The Path Back to Ourselves.

Grace Under Fire at The Shepherd. Courtesy of Library Street Collective and the Shepherd. Photo by Joseph Tiano.

By JAMES SALOMON January 31, 2025 

Grace Under Fire at Library Street Collective’s The Shepherd, Detroit,
curated by Kyle DeWoody, Laura Dvorkin, and Maynard Monrow.

A Wing and a Prayer at the Bunker Artspace, West Palm Beach,
curated by Zoe Lukov and Kyle DeWoody.

In the midst of precarious times, where do we find the continued strength,
encouragement, even desire to dare hope for something better?

Approached through the lens of spirituality, community, and nature, this exhibition explores the pockets of grace that life gifts us in the midst of great misfortune, the touchstones in adversity, and the lights in times of darkness that keep us on the path.

Through a diverse selection of work, these are some of the ideas on offer—Seeds of growth and renewal, personal and communal healing, ceremony and ritual, divine intervention, alignment with the earth and the stars, shared acts of care, joy and expression, familial and ancestral resilience, and world and future building.

This curatorial statement sets the scene in a newly published catalogue on the Shepherd exhibition, and it speaks as a letter of love, empathy, and resilience in moments when we’ve Just. Had. Enough. The curators aren’t afraid of big ideas in these two connected shows. Do we have the guts, the patience, the will to stomach them? Either way, the artists are offering a lifeline.

 Grace Under Fire at The Shepherd. Courtesy of Library Street Collective and the Shepherd. Photo by Joseph Tiano.
 

It’s fitting that Grace Under Fire took place in a decommissioned church, with architecture that reaches to the heavens, and contemporary art fully occupying a former place of worship. The religious world ushers in the art world. They have been intrinsically linked throughout history, as art has told the story of religion before there was a common tongue. Can we call the art world an alternative religion unto itself? More specifically….is the art world a space for those who lost their religion?
 

“Being in the Art World is like being Amish. It is like being in a small, sectarian cult, with its own belief systems and its own social practices and formations, and its own social mores. We talk in code, we dress a certain way, we’re very identifiable to one another, but we’re not an open field,” as Helen Molesworth explains in Kelcey Edwards’ film The Art of Making It.
 

In terms of initiation, I clearly remember my earliest days as an intern at a prominent gallery in Paris, thinking that I’d slipped under the velvet rope (or jumped the fence). I’m sure many feel the same way with their own art world beginnings, and have fantastically unique stories to tell about them. For me, a few years had gone by, and I found myself in the suit-and-tie Fifth Avenue chapter of my career where I worked with some of the most celebrated artists and art enthusiasts in the New York mecca. Regardless of that hierarchy, we are all disciples and admirers of Hephaestus, Ptah, Nuwa, Brage, all gods of creativity (the list goes on and on). We are part of the Salon des Refusés in society, not because we are failures, but because we like it here, and there is a reason why we wound up here. A culture that welcomes rule breaking and revolutionary thoughts, a language that transcends the verbal that emboldens the human experience, and likes to keep it weird.
 

So, if Kyle, Zoe, Laura, and Maynard ask where we should turn to, collectively and individually, I would offer creativity as means to reveal community, where one can be themselves, speak to themselves, hear themselves. “The artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world.” – Andrei Tarkovsky.

'A Wing and a Prayer' curated by Kyle DeWoody and Zoe Lukov at The Bunker Artspace: Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody, West Palm Beach. Photo by Capehart Photography.
 

This ambitious project includes almost 200 artists in two venues, the second one of which, titled A Wing and A Prayer, is at the Bunker Artspace in West Palm Beach. It is owned by Beth DeWoody, undoubtedly a High Priestess in our temple.

“It’s all an offering to God,” states Rick Rubin, creativity guru, “It’s a higher vibration. We’re making the best we can make, to the best of our abilities, out of love and devotion. That’s what it is.”
 

 Dawn DeDeaux, Ladders for Fragile Ascents, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.

Throughout art history metaphoric ladders abound to illustrate our universal longing to 'see' into the future. We also find ladders depicted for ascents into the heavens or as the rung steps climbed on the path to higher knowledge. In my own work, I have used the ladder motif in sculptures and drawings accordingly. I have also deployed an army of ladders throughout landscape depictions of my watery homeland - the fastest eroding landmass in the world. " — Dawn Dedeaux

Michele Oka Doner, Another Genesis, 2020. Photo by Tim Johnson. Courtesy of the Artist and Library Street Collective.

A layered work that began with our internalized ocean, blood, which is mostly saline solution just like the ocean. And then we are also a body electric. We possess electrical currents that allow us to regenerate, and heal. We need to remember what we are made of, where our physical body came from, then allow it to be the sanctuary it was meant to be, a place to hold what we call the soul.

— Michele Oka Doner

 Jamea Richmond-Edwards, The Midnight Marauder, 2024

Midnight Marauder is a metaphorical painting that examines the human condition in times of chaos. It reflects the inner turmoil that arises when familiar structures are engulfed by uncertainty and the choices we make in response to these challenges. — Jamea Richmond-Edwards

 

Thomas Beale, Untitled (shell seat). (left and right): Courtesy of the Artist.

“The world is too much with us,” Wordsworth wrote, and even he may have been surprised at how resonant his lament rings today. Meanwhile, I sense that the creative impulse that drives me springs from a source similarly common across the ages: a disposition to stand aside from “the world of man,” and conjure from that larger universe we inhabit– to echo in some measure mysteries that lie beyond our understanding, and give them form, no matter how far our senses may have fallen out of tune.

— Thomas Beale

Marie Watt, Singing Everything: Crescendo (Staccato), 2023. Photo by Kevin McConnell. Courtesy of the Artist and MARC STRAUS.

If the handwritten word is an extension of one’s body and the cadence of one’s voice, then all the intergenerational hands embroidering these panels amplify the intention. As witness to the conversations and thoughts that spring forward when we gather together, the blankets are transformed into a record of energy and experience. I’m interested in sewing circles as collective meditations,
a recognition of what is universal, a chorus of song. — Marie Watt

Catalogue for Grace Under Fire
at The Shepherd, Detroit:

https://lscgallery.com/products/grace-under-fire-exhibition-book

A Wing and A Prayer
Curated by Zoe Lukov and Kyle DeWoody
at The Bunker Artspace, West Palm Beach
Through May 1, 2025

https://www.thebunkerartspace.com