to be submitted. This was an open call. Submissions ranged widely from traditional to very conceptual, abstract, and experimental work. Jury selections were made based on the overall quality of the works submitted.

For this exhibit 120 artists submitted 495 works from Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. Fourteen works by the following 11 artists from our three-state region (3 from Indiana, 3 from Kentucky, and 5 from Ohio) were selected by a blind jury process for presentation in the gallery and the Manifest Exhibition Annual publication.

Presenting works by:

Kevin Gardner
Berea, Kentucky

Lee Heinen
Cleveland, Ohio

Ron Isaacs
Lexington, Kentucky

Ellen Lyon
Bloomington, Indiana

Jenniffer Omaitz
Kent, Ohio

Kathleen Pahl
Bowling Green, Ohio

Robert Pulley
Columbus, Indiana

Emil Robinson
Cincinnati, Ohio

Julio Cesar Rodriguez
Louisville, Kentucky

Barbara Triscari
Lebanon, Indiana

McCrystle Wood and Melissa Lusk
Cincinnati, Ohio

Jenniffer Omaitz

Robert Pulley

McCrystle Wood and Melissa Lusk

drawing room

Firstlings + There is a Fly on a Plate
A Two Person Exhibit Featuring Ceramic-based Works by Arny Nadler and Ivan Albreht

In considering proposals submitted for this exhibition period to coincide with the NCECA conference originally scheduled to be held in March of this year in Cincinnati, Manifest's team realized it had a special opportunity to craft a two-person show featuring two bodies of quite diverse yet compellingly contrasted works. We are grateful that Ivan Albreht and Arny Nadler accepted our invitation and have joined forces in this intimate presentation of their ceramic-based works.

Ivan Albreht was born and raised in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia (present Republic of Serbia). He graduated at the Academy of Applied Arts in Belgrade in 1997, where he also defended magisterial dissertation in 2001. In 2004 he received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale (USA). From 2005 to 2008 he has managed the ceramics program at Monmouth University (NJ). Since 2008 he has overseen the ceramics program at University of Miami (FL).

Albreht has exhibited internationally since 1997, including Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, and across the United States. His work was featured in many international competitions, and he participated in residency programs in Asia, Europe, and United States. In 2007 he received Special Prize at the 4th World Ceramic Biennial in Korea (CEBIKO). He was awarded Florida Individual Artist Fellowship for the Visual Arts in 2012. His work is included in public and private collections globally. He is an elected member of the International Academy of Ceramics (IAC/AIC) based in Geneva, Switzerland since 2009.

Of his work Albreht states:

"I use technology and generic production to reference the conservative view of ceramics as a decorative and utilitarian craft. I do so by subscribing design and classical decoration to a new, generic element. My interest in the use of day-to-day images and objects is their ability to simultaneously point to both purification and disgust – translating a rather accidental behavior into an organized pattern of pleasing designs, or using aesthetics of the artificial in the context of the historical."

Arny Nadler is an associate professor at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis where he chaired undergraduate art from 2013-2018. He earned a BFA from Washington University and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He has received a George Sugarman Foundation grant, a Regional Arts Commission Fellowship, a Regional Arts Commission Artist Support Grant, and two Sam Fox School Faculty Creative Research Grants. Nadler has works in the permanent collection of the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art and has exhibited at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, The Clay Center of New Orleans, Newport Beach Civic Center, Evanston Art Center, Turchin Art Center, Sculpture Key West, Western Michigan University, the Catherine Konner Sculpture Park, and the Mitchell Museum, with reviews in Art in America and other publications.

Recent exhibitions include the 24th No Dead Artists exhibition at Jonathan Ferrara Gallery in New Orleans and Material Identity at Artworks Center for Contemporary Art in Loveland, Colorado. Nadler moderated the panel Material Poetics at the 2017 International Sculpture Conference in Kansas City, MO and has presented at the Foundations in Art: Theory and Education Conference and the Mid-America College Art Association Conference. He has been a visiting artist at several universities and colleges and is represented by Bruno David Gallery in St. Louis, the site of his most recent solo exhibition titled Firstlings: Sculptures + Works on Paper.

Of his work Nadler states:

"I am obsessed with the predicament of the human form, both its fragility and its dominance in the environment. The son of an immigrant tool and die maker who was permanently paralyzed in a factory accident, I grew up preoccupied with the notion of wholeness—of body and place. Making sculpture has always been my way of understanding the world."

This exhibition was assembled from two that were among 162 proposals submitted in consideration for Manifest’s 17th season.

Albreht

Albreht

Nadler

Nadler

parallel space + central gallery

SUBLIMATION
A Two-room Installation by Manami Ishimura

In addition to creating the concurrent two-person show (above) for this exhibition period to coincide with the NCECA conference, Manifest's team embraced the timely opportunity to schedule this potently ritualistic two-room installation by Manami Ishimura. Especially given the fact that the conference itself will now be virtual due to the ongoing pandemic, negating the hundreds of visiting participants we had anticipated sharing our exhibits with, we feel the interactivity and poetic statement offered by Ishimura's work is now perhaps more meaningful than ever.

Manami Ishimura was born in Tokyo, Japan. Ishimura received her BFA degree in sculpture at Tama University in Japan, and graduated with an MFA degree in sculpture and ceramics at Texas A&M Corpus Christi in 2018. Her sculptures, which have been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including recent sculptural drawings at Masur Museum of Art in Monroe, Louisiana; Wichita Falls Museum of Art at Midwestern State University, Texas; Biwako Binnale, Shiga, Japan; and Gallery C at Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan.

