April 19 - May 13, 2022; Archer Gallery

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Artists and friends Carissa Potter and Kate Pruitt invite you to indulge in the mire. Their exhibition, Wallowing, presents a series of works made of longing, sadness, and confusion. Often we are taught not to linger in moments of grief: indulge too deeply in dark feelings and you may become trapped there forever. However, in coping with the recent churn of overwhelm and despair, both individual and collective, Potter and Pruitt have found that turning toward grief can be a way through.

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The artworks in this show take on “muddiness” and the qualities of mud as a useful metaphor for coping with feelings of grief, loss, confusion, anger, and regret. Potter’s multi-scale figurative paintings explore the longing for touch, comfort and safety, and Pruitt’s papier-mâché sculptures combine abstract and figurative elements—human limbs, paws, anthropomorphized domestic objects—to capture moments of personal loss.

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So much is broken and the trauma seems too much to bear sometimes, but transformation can sometimes hide in the depths of despair. In Wallowing, Kate and Carissa celebrate the act of sitting in the discomfort that life often brings: the beauty of being stuck, right here, together in the mud.