Inspired by the 1978 movie “Interiors” written and directed by Woody Allen, this exhibition examines the close relationship between the physical interior we create for ourselves and our own psychological interior. In this artist invitational, 10 women artists will share work in many mediums.

Contributing Artists: Darrelle Anne Centuori, Eliza Wing, Erin Stack, Gail Crum, Jessica Ramage, Jessica Stockdale, Karen Petkovic, Liz Maugans, Raheleh Mohammad, Shari Wilkins, Susie Underwood

Jessica Stockdale – “Clocked Objects”

When the sun operates itself at noon,
the hours haze finds a spotlight.
Everything goes too fast,
even as dust accumulates.

Something from the ceiling is beaming down
every time I twist in barnacled sleep.
And I’ve never paid attention to the squeaks of floorboards,
so I certainly don’t hear them now.

Glass door knobs display fractals,
and the milky blue stained glass lamp
stays sectioned into perfect citrus slices.
I touch the same staircase spot at each chimed ascent.

When my eyes believe
in more than their shapes,
these items are tempered with meaning:
an aloe plant,
a modern key in a historical shape,
a golden cat.

There’s the fullness
of empty rooms to consider,
and the clutter of what’s outside the window.
I was raised at age five
with a balcony outside my door,
and I’ve always roamed at night.
But we’re all rooftop junkies, escaping the shrug of daylight.

– 2017

Jessica Stockdale – “Propulsion in Amber”

I have found,
resurrected,
the ancient ceremonial effects
of your 1930’s life
It is a flashing bronze amber in the shadows, with
gems affixed to a hair comb, a
porcelain hand mirror with a dainty rose, and the
lace, the
lace, the
lace tablecloths.
There was no white wedding dress that year.
But I heard there was a violet placed in your hair.

The bruised grape jelly story dropped plainly,
of how it was the only item written with available excess.
Later you’d have Betty Crocker teach you everything,
with no cobbler left untested.
Never did we walk up to an unfilled table.
Wet and quick is life,
dull and dry is the thud of falling away.

What was intangible quickens and becomes the atoms of energy
fueling something far and close.
What was in the open-air is on a slow crawl to oblivion and dust.
So we believe in the inside.
We believe in the interior life that expands and
has a vertebrae through time.
Expanding,
expanding.
Never contained.

I am wearing your infinity
under the treasure of my tongue.

– 2017

Raheleh Mohammad Artist Statement

Raheleh Mohammad is an Iranian born computer scientist who currently lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio. Although she has had her formal education in the engineering discipline (and a Master’s degree as the result,) as a self-taught photographer, she has been doing photography for more than 10 years.

Life for her is like a long continuous picture, emerging frames after frames whose she sometimes borrow to hold on to; to appreciate more deeply, and to share with others. Photography for her is a visual experience which allows her to capture the moments that could either convey a narrative or a fading reality in a poetic interpretation. Her work has been exhibited in the United States and abroad in group and solo shows.

In this exhibition, she is showing her collage/mixed media pieces using traditional and alternative photographic processes including: Silver Gelatin Print, Polaroid Lift Emulsion, Image

Transfer on Wood and Image Transfer on Acrylic Skin in composition with Pyrography, handmade paper, textile and sewing.

How do we choose to fill and decorate the space in our heart and mind? Her focus in this exhibition is “Inner awareness”. To be conscious of specific times and locations and their impacts on our thought processes and feelings which shape our memories, as if something invisible deep inside us with their own dimensions, shadows and lights imprinted in our minds!

She tries to decode such inner experiences and emotions which lift or shake us; the way we conceptualize our missing pieces, the effects and marks of memories, experiences, environments, people or even thoughts on our inner selves. She intentionally uses stitches to sew all these elements to materialize the idea of how each of them contribute to decorate our interior consciousness.

Susie Underwood Artist Statement

Every human being on the planet lives a unique and singular experience and within each individual lies the potential for countless realities. While each coincidence or choice leads us down our own linear narrative, these other possibilities exist as shadows and glimmers in our periphery. If we stop a moment to reflect on who we were or have become in a particular place and time, we can see that those unexplored pieces of self will forever be lurking, influencing our actions and lying in wait for the perfect opportunity to materialize into tangible reality.