Ishimura’s continued exploration of ways to celebrate this global society has led her to receive the Vision 2020 grant from Mid-South Sculpture Alliance. Ishimura attended artist residencies including the Windgate artist in residency, Franconia Sculpture Park, and Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences.

Of her work Ishimura states:

"Thousands of Cranes is an installation in which attendees are invited to break ceramic origami cranes and replace them with paper origami cranes. In Japan, we have a ritual where people fold a thousand origami cranes for a person who is sick or in some other bad situation. Once the person is better, they bring all of the origami cranes to a Shinto shrine, where it is burned for purification. Thousands of Cranes is an appreciation of universal cultural activities that represent hope for a long life. It offers a ritual about the desire for longevity as well as the acceptance of the laws of nature, and invites gallery goers to participate in the process. Breaking the delicate porcelain cranes is both painful and purifying...

Ceramics is a fragile medium- acceptance of the inevitability of damage is necessary for all of us. The ephemeral materials we use have been developed through trial and error, creation and destruction, always shaped by human hands. Viewers will personally experience the natural dynamism of this exhibition by engaging with fragile objects and the ephemeral beauty of life."

This exhibition was selected from among 162 proposals submitted in consideration for Manifest’s 17th season.

north gallery

ARTIFACT
Ceramic-based Works of Art

― Lao Tzu

Fire hardened dirt has been a part of humanity's long evolution across millennia. Right alongside paintings and drawings on cave walls, shards of ceramic have evidenced the human animal's intellect, sophisticated approach to manipulating its environment, and its ingenuity for survival. But even more, surface quality manipulated with deliberate designs carry a psychological portrait of the maker, and culture, relative to aesthetic and symbolic meaning through mark making.

How do artists and craftspeople of today carry such processes forward, or connect them in retrospect to the long lineage that came before? How is work made of ceramic used today to convey meaning, to create valuable experiences for the viewer, to express content or aesthetic moments beyond the raw material itself? How is the medium negotiated between form and function, art and utility? For this exhibit Manifest invited artists to share works that in some way answer these questions, to provide examples of exceptional contemporary ceramic artifacts.

For this exhibit 88 artists submitted 281 works from 30 states, Washington D.C., and 3 countries, including Canada, Italy, and the United States. Eighteen works by the following 13 artists from 11 states were selected by a blind jury process for presentation in the gallery and the Manifest Exhibition Annual publication.

Presenting works by:

Eliza Au
Lake Dallas, Texas

Angelique Brickner
Asheville, North Carolina

Bob Bruch
Oberlin, Ohio

Ryan Davis
Wichita, Kansas

Kelly Devitt
New Bedford, Massachusetts

Jessika Edgar
Allen Park, Michigan

Martie Geiger-Ho
Bradford, Pennsylvania

Amanda Gentry
Chicago, Illinois

Jennifer Holt
Decatur, Illinois

Molly Johnson
Chesterland, Ohio

Terry Kreuzer
Cheyenne, Wyoming

Bobbi Meier
Gary, Indiana

Jennifer L. Miller
West Chester, Ohio

Bob Bruch

Jennifer Miller

Jennifer Holt

Limited Admission Opening Preview: Friday, April 16, 6-9pm

Limited Admission Opening Preview: Friday, May 28, 6-9pm

Limited Admission Opening Preview: Friday, July 9, 6-9pm

Limited Admission Opening Preview: Friday, August 13, 6-9pm

MANIFEST VR WALKTHROUGH — Social Distancing Exhibit Experience (link here to full screen view)

main gallery

LET THERE BE.
Photo-based Works About Tangibility

Supported by FotoFocus

Photography and lens-based art is often, even unconsciously, taken for granted as being disembodied from physical reality. However, without catalytic objects such works would not be possible. For this exhibition Manifest sets out to remind artists and the public of this fact by showcasing works that reveal the ‘objectness’ of photography either through display of the works themselves, the mechanisms crafted to create lens-based experiences, dialogs between photographic works and their physical subjects, or narrative works explaining the complicated entanglement of light and form.

By playing off the notion stated in FotoFocus’s originally planned Biennial theme that, “Light is a fundamental aspect of photography,” Manifest completes the statement by adding, “...and physical form gives photography its substance and relevance to the human experience."

For this exhibit 58 artists from 21 states and the countries of Armenia, Australia, England, Germany, Italy, and New Zealand submitted 247 works. Seventeen works by the following 12 artists from 8 states, and the countries of Armenia, England, and Italy were selected by a blind jury process for presentation in the gallery and the Manifest Exhibition Annual publication.

Presenting works by:

Francesco Amorosino
Rome, Italy

Trey Broomfield
El Paso, Texas

Bridget Conn
Savannah, Georgia

Nicki Crock
Galloway, Ohio

Richard Dickson
London, England

Claudia Hollister
Portland, Oregon

Prince Lang
Cincinnati, Ohio

Lynette Miller
Black Mountain, North Carolina

Lake Newton
Memphis, Tennessee

Carolyn Norton
Hattiesburg, Mississippi

Morgan Ford Willingham
Emporia, Kansas

Yaroslav Zabavskiy
Dilijan, Armenia

     Francesco Amorosino

     Lynette Miller

     Richard Dickson

drawing room

HV-C notations (...)
Shadowgraphs by Mary Jo Toles

Professor Emerita from the Cleveland Institute of Art in Photography and Digital Imaging, Mary Jo Toles has contributed as an arts educator for three decades. Recognized for her development of experimental processes including high-voltage photographic imagery and eco-friendly green photographic processes, Toles is an inventive contributor to the academic and professional scope of this historical and contemporary field that crosses both arts and science.

