Author: admin

26: The Annual Juried Principia College Student Art Exhibition

April 7 – April 16, 2026
Opening Reception: Tuesday, April 7, 5:00-6:30 p.m.
Juror’s Presentation of Awards: Tuesday, April 7, 5:30 p.m.

Our Juror this year is Amy Torbert, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Associate Curator of American Art at the Saint Louis Art Museum. A native St. Louisan, she earned an MA from the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art and a PhD from the University of Delaware. Prior to arriving at SLAM in 2018, she held curatorial fellowships at the Yale University Art Gallery, Harvard Art Museums, and Philadelphia Museum of Art. While at SLAM, she has curated the exhibitions Art Along the Rivers: A Bicentennial Celebration (2021), The Work of Art: The Federal Art Project, 1935–1943 (2024), and Picturing Independence, which opens in June.

Featured images: 
Nekoda Burnett, Colors of Flight (2025) chalk pastels
Ishmael Ochieng, Untitled (2026) charcoal on paper
Mateus Montandon, Virgin of the Rocks (2026) acrylic on canvas

Seeking That Shimmering Weave (Experiments and Encounters through Drawing) work by Matthew Whitney

February 17 – March 28, 2026
Opening Reception: Tuesday, February 17, 5:00-6:30 p.m.
Artist’s Gallery Talk: Tuesday, February 17, 5:30 p.m.

Matthew Whitney (he/him) is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and pedestrian whose work explores lived experience as an embodied encounter rather than a representational one. Working across drawing, painting, photography, collage, video, performance, and installation, his practice privileges process, material responsiveness, and attention over fixed meaning.

Rooted in contemplative traditions, the work has long engaged walking as both method and metaphor—producing personal cartographies that trace the relationship between body, ground, and place. In recent years, his practice has shifted toward materially driven processes that embrace fragmentation, chance, and imperfection as generative conditions. Through acts of manipulation, “deskilling,” and intuitive mark-making, his work invites viewers into open-ended encounters that foreground presence, vulnerability, and reflection.

Matt holds a BA in Art from Whitworth University and an MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Arts. In parallel with his studio practice, he is engaged in teaching, facilitation, and community-based work. He currently serves as Creative Director at Spiritual Directors International, an interfaith nonprofit dedicated to contemplative practices of spiritual direction and companionship.

Download Brochure

Further work can be viewed at www.matthewwhitney.com.

Featured image: Matthew Whitney, Working It Out, (2018) acrylic and graphite on paper, 60” x 120”

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, Up River (2025) burned wood, 66″ x 96″

DOWNLOAD CATALOG

photo: Suzy Gorman

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