Kellogg Community College is exhibiting more than 50 works by Marshall-based artist and alumna Meagan Wildt Thomas through mid-October on campus in Battle Creek.
“Portals: The Abstract Nature of Memory” consists of colorful mixed-media works ranging from the abstract to the illustrative. It opened Sept. 7 and will run through Thursday, Oct. 15, in the Davidson Visual and Performing Arts Center’s Eleanor R. and Robert A. DeVries Gallery, on campus at 450 North Ave. in Battle Creek.
The exhibit is free and open to the public during regular gallery hours, which are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays and 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursdays.
A reception with the artist – also free and open to the public – will be held from 4:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 1, in the gallery as part of the College’s upcoming Celebration of the Arts.
In an artist’s statement, Wildt Thomas said the exhibit is her way of “exploring the intersection between the definite and the abstract.”
The exhibit explores the relationship between memories rooted in specific details and those that evoke feelings rather than specific images.
“Sometimes memory can be an image that takes us somewhere specific, and it can be a feeling that takes us to a place we can’t quite name,” Wildt Thomas said.
The exhibit is “an invitation to be present in what you’re feeling, to notice the beautiful ordinary things, and find a bit more magic in being where you are right now,” she said.
For more information about the exhibit or other KCC arts events and initiatives, contact KCC’s Arts and Communication Office at 269-965-4126.
About the Artist
Meagan Wildt Thomas is an artist and illustrator born and raised in Homer, Michigan. She graduated from KCC with an Associate in Applied Science in Graphic Design degree and currently works as an educator with Eastend Arts Center in Marshall, where she teaches art classes and hosts a weekly creative club. She loves to create a space where people can gather to experiment, play and discover something unexpected together.
Her personal practice is an ongoing visual diary of the mundane, magical and weird moments of everyday life. A sketchbook is her favorite place to slow down and make sense of the world, place to observe, wonder, draw and reflect. Often carried along for the ride, these sketchbooks become collections of tiny observations and the seedlings for finished paintings.
Wildt Thomas said she is fascinated by the things that make us human: memory, personality, connection, time, mortality and the strange ways our minds wander. Her work is an ongoing attempt to make sense of the beautiful, complicated, fleeting experience of being alive.
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