Toles has been published in the US, Japan and Germany. She is a recipient of Ohio, Florida, and Illinois Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowships and National Endowment for the Humanities project grant. She represented the state of Ohio as an Artist in Residence at Cimelice, in the Czech Republic.

Toles' work is represented in collections nationally, including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), Art Collection of the First National Bank of Chicago, M.I.T. List Foundation, and JPMorgan Chase Art Collection. Exhibitions include the Corcoran Gallery, Washington D.C, Boston Photographic Resource Center, SPACES Gallery, MOCA-Cleveland, and the Kohler, Akron, Cleveland, Columbus, and Grand Rapids Art Museums.

Of her work the artist states:

"This exhibit includes images from an ongoing series that has evolved over years of exploration working with high-voltage photography. The more recent work represents eco-friendly chemistry for black and white photography. These photographs are evidence of an interaction between gelatin silver paper processed with organic plant-based phenol developers. The Caffenol process uses everyday ingredients: coffee, Vitamin C and washing soda. The results are paper negative shadowgraphs rendered in subtle tonal ranges of the gelatin silver emulsion.

Works on view are photographic prints created in the darkroom, where nuanced experimentation makes it impossible to fully predict outcomes yet summons the beauty and complexity of form produced in the residual images. Selected objects placed on the light-sensitive surface, are exposed to high-voltage discharge from a horizontal resonating Tesla coil with added ambient light. Images are often paired or arranged as elements in more complex non-hierarchical grid configurations.”

This exhibition was selected from among 162 proposals submitted in consideration for Manifest’s 17th season.

parallel space

Multiple Images of a Complex Nature
Photographs by Chaddy Dean Smith

Chaddy Dean Smith is a fine art photographer best known for his ongoing photographic study of the American landscape. Based in the Dallas Fort Worth area, he is a professor of photography at Texas A&M University, Commerce. He served on the University of Oklahoma's School of Art faculty for thirteen years before coming to TAMUC and has more than thirty years of experience in both the applied and fine art fields of photography.

Smith has conducted many workshops, including a pinhole workshop at the Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain. He has presented his award-winning photographs nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions. Among venues that have featured his work are the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art, Shawnee, OK; Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Norman, OK; Longview Museum of Fine Arts, Longview, TX; The Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins, CO; Pingyao International Photography Festival, Pingyao, China; Manifest Creative Research Gallery and Drawing Center, Cincinnati, OH; and Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA. The Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, FL, chose Smith’s triptychs for its Reverberations: Diptychs and Triptychs exhibition and for inclusion in its permanent collection. Smiths Multiple Images of a Complex Nature series was selected as a Jurors Pick of the 2019 LensCulture Black & White Photography Awards.

Of his work the artist states:

"There was a time when I was very frustrated with my approach to landscape photography. I thought that I had to present an idea within one frame, and that landscapes could only be viewed as a single fragment and seen from a single point.

Italian Renaissance artists demonstrated that if you change your point of view, you would see the same scene differently. In painting, this led to the rise of one-point and then three-point perspective in the early 1400s, as artists sought to achieve the illusion of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. Their goal was to seek a certain reality or a certain naturalistic truth in their work, to define a trompe l'oeil. Cubist artists such as Picasso carried this idea further in the early 1900s, which fragmented his painted images to include a constantly shifting point of view. I began to work with these concepts to reconstruct landscapes using fragments of different viewpoints in order to better show my personal, internal vision of the landscape. I put three photographs together, so that at first glance they look like a panorama but after closer examination are three different viewpoints of the landscape pieced together. Using this technique I expand or condense the landscape, sometimes showing the passage of time or even a more abstract view of the subject. This method allows me to make images that deal with Landscape as fact, as culture and as pure form.”

This exhibition was selected from among 162 proposals submitted in consideration for Manifest’s 17th season.

central gallery

Life and Solitude, Death Valley
Photographs by Matthew Zory

Matthew Zory, in addition to being a photographer, is the Assistant Principal Bass (Trish and Rick Bryan Chair) for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the rhythm section bassist for the Cincinnati Pops. His most recent book, Through the Lens: The Remaking of Cincinnati’s Music Hall, is a photographic essay that documents the recent historic renovation of Samuel Hannaford’s 19th century building.

Zory’s photography has been featured in numerous publications including Analog Magazine, AEQAI arts journal, the Manifest International Photography Annual, Cincinnati Magazine and the Cincinnati Enquirer and has appeared in a number of museums and galleries including the Taft Museum of Art, Carnegie Center for the Arts, Wash Park Art and Indian Hill Gallery.

Of his work the artist states:

"I love the desert, it’s my heart’s home. The sounds and silence, the smell and feel of the dry air, the vastness, and the mystery too. Things that have short visual lives, the occasional organic form in the shifting sands, and the sense of isolation, do they parallel our connection to this earth?

I knew these scenes of textures, shapes and light would lend themselves to the beauty of the platinum palladium printing process, a process that is as old as photography (1870’s) but new to me. I came to it out of a need to be more hands on with the creation of my prints. The texture of the paper and the glow and delicacy of the metals absorbed into the paper reflect the experience of being there. These pictures were made using my Rolleicord with Kodak Tri-X 400 film (the squares) or my DSLR, and then converted to digital negatives for the contact prints.”

