a crack in the leak

Mac Benson, Rachael Griffin, Luke Johnson, Melanie McLain, Tegan Moore, Libby Rosa, Adam Liam Rose, Ben Skiba, Owen Tuohy, and Ariel Wood

September 14th - October 19th
Opening: September 14th, 7-10pm

a crack in the leak is a group show based around concepts of permeability, protection, and ooze. Curated by Ariel Wood, the show includes ten artists working in a range of mediums.

“A crack is an opening but also a failure of containment, a place where something escapes or where things gather. The artists in this exhibition understand and explore the dual nature of the crack, the both/and of leakiness, the rhyming of water’s overflow of a container and a person’s overflow beyond categories of being just one thing or another: both a child and a parent, both a partner and an individual, both a giver and a taker. An inability to completely control water rhymes with the inability to control or hem in a person’s being, not to mention it brings attention to how hemming in does a disservice to our sense of self’s inherent seeking to expand, spread out, seek support from and among, seep, and permeate aspects of life.” - Maggie Mitts

MAC BENSON she/they (b. 1998, Cleveland, OH) is a Texas-based interdisciplinary artist and naturalist. She has participated in citizen-based environmental research since 2016, volunteering with UT’s invertebrate fossils and minerals collection, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, and the Native Prairies Association of Texas. In 2023, she collaborated with Caroline Perkison on A Place in the Park, a scavenger hunt exhibition at Red Bud Isle that encouraged visitors to engage with nature the same way they engage with art. She has exhibited at the Visual Arts Center and Flatbed Center for Contemporary Printmaking.

RACHAEL GRIFFIN she/her (b. 1990, Columbus, OH) is a printmaker and painter based in Madison, WI. She received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, following her BFA from Ohio University. After her studies, she was an Artist in Residence at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and has since then become an active member of Vox Populi Print Collective and the Monotype Guild of New England. Griffin is the Administrative Manager at Tandem Press, where she is surrounded by stunning prints by world renowned artists. She enjoys sharing her love for art by teaching at Madison College and various workshops.

LUKE JOHNSON he/him (b. 1994, St. Paul, MN) is a multidisciplinary artist born in Minnesota, and currently based on Treaty 7 territory in Red Deer, Alberta. His work responds to the ways objects embody, or fail to embody, their history and intent, and the importance of attention as a purposeful and ongoing visual act. He has exhibited his work throughout Canada and the United States, and internationally in various print biennials and triennials. He received his BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his MFA from the University of Alberta, and has taught printmaking and drawing at the University of Alberta and Red Deer Polytechnic.

MELANIE MCLAIN she/her (b. 1982, Florida) is an artist based in Mexico City. She works predominantly with sculpture and performance to explore the emotional and psychological aspects of our built environment.  McLain’s recent solo exhibitions include Las cosas que son lugares in Museo Universitario del Chopo and Positus. Her awards include New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship. She has been an artist in residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, MacDowell, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Shandaken: Storm King, and Fundación Casa Wabi.

TEGAN MOORE she/her (b. 1985, Toronto) works in sculpture and installation to interrogate the built environment and its relationship with the body through granular, intuitive, and research-based investigations. Her practice embraces provisional and metabolic processes through a perpetual use of discarded material, complicating their time and value flows and the dominant systems they circulate within and through. Based in Tio’tià:ke / Mooniyang / Montréal, Moore also works collaboratively with plastic pollution research group The Synthetic Collective, and co-organizes the project space Support.

LIBBY ROSA she/her (b. 1993, Pittsburgh, PA) is an artist, curator, and teacher working in Philadelphia, PA. Rosa’s installations, paintings, and sculptures explore concepts of control and transformation, created from the artist’s lexicon of symbols, characters, and places. She received her BFA from the University of Wisconsin - Madison (2015) and her MFA from Cornell University (2019). Rosa has attended residencies at Tongue River Residency (Dayton, WY), Trestle Art Space (NYC, NY), ASMBLY Session #1 (NYC, NY), and VCU SSP 2015 (Richmond, VA). She founded Peep Projects, a project/gallery space in North Philadelphia.

ADAM LIAM ROSE he/they (b. 1990, Jerusalem) is a curator and artist exploring the visual language and architecture of “safety.” Born in Jerusalem and raised mostly in the United States, his multi-disciplinary practice investigates the slippage between theater and life; where aesthetics and visual tricks are used to numb, sooth or distract populations from a real or perceived disaster. He received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (‘12) and an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts (‘17). Rose joined as co-director at artist-run gallery Ortega y Gasset Projects in 2019. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

BEN SKIBA he/him (b. 1993, Minneapolis, WI) was born and raised in a small town in Wisconsin. After receiving his BFA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison he moved to Portland, Oregon to pursue the yearlong Emerging Artist Mentorship Program at Ash Street Project. After a few years at Ash Street Project, Skiba now lives and works out of his home studio in Portland. In 2023 he started a home gallery project, Hide & Seek (@hideandseekgallery), to further connect people.

OWEN TUOHY they/him (b. 1994, Madison, WI) A midtown boy with small town dreams, Owen Tuohy makes nice things and tries to live a quiet life. Tuohy’s artworks like to undulate between the industrial and the handcraft, toying with our previously-held notions of growth, beauty, and death. Light and refraction play a consistent role as a subject matter within these artworks (effects mainly created through recycled neon lights, shiny things, and locally-sourced or reclaimed wood) as well as sustainable practices. Currently based in Madison, Wisconsin and still making art sometimes :) Owen has plans to one day buy a small houseboat and start a semi-luxury cheese cruise.   

ARIEL WOOD they/them (b. 1994, Pasadena, CA) is a Texas-based artist and educator by way of California and Wisconsin. They received a BFA in printmaking and drawing from The University of Wisconsin at Madison and their MFA in Sculpture from The University of Texas at Austin 2022. Wood is a sculpture artist interested in the way plumbing and drainage can elicit notions of interconnectedness, liminality, and queerness. Picking and parsing out those aspects of the larger system that appear strange, silly, or sentimental. Wood has shown their work nationally and internationally in Wisconsin, Illinois, Texas, New York, and Florence, Italy.

Working with the artist Melanie McLain, movement and performance artists Katherine Vaughn and Venese Alcantar will activated McLain’s piece, La Fragilidad de Las Estructuras, with an improvisational, durational performance on October 5th. 2024.
Photos taken by Tanya Zal