BUCKHANNON, West Virginia – Sleeth Gallery, located in McCuskey Hall, will host an exhibition entitled  As Within with recent works by Lauren Frances Evans April 11-May 4. A gallery reception will be held Thursday, April 11 from 4:30-7 p.m. with Evans giving an artist talk at 6 p.m.

Lauren Frances Evans currently lives and works in Birmingham, Alabama where she is an assistant professor of art and gallery director at Samford University. She completed her undergraduate studies at the College of Charleston and received her MFA from the University of Maryland. Evans has participated in residencies at Franconia Sculpture Park, Elsewhere Living Museum, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Stay Home Gallery. Evans is the founder and facilitator of the Artist/Parent/Academic Network and is mother to Agnes Prairie and Edith Moon.

Shaped by her own maternal experience, inherent mysticism, and neurodivergent identity, Evans probes at the visceral tensions of threshold moments, and scratches at liminal flickerings of the beyond. Evans serves on the boards of East Village Arts, in Birmingham, and the Alabama Visual Arts Network. This year, she was awarded a Visual Arts Fellowship by the Alabama State Council on the Arts.

Evans had this to say about her exhibit: “What do you call that thing that is you, and yet something else entirely, inside of yourself and outside of yourself at the very same time? Questions of origin and existence are constantly shaping how I think about my creative work, and my belief is that the work of the artist, and perhaps especially the mother artist, is primarily ontological. Just as the human belly button marks both a connection to and a separation from our physical origins, the work that I make points to a similar simultaneity of opposites, referencing the body’s attraction and repulsion but also the immaterial void of human longing in us all.”

“Reaching for, grasping at, embracing, probing and prodding, these hands (both attached to my body and depicted so often in my work), they hold so much. As an artist, again and again, I find myself scratching at the surface of various possibilities, and the satisfaction of fingernails caught under the edge of things sensed (though rarely clearly seen) keeps me picking at, peeling back, and digging for more.

“These hands. They hold, they probe, they feel for and pick at the surface of something far beyond the scope of this game. What is it, then, to begin again?”

ABOUT WEST VIRGINIA WESLEYAN COLLEGE
West Virginia Wesleyan College (WVWC) is a private, four-year residential liberal arts and sciences college in Buckhannon, West Virginia. A tradition of excellence for more than 130 years, West Virginia Wesleyan is home to 14 Fulbright Scholars. The Princeton Review ranked Wesleyan as one of its 2023 Best Colleges in the Southeastern Region of the United States. U.S. News & World Report’s 2022-2023 Best College Rankings designated Wesleyan seventh in Best Value – Regional Universities (South). WVWC offers students nearly 60 majors and 40 minors; graduate programs in athletic training, business administration, creative writing, nursing and clinical mental health counseling; 21 NCAA Division II athletic programs; multiple performing arts groups; and more than 50 organizations. Founded in 1890, the College is closely affiliated with the United Methodist Church and abides by the Wesley doctrine that emphasizes service to others. For more information, visit wvwc.edu.