This exhibition was selected from among 162 proposals submitted in consideration for Manifest’s 17th season.

north gallery

LET HERE BE
Art About Tangibility

As is customary with Manifest’s responses to the FotoFocus Biennial themes, we offer parallel exhibits—one calling for lens-based work (photography or otherwise), and one calling for non-lens-based work (everything else), but both of which address a similar overarching concept. Our expectation is that, as usual, the two exhibits will engage in playful dialog from one gallery space to the other, adding to the viewer’s experience of the whole collection of works on view.

LET HERE BE called for works of any media, subject, or genre (excluding photography or lens-based works) which specifically address tangibility or physicality as a primary aspect of the experience of the work. Whether it be through how media is applied, assembled, or used, subject choices, narrative aspects, or installation considerations, works were expected to cause the viewer to pause and consider their own physicality, or reflect on the nature of being in the gallery space with objects or images, here and now.

For this exhibit 60 artists from 25 states and the countries of Canada, Israel, Japan, Mexico, and Scotland submitted 217 works. Sixteen works by the following 10 artists from 7 states, Canada, and Israel were selected by a blind jury process for presentation in the gallery and the Manifest Exhibition Annual publication.

Presenting works by:

Deidre Argyle
Springfield, Missouri

Elaine Buss
Kansas City, Kansas

Dylan DeWitt
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Andrew Leventis
Charlotte, North Carolina

Michael McCaffrey
Lawrence, Kansas

Adam Rosenthal
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Chen Shapira
Tel-Aviv, Israel

Nicole Sleeth
Victoria, Canada

Joseph Tigert
Smyrna, Tennessee

Jake Weigel
Modesto, California

    Dylan DeWitt

     Michael McCaffrey

     Nicole Sleeth

Limited Admission Opening Preview (Tickets): Friday, Nov 6, 6-9pm

MANIFEST VR WALKTHROUGH — Social Distancing Exhibit Experience (link here to full screen view)

main gallery

BEING IN AMERICA
Reflections on Circumstance

“America is another name for opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of divine providence on behalf of the human race.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today the world (of humanity) has been largely unified by a varnish applied by the hand of an invisible virus. In contrast, personal experiences are more polarized than ever, both internationally and within the boundaries of many countries, including the United States of America. It is worth noting that if "language is a virus", as Laurie Anderson's work of that title suggests, then so might politics, government, knowledge, good and bad behavior, religion, and culture in general all be viral in nature as well. We are all the effects of causes we barely know.

With this in mind, given the vise-like pressure now placed on all we do on a daily basis—decisions, calculated risks, eating, socializing, living life, choosing our representatives and leaders—what does it mean to be in a country that is, as John Adams reminds us, "a government of laws, not of men"? What sort of lens has been placed before our eyes, through which we now observe our circumstances, and this place called America, in a new light? How are artists documenting this today, in advance of the future editors of Art History?

With this we asked how artists record, through creative and thoughtful means, thoughts, feelings, and observations on what it means to be in America today, whether from the point of view of one living here now, of those who aspire to be here one day, or from those who observe at a distance.

The theme was wide open to interpretation, and works needed not be over-stated, nor political in nature. Works that comment or reflect on being in America today were welcome for consideration.

This exhibition will have opened to the public only a few days after a major turning point in American history. While at the time of calling to artists we had no way of predicting either the show, nor the current state of America at the time of the exhibit we were confident the resulting combination of works would be potent and thought-provoking. We believe it is.

For this exhibit 110 artists submitted 399 works from 34 states, Washington D.C., and 3 countries, including Canada, England, and the United States. Fourteen works by the following 13 artists from 10 states and the countries of Canada, and England were selected by a blind jury process for presentation in the gallery and the Manifest Exhibition Annual publication.

Presenting works by:

Mike Callaghan
Toronto, Canada

Raheleh Filsoofi
Nashville, Tennessee

Katherine McLean Forster
Poplar, England

Kathleen Tunnell Handel
New York, New York

Lara Ivanovic
Larchmont, New York

Daniel Koobir
Los Angeles, California

Kate Lackman
Cincinnati, Ohio

Jinwoo Hwon Lee
Chicago, Illinois

Kevin McGannon
Neenah, Wisconsin

Randolph Melick
Traverse City, Michigan

Hillel O'Leary
Providence, Rhode Island

Caleb Stoltzfus
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Andrew Youngblom
Grand Forks, North Dakota

Raheleh Filsoofi

Kate Lackman

Hillel O'Leary

Randolph Melick

drawing room

The Past Instructions For Its Use
Textile Mixed Media Works by Yohanna M. Roa

Yohanna M. Roa is a Colombian-American trans-disciplinary artist and art historian based in New York City. She attends the Women and Gender Perspectives program at the CUNY Graduate Center. Roa holds a master's degree in Visual Arts from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and a bachelor's degree in Visual Arts from the Departmental Institute of Fine Arts of Colombia. In 2019 she was an artist in residence at the NARS Foundation NYC. In 2018 she developed the project, The Journey to Mamacaltepec Momoxco, during an artistic residency at Calpulli Tecalco ONG in Mexico City. Roa received the Young Creators Award from the Ministry of Culture of Colombia.

Roa's works have been featured in a number of solo and group exhibitions at various venues such as La Bodega Gallery NY, Artlatinou in Mexico City, White Box in Harlem NY, Ruiz & Healy Art Gallery, Gallery Valenzuela & Klener in Bogota Colombia, Raúl Anguiano Museum in Guadalajara Mexico, Luz y Oficios Gallery in Havana Cuba, ARTBO in Arte Camara Colombia, Mc Nay Museum in San Antonio Texas USA, and Chihuahua Station Gallery among others. 

