Current Show

Insect Virtue
BY Samantha Hensley and Lizz Hamilton

September 7-September 29

Opening Reception: Friday, September 7, 6-10 pm
Lexarts Gallery Hop: Friday, September 21, 5-8 pm

Pursuing all the wonders across the many heavens, a perfect creature wandered down to earth. He admired the humble way things here lived and died, existing only to consume and then to be consumed. Moths spin fluids into silken strands, ants enter into putrid flesh, mosquitos gorge themselves on blood until their little bodies are fit to burst. Seeing this, his mantle radiated with a strange and gentle love for them. These little creatures asked for no awe. Now he inches deeper into the woods, where the soil deepens and the little beings seem to multiply, to his serene enjoyment.

Now lowly, once divine, he accepts his new form with modest shame. The underbrush hides him from judging sacred eyes, and the insects keep him meager company. From within the forest, sounds emerge, whispering and crying out to him as he passed. Even without thought they know that he is now their guardian; their virtue.
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Lizz Hamilton is a mixed media artist from Los Angeles, California. Her practice uses natural materials, performance, and text to explore bodily relationships with the divine, ritual, and the otherworldly. She received her BA (Honors) from University of the Arts London: Central Saint Martins in London, UK, and is currently an MFA candidate and instructor at the University of Kentucky. Her work has been shown both nationally and internationally.

Samantha Hensley is an illustrator and sculptor from Kentucky. She mends together endearing yet unsettling creatures from an array of scavenged material- teddy bear stuffing, old sweaters, easter decorations, used tissues. She aims to test the tension between disgust and affection for things that cannot be understood. She is currently a BFA student at the university of Kentucky. Her creatures have been shown across the Southern United States.