Artist talks with Leslie Schomp and Catherine Smith

This November, two ArtsWorcester exhibitions use startling media. In With You Here Between" Leslie Schomp uses her own hair to create tiny, hyper-detailed embroidery drawings. Catherine Smith's Dread Running, the winner of this year's Present Tense Prize, is a complicated act of mourning and restoration that incorporates the ashes of shelter dogs.

Join us in the galleries for back-to-back artist talks with Schomp and Smith, learn about each artists' inspirations and creative processes, and mingle with the artists and fellow art-lovers.

Free and open to the public.

ABOUT THESE EXHIBITIONS

Leslie Schomp: With You Here Between

November 3 through December 18, 2022 | Window Gallery

Leslie Schomp’s stitched hair drawings are both objects of devotion and drawn illusions. Hair has a history of being a medium of commemoration and love. By pairing self portraits with images from nature, the artist emphasizes our place in the natural world through this humble medium. Her drawings serve as a love letter to all that nature is: heartbreaking, terrifying, awe-inspiring, nostalgic, and magical. Learn more.

Catherine Smith: Dread Running

November 10 through December 18, 2022 | East Gallery

Smith’s series investigates humanity’s relationship to the animal world, establishes a place to mourn and pay tribute to countless unnamed shelter dogs, and asks the viewer to acknowledge painful truths about our society. In a complicated act of grieving and honoring their lives, she combined the discarded cremains of dogs with ceramic glaze to create a set of relief sculptures. When compiled into a stop-motion video, these reliefs evoke the past lives of these creatures and the eternity in which they now run.

For "Dread Running," Smith received ArtsWorcester’s Present Tense Prize for new practices, artistic risk-taking, and excellence in execution.