Of her work the artist states:

"I am a visual artist and feminist art historian. My practices around art focus on the uses of memory, the archive and the historical materiality of objects. My interest is to make indications that reveal obstructions, gaps and lacks in the different forms of production and transmission of information and knowledge; in particular the transformations and re-significations of the images, which arise from the relationship between, contents, histories, stories, contexts and geographical places. For me, the past is something we build from the present.”

This exhibition was selected from among 162 proposals submitted in consideration for Manifest’s 17th season.

parallel space

GROWN
Art About Maturity & Adulthood

The passage of time is measured, in part, by our state of mind. When we're young it moves so slowly. As we age, time's passing quickens. While it is unclear whether this perceptual phenomenon is linear in progression, or logarithmic, one thing is clear, adulthood comes with (or is perhaps catalyzed by) the recognition of the limits involved.

Historically, cultures would enact fairly strict rites of passage which served as a powerful albeit symbolic threshold which divided a person's time in childhood from their time in adulthood. One day you're a child, the next you're an adult, and you could point to a specific point in time and event when this change happened. Like birth and death, this was quite magical in its implications and impact on the individual. It oriented them, and fitted them into their society. In this way, society, in its widely varying pockets, clans, and cultures, played a direct and intentional role in self-definition—a definition built on a traditional (multi-generational) history and understanding of its people's place in the world and universe.

Today we ooze from childhood into adulthood. The threshold is not so clear. On one hand children are exposed to things far too mature for them to understand at such a young age. On the other hand people remain dependent upon their parents into their 20's and 30's, uncertain of who they are or what they are meant to do in life. It seems the modern world in all its sophistication may have redefined childhood, and therefore adulthood, and now we have to decide what that means for ourselves.

How are the concepts of adulthood and maturity addressed in visual art of today? How do artists reflect on these ideas as it pertains to today's world or to historical or imaginary cultures? We believe artists have something to say about what it means to be an adult, to be mature, so we invited artists around the world to answer these questions and more by sharing their works of art relevant to these concepts.

For this exhibit 24 artists submitted 82 works from 10 states. Seven works by the following 6 artists from 6 states were selected by a blind jury process for presentation in the gallery and the Manifest Exhibition Annual publication.

Presenting works by:

Tom Bartel*
Athens, Ohio

Margaret Davis
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Matthew McHugh
West Lafayette, Indiana

Ruth Ross
Portland, Oregon

Aaron Wilder
Chicago, Illinois

Cheryl Patton Wu
Cape May, New Jersey

* Due to pandemic-related impacts affecting artists and availability of works, installations may vary. Some works will not be on view in the gallery. All jury-selected works will be featured online in social media features, shared in the VR Tour linked from this page, and published in the Manifest Exhibition Annual.

    Cheryl Patton Wu

Aaron Wilder

Tom Bartel*

central gallery

ARTIFICIAL LIGHT
Works Depicting or Using Artificial Light

“The skylines lit up at dead of night, the air-conditioning systems cooling empty hotels in the desert and artificial light in the middle of the day all have something both demented and admirable about them. The mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to see the lights go out as was the hunter in his primitive night.” ― Jean Baudrillard

With the invention of artificial light, everyday life, even humanity itself, was changed forever. So were a lot of things, including the art we make. Quality of life was impacted in both positive and negative ways. Beginning roughly 100 years ago people in populated areas had embraced the new marvel that was electricity and electric light. Benjamin Franklin's and others' discovery of electricity, and Thomas Edison's, JP Morgan's, and Nicola Tesla's practical implementation of it eventually led to a cascade effect that brings us to today.

While electricity powers much of society, it is specifically artificial light that has become the primary vehicle of nearly all our communications. It has extended our work days, and formed the avatars of our virtual existences. We have become light-based beings...

How do artists of today incorporate the use of artificial light in their process? How does artificial light serve as a subject in visual art? Does the synthetic nature of such illumination impact the content of artists' work? We invited artists around the world to answer these questions and more, all centered on the subject of Artificial Light.

For this exhibit 61 artists from 26 states and 3 countries, Canada, Israel, and the United States submitted 257 works. Nine works by the following 8 artists from 6 states were selected by a blind jury process for presentation in the gallery and the Manifest Exhibition Annual publication.

Presenting works by:

Jenny Carey
Tampa, Florida

Jacob Crook
Starkville, Mississippi

Eric Forman
Brooklyn, New York

Hans Habeger
Libertyville, Illinois

Duncan Hill
Brooklyn, New York

Joshua Penrose
Worthington, Ohio

James Ritchie
Plymouth, Michigan

Ericka Sobrack
Orlando, Florida

Eric Forman

Ericka Sobrack

Hans Habeger

north gallery

MODIFIED
Art About Modification

modify verb

mod·​i·​fy
modified; modifying

1 : to make less extreme : MODERATE

2 : to limit or restrict the meaning of especially in a grammatical construction

3 : to make minor changes

4 : to make basic or fundamental changes in, often to give a new orientation to or to serve a new end

Art making in general is a process about modification. But in developing this exhibition we were interested in how artworks can be about or depict the process of tuning, refining, or altering subjects, their contexts, or materials in order to achieve a different purpose or point. This concept was wide open to interpretation and application of the theme 'modified'.

