Artists Davíd Mejia and Tricia Waddell use a range of materials to create paintings, installations and sculptures that reflect ideas of protection, spirituality and healing. Both Mejia and Waddell believe there is power in objects and line. Mejia colors sawdust and lays it out on tiles relating to a Honduran Holy Week tradition where miles of elaborate designs are created as carpets for a procession celebrating the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. They meticulously compose the colored sawdust from collected designs by pushing the material around with paint brushes. It is a laborious process that is balanced with a meditation-like focus. Waddell hand paints and dyes fabric to create uniquely designed dolls that stand in precarious positions. Some of these figures unfurl in length while others curl and wrap in on themselves. This compression and expansion creates tension in what Waddell calls talismans – objects that hold powers of protection and healing.

Another mode of working for each artist is the more traditional painting. Mejia grew up working in an atelier in Honduras at the age of six where they fell in love with symbolism, flora and fauna, and folklore. They create settings – a table or a sacred place in the forest to build a narrative of imagery as inner sanctuary. Waddell creates abstract marks on canvas with various transparency of dyes and sews together and embroiders wall-based works. These reflect fractures within the self to embody quiet emotional power and empathy. Similar to her dolls, these paintings create gridded boundaries for abstract marks that have the potential to be limitless.

Curated by Derrick Velasquez and Lauren Hartog