Up River: A Path Forward, Work by Thomas Sleet

September 9 – November 15, 2025

Opening Reception: Tuesday, September 9, 5:00-6:30p.m.
Artist’s Gallery Talk: Tuesday, September 9, 5:30p.m.

Thomas Sleet is an artist who lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri. He creates pieces that focus on intersections of the natural world with the man-made and the synergistic design probabilities created at that juncture. Drawing on his interest and fascination with nature, including the ways nature uses materials and builds geometrically, Sleet informs, and reforms, salvaged manufactured elements. He gives these a new life in the form of organic geometric structures imbued with a spirit, creating sacred vessels.

Sleet received his BFA in Ceramics with a minor in Sculpture from Washington University in St. Louis and has maintained a working studio since 1980. He has mounted three solo shows at the Bruno David Gallery in St. Louis, a solo show in 2002 at the Mitchell Museum at Cedar Hurst in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, and has had works exhibited at Elliot Smith Contemporary Art in St. Louis, as well as the Columbus Museum of Art in Columbus, Ohio. In addition, Sleet has hosted artist residencies and seminars at Webster University, University of Missouri at St. Louis, the College School, and the School for Visual and Performing Arts, a magnet school of St. Louis Public Schools.

Thomas Sleet’s website: https://thomassleetart.com

Featured image: Thomas Sleet, Ark of Freedom (2021) wood, linseed oil, shoe polish, 132 x 156 x 84 in.

Free Public Lecture by Contemporary Sculptor Leonardo Drew

Tuesday, March 11, 7:30 p.m.
Wanamaker Hall, Principia College, Elsah, IL 62028

For over three decades, Leonardo Drew has become known for creating contemplative abstract sculptural works that play upon a tension between order and chaos. At once monumental and intimate in scale, his work recalls post-Minimalist sculpture that alludes to America’s industrial past. Drew transforms accumulations of raw materials such as wood, scrap metal, and cotton to articulate various overlapping themes with emotional gravitas: from the cyclical nature of life and decay to the erosion of time. His surfaces often approach a language of their own, embodying the labored process of writing oneself into history.

Drew’s works have been shown internationally and are included in numerous public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; and Tate, London. His works have recently been acquired by The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Bloomington, Indiana; and New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana among others.(Image and bio credits: Galerie LeLong)

Principia College Studio Art Faculty Exhibition

PRAXIS @ PRIN 02: Principia College Studio Art Faculty Exhibition

February 25–March 29, 2025
Opening Reception: Tuesday, February 2025, 5:00–6:30 p.m.

Above: Life / Time Series by Dan Kistler • 2025 • oil transfer & dyes

Above: three works by Dane Carlson
Papers • 2022–current • 8.5” x 11”, various • copy paper
Lubra Elevation • 2024 • 25” x 240” • digital photographGomba Gang Elevation • 2024 • 25” x 210” • digital photograph

Campus Climate Diary (2022–23, 2023–24) by Kristin Martin • 2022–ongoing • 100” x 96” • colored pencil, rhinestones, and bias tape on watercolor paper

Above: two works by Debi WorleyReflection • 2025 • 48” x 96” x 2” • aluminum
Fluidity of Thought # 4 • 2023 • 9” x 30” x 11” • glass, porcelain, steel, aluminum

Emergence of the First Sister: New Work by Luci K. Evans

Color Wheel 4 • 2024 • gouache and ink on paper • 14” x 14”

January 28–February 8, 2025

Reception for the artist January 28, 2025, 5:00–6:30 pm

Artist Bio: 

Luci Kahroniios’tha Evans is an American contemporary painter and mixed media artist based in St. Louis, Missouri.

Raised in a family of artists, Luci’s passion for creativity began at a young age. Her artistic journey includes attending a Drawing Marathon led by Graham Nickson at the New York Studio School in 2018 and an art study abroad traveling through Greece, Italy, and Turkey that same year. She earned a BA in Studio Art from Principia College in 2020.

Her work has been featured in several exhibitions, including the pop-up show Tracking the Curve at the New York Studio School Student Gallery (2018). At Principia College’s James K. Schmidt Gallery, her art appeared in two exhibitions: a Student Study Abroad Show (2018), which she also co-curated, and a Juried Student Art Show(2019), where she received a prize for her work. Additionally, she was honored with the Kathryn Cogswell Maule Studio Art Award during her junior year (2019).

Artist Statement:
Corn has always been a significant symbol in my life. Growing up in the Midwest—the heart of the Corn Belt—we are surrounded by fields of it. Corn is in what we eat, what we drink, even in the gas we put in our cars. But what I am most drawn to about this crop is its role in Indigenous people’s histories and cultures. For example,I’m inspired by the Mohawk legend of the Three Sisters, which teaches the traditional practice of planting corn, beans, and squash together in the same garden. Each individual plant biologically supports the growth and wellbeing of the others and together they provide a healthy balanced diet for the humans who plant them. This practical form of companion planting symbolizes the harmony between food, land, and community.

As a descendant of the Mohawk Tribe, I strive in my work to celebrate the revival of Indigenous knowledge and traditions while grappling with the impacts of colonization. The works in this exhibition encourage you to explore the complicated story of corn: as a sacred crop and as a symbol of industrial exploitation.

My creative practice is rooted in experimentation and exploration, blending familiar and new materials to examine themes of identity, resilience, and environmental sustainability. I often use encaustic paint, a medium introduced to me by my Mohawk grandmother. I love working with this natural material (paint made from bee’s wax, damar resin and pigments) for its connection to my personal memory, its tactile qualities and its associations with preservation and healing which relates to broader cultural narratives.