For this exhibit 62 artists from 22 states and 3 countries, including Brazil, Canada, and the United States submitted 233 works. Twenty-one works by the following 13 artists from 8 states were selected by a blind jury process for presentation in the gallery and the Manifest Exhibition Annual publication.

Presenting works by:

Leslie Bellavance
Ada, Michigan

Greta Boesel
San Francisco, California

Carol Boram-Hays
Columbus, Ohio

Sarah Deppe
Madison, Wisconsin

Drew Etienne
Iowa City, Iowa

Skylar Fleming
Seattle, Washington

Dennis Gordon
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Dmitry Grudsky
Newark, California

CT King
Cincinnati, Ohio

Perin Mahler
Laguna Beach, California

Amy Mahnick
Rochester Hills, Michigan

Steve Novick
Somerville, Massachusetts

Mark Partridge
Deerfield Beach, Florida

Dennis Gordon

Dmitry Grudsky

Carol Boram-Hays

MANIFEST VR WALKTHROUGH — Social Distancing Exhibit Experience (link here to full screen view)

main gallery

11th Annual TAPPED
Artists and their Professors

The relationship between artists and their current or former instructors can be a powerful one. Even when this bond is left unstated, we carry our professors' voices forward in time as we mature as artists and people. We eventually realize that the instruction given by our teachers during our relatively brief careers as students continues to expand within us. We realize that the learning they inspired (or insisted upon) is a chain-reaction process that develops across our lifetime. All of us who have been students carry forward our teachers' legacy in one form or another. And those who are, or have been teachers, bear witness to the potency of studenthood.

Out of respect for this artist-teacher bond, and in honor of instructors working hard to help artists tap into a higher mind relative to art and life, Manifest is proud to  present TAPPED, an annual exhibit that presents paired works of art by current or former artist/teacher pairs.

For this exhibit 61 artists submitted 215 works from 19 states and 3 countries, including Canada, Poland, and the United States. Twenty-two works by the following 22 artists from 12 states and Poland were selected by a blind jury process for presentation in the gallery and the Manifest Exhibition Annual publication. The artists are listed in pairings to illustrate their teacher/student relationship (past or present). Works on view will include paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs. The exhibition layout is planned so that each pair of artists' works will be shown side-by-side or in close proximity. Visitors will be able to enjoy the variety of types of works while also considering the nature of influence between professor and student.

It is worth noting also that a number of the artists in the 'former student' category are now themselves working as professors.

drawing room

HOARD
Art About Collection

“Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.”

― C.S. Lewis

Collecting things has surely been a hallmark of humanity since our earliest days as a species. It is in part thanks to the remnants of things accumulated, cherished or otherwise, and then hoarded in caves, clay pots, sunken ships, dried wells, libraries, crypts, and more that we have been able to discern some thread of a history of humanity over time to this day. Even art as a phenomenon of civilization has been shaped by one form of collecting or another—museums, powerful people or institutions amassing value or expressing their taste, cultural movements reinforcing identities, and so on.

Some works of art are themselves representative of this process, one of accumulation, categorization, and hoarding in one form or another. How do artists use such cumulative processes to convey meaning, to create valuable experiences for the viewer, to express content or aesthetic moments beyond the raw material itself? For this exhibit Manifest invited artists to share works that in some way do this, and reveal the power of a dragon's hoard.

For this exhibit 49 artists submitted 177 works from 23 states and 3 countries, including Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Nine works by the following 9 artists from 6 states and Canada were selected by a blind jury process for presentation in the gallery and the Manifest Exhibition Annual publication.

Presenting works by:

Larry Cressman
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Katherine Duclos
Vancouver, Canada

Kim Flora
Cincinnati, Ohio

Joseph Holsapple
Thibodaux, Louisiana

Julie Jenkinson
Toronto, Canada

Jason Lanegan
Spanish Fork, Utah

Curt Lund
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Jarrid Scott
Dawson Springs, Kentucky

Hannah Zimmerman
Cincinnati, Ohio

Katherine Duclos

Curt Lund

Jarrid Scott

parallel space

RESPONSE
Paintings & Drawings by Derek Wilkinson

Derek Wilkinson’s figurative paintings and drawings have been included in over one hundred group exhibitions across the United States. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas, and the Emporia Arts Center in Emporia, Kansas. His work has been selected for twenty-four exhibition awards including a Best in Show at “Richeson 75: International Art Competition Figure/Portrait 2011,” First Place at “National Small Oil Painting Exhibition 2012,” First Place Award at “PINNACLE: National Juried Art Competition,” in 2016, and Third Place at “2018 Oil Painting National Exhibition.” His work is in a couple of public collections including Minot State University, and Baker University.

Wilkinson grew up in the Pacific Northwest and received a BFA in painting from Washington State University, in Pullman, Washington. He continued his studies in painting and drawing at Arizona State University, in Tempe, Arizona, where he received an MFA in 2006. Derek currently resides in Emporia, Kansas with his wife and daughter, and has been teaching painting and drawing at Emporia State University since 2009.

Of his work the artist states:

"My artwork is a response to the stress, strain, silliness, and satisfaction that life presents. Completing numerous self-portraits has allowed me to explore the depths of my emotional and mental states. In addition, the identity of the subject becomes ubiquitous, allowing the viewer to become more receptive to the changing content that is being expressed from one piece to another. For that reason, self-portraits function as universally expressive vehicles, allowing the viewer to place themself in the mind of the artist.”

