'Echoes of Nature' speaks quietly of war, climate, extinction, grief and beauty

Like rhizomes that send out roots and shoots from underground stems, the four artists whose work is represented in “Echoes of Nature” are connected by conversations with plants and animals, and by family, proximity, and collaboration.

Artworks by Lora Jost, her brother Scott Jost, their Newton childhood neighbor Carolyn Goertzen Wedel, and Lawrence ceramist Kim Brook are available for viewing and purchase through September 13 at the Carriage Factory Art Gallery in Newton, Kansas.

Brook’s ceramics, Lora Jost’s drawings, Scott Jost’s photographs, and Wedel’s cut-paper mixed-media collage are finely made. Formal beauty, however, can’t be extracted from the vital messages the artists convey. 

The exhibited works may seem harmless because they are intricate and detailed immersions into natural forms. However, these works ask the viewer to listen to a subtler kind of discourse. The unfolding story is an account of how art functions as research, both scientific and aesthetic, as political discourse, and as personal expression.

Brook and Lora Jost are sometimes artistic collaborators — another rhizome offshoot — though that work is not presented here. Their ceramics and a drawing welcome visitors into the exhibition with Brook’s floral, white, and red porcelain wall plaques hanging at the entry next to Jost’s “Cardinals and Coal,” a black, white, red, and orange pencil drawing, which is part of Jost’s climate-centered body of work. Their sensitive pairing by Carriage Factory director and mosaic artist Mary Lee-McDonald resonates in color and form. The exhibition is arranged so each artist has their own space as the gallery’s white, red, and beige wall sections make visual connections among the pieces unavoidable. 

Lee-McDonald, who has directed the gallery since 2019, is curator for the exhibition. As the exhibition designer, she said: “There’s a lot of thought for helping people experience the work all the way through. The story for each exhibit unfolds after that.” 

Lora Jost’s 21 strong and delicate drawings (pencil and mixed media) display a visual language of refined, repeating imagery. Birds, ghost birds, stars, hands, arches, spirals, kites, and geometric dots and dashed lines are the vocabulary that articulates the artist’s statements about the dangers of burning coal, the global heatwave of the past summer and this one, and freedom — both psychological and geo-political. 

In “Free Free,” made this year, a net or fence of spirals overlaps gray bird ghosts and human faces with large eyes, watching what is happening while a shower of American stars pulses in the foreground. The piece was inspired by and incorporates the words of Palestinian birdwatcher Lara Sirdah in Gaza: “I wish we were birds, so we could move freely.” The drawing both asks and reveals how ordinary and fragile activities like birdwatching continue in a war, and remind the viewer of the U.S.’s complicity.  

“Echoes of Nature” is the first exhibition that brings together the Jost siblings’ work. Scott Jost’s 27 color digital photographs of individual bees going about their flight and flower business are accompanied by QR codes. These link to information about the Virginia and Alaska sites and plants in the photographs, along with bee species, habitats, and behavior. 

“I wanted something that feels like an art show but with a strong conservation angle that’s practical and helps people understand,” Jost said when he dropped into the gallery with his mother. Jost teaches photography at Bridgewater College in Virginia, where he participates in projects like Bumble Bee Watch and the Virginia Master Naturalist program. The bee works are his first experience with macro photography. Each photo shows us an individual striver, single-mindedly heading into a blossom with their legs tucked, or dusted with pollen while crawling over a plant. 

Across the gallery, Brook’s vessels carved with flowers and pattern, decorated with delicate glazed red dots and lines, echo Jost’s bee-attracting floral profusion. The pristine white porcelain features glazed and unglazed areas, and even the backs and bottoms of the pieces are embellished with plant and flower shapes. Brook uses the language of plants as she explains the source of the forms in her statement: “At the root of my art stems the journey of reclaiming joy amidst grief.” 

Brook water-etches her wheel thrown cups, bowls, and vases to create each gentle relief image. Their delicate discretion gives viewers a place to rest and contemplate the gentle ways grief can change us, as the scale and purity of the colors invite the viewer to come closer. In 16 small-scale pieces, Brook’s virtuosity with clay and focus on functional pieces made for the hand to hold and explore is on full display. 

Wedel’s cut-paper works make use of shadow as well as color and shape. She cuts and assembles painted and printed watercolor sheets into bold, graphic compositions that appear to float between the background and the frames’ glass. Her subjects — aspen trunks, leaves and petals, fruit and vegetables — are realistic and abstracted. The shapes undulate, and depending on whether they are displayed under natural or electric lighting, the shadows can be soft accents or contribute completely new forms and layers to the composition. 

Her aesthetic of formal simplicity and clean, minimalist compositions began in her parents’ Newton printing business before digital typography and graphics became widespread. She watched and participated as camera-ready copy was produced by hand-cutting and assembling images and text. Like the Josts, Wedel was trained in the art department at Bethel College in North Newton.

The Details

“Echoes of Nature”
July 20-September 13, 2024, at the Carriage Factory Art Gallery, 128 E. Sixth in Newton, Kansas.
The gallery is open to the public from noon–5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Saturday. Admission is free.
Learn more.

Lori Brack is a writer and arts worker based in Lucas, Kansas. She is the author of three books of poems and many essays in anthologies and journals. Links to her writing and full bio are at www.loribrack.com.

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