Through mixed-media techniques, including painting, sculpture, and installation, I transform corn crop residue into textured assemblages. Each cob becomes part of a larger whole, reflecting the interconnectedness of individual lives within broader systems. The repetitive, meditative nature of this process speaks to cycles of life, culture, and regeneration, even in the face of destruction. Color also plays a vital role in my work, serving as both an intuitive and symbolic element. Vibrant hues evoke vitality, resilience, and the potential for transformation. 

Through my art, I aim to create a space where viewers can reflect on the past, honor Indigenous wisdom, and imagine a more sustainable and inclusive future.

Left: Big Color Wheel, 2025, encaustic paint on corn cobs, 5’ diameter
Right: Luci K. Evans with Belt, 2025, encaustic paint on corn cobs, 7.5’ x 3.5’

INHERITED SUCCESSION: Instill and InspireWork and Reflections by Elan Cadiz

Let Them Eat Cake, I, (2023), acrylic and gouache paint on poster paper, 18”x24”  

October 29 – November 23

Opening reception: Tuesday, October 29, 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.
Artist’s Gallery Talk: 5:30 p.m.

Élan Cadiz is an interdisciplinary, multi-ethnic, multi-racial, North American, native New Yorker, and visual artist who deconstructs and balances her intersectionality through her creative projects. Élan’s art and practice are grounded in the documentation of her personal narrative through the use of portraiture, domestic and historical imagery.

Cadiz’s artworks explore the ways societal and personal histories overlap and affect individual relationships, power dynamics and identity. The materials she works with are influenced by the subjects she discuss which is why she moves skillfully through mediums, combining and collaging the best materials to convey her visual language.

Cadiz’s intention is to speak to the boundless potential in humanity and ways our pasts can inform our future for the better, despite impediments that arise. Her goal is to have viewers question their condition(s) in ways that bring about helpful inner inquiry and thoughtful discussion.

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About the Artist

Élan Cadiz’s formal training began in the High School of Art & Design, New York City. After graduation she was accepted to the Fashion Institute of Technology where she studied Advertisement and Design and Photography for two years. Cadiz graduated from City College of New York City with a BA in Studio Art and Education in 2008. Cadiz received her Master’s in Fine Art (MFA) from the School of Visual Arts May 2018 and received the Martha Trevor Award/ Worldstudio AIGA Scholarship, Paula Rhodes Memorial Award and the School of Visual Arts Merit Scholarship.

Since 2014 Cadiz has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions and she has been engaged in numerous artist residencies.

Cadiz has instructed young people in the arts for 24 years and taught for or was in collaboration with programs/institutions such as the Harlem School of the Arts, Thurgood Marshall Upper and Lower Academies, Harlem Children Zone, No Longer Empty, Cool Culture, Bank Street College, Weeksville Heritage Center, the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York Historical Society, Center for Arts Education, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, the Boys Club of New York City, Foster Pride, the Children’s Museum of Manhattan and the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling, Bridgehampton Museum and more.

Progression: Work by Robert Stuart

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Robert Stuart

Ashes, 2023, oil and collage on canvas, 63″ x 112″

September 10 – October 19, 2024

Opening reception: Tuesday, September 10, 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.
Artist’s Gallery Talk: 5:30 p.m.

Working with materials, thinking with materials, sensing their potential as you interact with them—constructing and deconstructing—to make an object with a physical presence that can provide a locus for emotional, intuitive responses that can engage the viewer in a deep, interior way.  This is the process and the potential of painting.   The physical becoming meta-physical.  Intimations of infinity.

I love this quote from President Kennedy engraved in the wall at the Kennedy Center, Washington, DC:  “The life of the arts . . . .  is close to the center of a nation’s purpose—and is a test of the quality of a nation’s civilization.”  It gives me hope and support as an artist in our contemporary world, a world in need of authenticity and beauty which art can provide.

About the Artist

About half of Robert Stuart’s time growing up was spent overseas in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific while his father worked for USAID and UNESCO.  Stuart was encouraged in art by his mother who attended The Art Students League, and taught art, and also by a longtime family friend, Catalan artist Pierre Daura, who had been a member of “Cercle et Carré,” (Circle and Square), the avant-garde group in Paris that included artists such as Mondrian, Arp, and Kandinsky.  Four years at Boston University’s School for the Arts was a rigorous, traditional program with much figure drawing,  and where Philip Guston was a major influence.

Following an MFA at James Madison University Stuart launched a career as a painter of landscapes and still-lifes, confident painting “before the motif,” and found success in galleries.  An art historian friend once said that he was “an abstract painter who went outside.”  Being selected for two exhibits at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts were important early boosts for Stuart’s career.

After ten years exhibiting in prominent galleries with his unique representational style, but with episodes of experimenting with abstraction, his responses to abstract paintings became so strong and his need for it so compelling that he could no longer deny it.  Discovering the painter Agnes Martin’s paintings and writings was crucial. Finally, immediately after visiting Zen gardens in Japan, a vivid dream of a large, red, abstract painting was so potent that Stuart had to make the painting, and set out newly committed to pure abstraction.  Almost immediately, there were two major validations for the artist:  he was selected for the New Orleans Museum of Art Triennial, and not long after, Stuart received an “Academy Award in Art” from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Stuart’s home and studio are in Staunton, Virginia.  He is represented by Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, Virginia.