This exhibition was selected from among 162 proposals submitted in consideration for Manifest’s 17th season.

central gallery

ONE 11
The 11th Annual Manifest Prizewinner

Many Moons
silverpoint, graphite, acrylic on plexiglass circles, approx. 100 x 275 x 2", 2018-2020

by Carol Prusa (Boca Raton, Florida)

Of her work the artist states:

"In my work I desire to create a generative space that tethers us as one in the vastness of the cosmos and the voids between, communicating what cannot be seen but felt – the vibrations that are part of us all, echoes from billions of years ago....

As a “conceptual voyager” I play with cosmologies created when scientists and artists imagine, making work that posits, as George Johnson suggests science does, “…a glorious human construction, an artful fitting of the data into a carefully crafted mental framework, a construction of towers that just possibly might have been built another way.” I hope in my work to create a shimmering body of work coalesced in the uneasy thin space between what I do and don’t yet understand and the erotic dark energy threading me to all.”

Carol Prusa is a mid-career contemporary artist known for her meticulous silverpoint technique and use of unexpected materials from sculpted resin and fiberglass to metal leaf and LED lights. In the 2015 catalogue essay for the exhibition Drawing in Silver and Gold: Leonardo to Jasper Johns, Bruce Weber called Carol Prusa “one of the most innovative artists working in metalpoint today.” Born in Chicago, Prusa lives and works in South Florida and exhibits internationally, including at Brintz Gallery/375 Gallery (Palm Beach) and Bluerider Art (Taipei). Her work is included in numerous public and private collections, including the Perez Art Museum (Miami), The Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), Telfair Art Museum (Savannah), and the Francie Bishop Good and David Horvitz Collection.

ABOUT THE $5,000 MANIFEST PRIZE

Four seasons ago our board of directors increased the Manifest Prize to $5000. This underscored our non-profit organization's desire to reward, showcase, celebrate, and document exceptional artwork being made today by working artists, and to do this in a tasteful non-commercial public context. Manifest's mission is centered on championing the importance of quality in visual art, supporting and encouraging artists at all levels. This project is one aspect of the realization of that mission.

We respect the creative principle of reduction (the blind jury process) as it is employed to achieve an essential conclusive statement for each exhibit we produce. This is what has led to the high caliber of each Manifest exhibit, and to the gallery's notable following. We believe competition inspires excellence. Therefore we determined ten years ago to launch the Manifest Prize in order to push the process to the ultimate limit—from among many to select just ONE work.

Manifest's jury process for the 11th Annual Manifest Prize included multiple levels of jury review of 1027 works by 214 artists from 38 states, Washington D.C., and 7 countries including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, and the United States. The jury consisted of a total of 20 different volunteer jurors from across the U.S. and Canada. Each level of the process resulted in fewer works passing on to the next, until a winner was reached. The size and physical nature of the works considered was not a factor in the jury scoring and selection.

It should be noted that the winner and finalists, 11 works, represent the top scoring 1% of the jury pool. The winner represents the top one-tenth of 1% of the jury pool.

The winning work will be presented in Manifest's Central Gallery from December 11, 2020 through January 8, 2021. It will be accompanied by excerpts from juror statements and the artist's statement.

The Finalists:

The Artists of the Ten Runner-up / Finalist Works: Raymond Baccari (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), Patricia Bellan-Gillen (Burgettstown, Pennsylvania), Lisa Bryson (Jamul, California), Rosalinda Cabrera (Romeoville, Illinois), Dana Kotler (Weehawken, New Jersey), Sadhbh Mowlds (Carbondale, Illinois), Elena Peteva (Providence, Rhode Island).

north gallery

HOMAGE
Art Honoring Another Artist

Whether it is intended as an homage to a deeply respected fellow artist, or simply a work representing a direct influence by the other's artwork, artists often pay a form of homage to their historical mentors in the things they make. We wonder how this shows up in artwork of today—how historical influences and bonds of aesthetic and intellectual lines of thought are integrated into creative production and expression. With this exhibit Manifest invited artists to share their works that represent such tributes to their inspirational predecessors, kindred spirits, and creative pathfinders.

For this exhibit 87 artists submitted 273 works from 30 states and 5 countries, including Canada, England, New Zealand, Scotland, and the United States. Fourteen works by the following 9 artists from 8 states were selected by a blind jury process for presentation in the gallery and the Manifest Exhibition Annual publication.

Presenting works by:

Michael Banning
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Larissa Barnat*
DeKalb, Illinois

Kenneth Batista
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Charles Browning
Quakertown, Pennsylvania

Sabra Crockett
Louisville, Kentucky

James Ritchie
Plymouth, Michigan

Benjamin Shamback
Mobile, Alabama

John Troy
Glendale, Missouri

Chris Vena
Tempe, Arizona

* Due to pandemic-related impacts affecting artists and availability of works, installations may vary. Some works will not be on view in the gallery. All jury-selected works will be featured online in social media features, shared in the VR Tour linked from this page, and published in the Manifest Exhibition Annual.

Chris Vena

John Troy

Sabra Crockett

MANIFEST VR WALKTHROUGH — Social Distancing Exhibit Experience (link here to full screen view)

THE FIVE THEMES PROJECT — For this fourth exhibit period of our 17th season Manifest has created a very special set of exhibitions for the second annual Five Themes Project—offering five concurrent interrelated shows. This iteration of the project proposes one puzzle with many solutions—inviting the viewer to draw connections from exhibit to exhibit and work to work in order to discern dynamic narratives, story lines, and interactive epiphanies from Who, What, Where, When, and Why.

main gallery

WHERE
Art About Location

(Part of the Season 17 Five Themes Project)

WHERE indicates physical location, whether exact, generalized, or as yet undetermined. Or it indicates a circumstance or context.

