EMERGENCE – Part III: REBIRTH
September 19, 5–8 PM at 300 W Front St. Harvard, IL 60033 (Starline Factory)
On September 19, we open the third chapter of EMERGENCE, a four-part exhibition series that has been tracing something many of us know in one form or another: what it means to move through difficulty and come out changed on the other side.
The first two exhibitions, Grief and Acceptance, felt deeply internal to me. They were about the work we do largely within ourselves—the sorting through, the questioning, the sitting with things we may not yet know how to resolve. In many ways, that part of the journey can feel solitary.
Rebirth feels different.
In my own life, healing and rebirth have rarely happened in isolation. They have happened through other people.
I find guidance and support in my groups, in my family, and in close friendships. These relationships have a way of pulling me out of my own quagmire and reconnecting me with the world. Sometimes that connection is exactly what makes it possible to begin again.
And perhaps that is what interests me most about the idea of rebirth. We tend to imagine it as a dramatic transformation: the old self disappearing and a new one emerging in its place. But I don't think it always happens that way.
Sometimes rebirth is quieter.
It is returning after a setback. Seeing something differently. Allowing another person to help you. Finding that you still have something to contribute. Realizing that after all the trials, errors, detours, losses, and changes, you are still here—and perhaps more connected to the world than you were before.
After more than 50 years of making art, I have had plenty of time to change. My work has changed. I have changed. My understanding of why I make art has changed.
My practice of Tai Chi has also influenced the way I think about this. Over time, it has helped me understand our interconnectedness more deeply—the idea that very little exists entirely on its own. One movement affects another. We respond, adjust, lose balance, regain it, and continue.
I can't fully describe that experience in words.
Maybe that's one reason I keep painting.
Art gives me another language for things I understand intuitively but cannot quite explain. And Rebirth is part of that ongoing search.
This exhibition brings together artists interpreting rebirth in many different ways: transformation, resilience, healing, rediscovery, hope, metamorphosis, and the quiet beginnings that sometimes arrive after difficult chapters.
I am grateful to have had chances in my own life to begin again. I am equally grateful that those beginnings have allowed me to return—not simply to myself, but to my community.
Perhaps rebirth isn't about becoming someone entirely new.
Perhaps it is about finding our way back into the world.
EMERGENCE – Part III: REBIRTH
September 19, 5–8 PM
I hope you’ll join us.
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