"Where" can be taken as a question, or as an answer to any number of related questions in a multi-part puzzle—expressing inquiry or determination about a particular or generalized place or circumstance.

Where did it happen? Where is it? At, in, or to what situation, position, direction, or circumstances...?

The Five Themes exhibits had no defined expectation for type or style of work to be considered or selected. Submissions ranged widely in media and style for every exhibit.

The five themes were offered as a playful opportunity to engage in what ultimately results in a puzzle-like game across five exhibits in five galleries.

For this exhibit 61 artists submitted 221 works from 26 states and 3 countries, including Canada, Germany, and the United States. Nineteen works by the following 16 artists from 12 states were selected by a blind jury process for presentation in the gallery and the Manifest Exhibition Annual publication.

Presenting works by:

Ahmet Arslan
Long Beach, California

Peter Baczek
Oakland, California

Dena Eber
Toledo, Ohio

Kariann Fuqua
Oxford, Mississippi

Matt Gehring
Chicago, Illinois

Jason Guynes
Tuscaloosa, Alabama

Rebecca Harrell
Austin, Texas

Karen Hillier
Bryan, Texas

Ryan Howerton
Topeka, Kansas

Travis Neel
Lubbock, Texas

Mary Nees
Johnson City, Tennessee

Sarah Newton
San Francisco, California

Lauren Scavo-Fulk
Jeannette, Pennsylvania

Hanna Sosin
Franklin, Michigan

Cheryl Patton Wu
Cape May, New Jersey

Stephen Yuen
Honolulu, Hawaii

Dena Eber

Travis Neel

Lauren Scavo-Fulk

Rebecca Harrell

drawing room

WHEN
Art About Timeframe

(Part of the Season 17 Five Themes Project)

WHEN is a word that flexes depending on context. Its first known use being over 800 years ago, it continues to suffice as a key element in the English language facilitating understanding of events past, present, or future, certain or undetermined.

"When" expresses inquiry or determination about a particular point in time, or a generalized timeframe for some event or action.

For this exhibit 24 artists submitted 81 works from 18 states and 2 countries, including Canada and the United States. Six works by the following 5 artists from 4 states and Canada were selected by a blind jury process for presentation in the gallery and the Manifest Exhibition Annual publication.

Presenting works by:

Drew Etienne
Iowa City, Iowa

Tori Foster
Toronto, Canada

Lisa McCleary
Brooklyn, New York

Parul Naresh
Fremont, California

Christopher Smith
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Drew Etienne

Tori Foster

parallel space

WHAT
Art About Specificity

(Part of the Season 17 Five Themes Project)

WHAT is a word that has many purposes. Whether pronoun, adverb, adjective, or determiner, it is ubiquitous in the English language, with its first known use also being over 800 years ago. It continues to fluidly, almost invisibly, enable conversation, learning, and action.

"What" can be a question or an answer expressing inquiry or determination about the identity, nature, or value of an object or matter.

For this exhibit 21 artists submitted 79 works from 14 states. Eight works by the following 6 artists from 6 states were selected by a blind jury process for presentation in the gallery and the Manifest Exhibition Annual publication.

Presenting works by:

Jackson Bullock
St. Louis, Missouri

Louise Glass
Piermont, New Hampshire

Lynne Miller Jones
Evanston, Illinois

Steve Novick
Somerville, Massachusetts

Norton Pease
Statesboro, Georgia

Caleb Stoltzfus
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Louise Glass

Lynne Miller Jones

central gallery

WHY
Art About Causation

(Part of the Season 17 Five Themes Project)

WHY indicates a reason, cause, grounds, or motive. For this exhibit it may be an inquiry or statement about the particular or generalized reason something may be a certain way, have happened, or may still occur. Why did it happen? Why could it be? Why are things so?

For this exhibit 21 artists submitted 78 works from 12 states. Twelve works by the following 6 artists from 5 states were selected by a blind jury process for presentation in the gallery and the Manifest Exhibition Annual publication.

Presenting works by:

Locus Xiaotong Chen
Queens, New York

Seth Cook
Cincinnati, Ohio

Dominic Lippillo
Starkville, Mississippi

Chris Mills
Wayne, Pennsylvania

Abbi Ruppert
Edwardsville, Illinois

Samantha, Vance
Cincinnati, Ohio

Seth Cook

Abbi Ruppert

north gallery

WHO
Art About Identity

(Part of the Season 17 Five Themes Project)

WHO indicates a specific or general identity, whether individual or collective.

"Who" may express inquiry or determination about a particular or generalized person, group, or being. Who did it? Who was there? Those who are affected.

For this exhibit 77 artists submitted 277 works from 26 states, Washington D.C., and 3 countries, including Brazil, Canada, and the United States. Ten works by the following 7 artists from 5 states were selected by a blind jury process for presentation in the gallery and the Manifest Exhibition Annual publication.

Presenting works by:

Tamie Beldue
Black Mountain, North Carolina

Madison Eaglowski
Athens, Ohio

Susan Fecho
Tarboro, North Carolina

Alexa Frangos
Wilmette, Illinois

Gary Gaffney
Cincinnati, Ohio

Jason John
Jacksonville, Florida

Wen-Hang Lin
Mesa, Arizona

Tamie Beldue

Alexa Frangos

Jason John