ARTISTS
Jacqueline Overby and Lana Waldrep Appl: A Whisper Campaign
A whisper is not always a secret. Sometimes it's a suggestion, a cue, or an offering. A whisper implies intimacy, a closeness between speaker and listener. But it also implies distance鈥攕omething overheard, elusive, hard to grasp. A whisper can spread without origin, carried ear to ear, image to image. It鈥檚 persistent, gentle, and full of tension.
A whisper can be the start of something鈥攁 ruffled mumble of quiet, a voice not yet certain of itself. Whispers are tentative expressions of possibilities. Whispers can carry with them the strength of thousands or the whimper of a dying effort. In A Whisper Campaign, artists Jacqueline Overby and Lana Waldrep Appl probe the subtle yet insistent presence of whispers鈥攖hose quiet, context-rich messages that challenge us to listen more closely. The exhibition explores what is peripheral, ambient, and often ignored, making space for what typically fades into the background. Whispers are messages that you have to work to receive. You have to lean in and choose to hear. Whispers do not demand your attention, they appeal to curiosity. They provoke your attention.
Like gossip鈥攐riginated in the Old English word "god-sibb," meaning "godparent" or a close female friend鈥攚hispers can travel along invisible networks, misunderstood or mischaracterized by dominant power structures. What began as god-sibb, meaning close kin or confidante, was reshaped by patriarchal forces into something idle, immoral, and feminine in all the wrong ways. But gossip, like whispering, is not inherently harmful. It can also be an act of care, resistance, or solidarity鈥攁 way to connect, share, and survive. This exhibition asks: what do we lose when we dismiss what is quiet? What truths are carried by the whispers we overlook?
Overby鈥檚 sculptures gesture toward bodies, but remain unnameable鈥攍ike half-remembered dreams. Stitched and suspended, their plush surfaces and bulbous forms pull from the language of toys and childhood aesthetics, but carry with them an adult unease. They flirt with familiarity, only to resist it. Drawing on influences from cartoons, gendered archetypes, and the surreal tension of body dysmorphia, her work whispers rather than declares. Meaning unfolds here not in clarity, but in suggestion鈥攊n hints, innuendos, and incomplete forms. Her palette, at once saccharine and venomous, evokes the warning colors of poisonous creatures鈥攁n instinctual alert dressed in sweetness. The act of felting, of stabbing fiber into shape, becomes a method of quiet confrontation, a slow reckoning with intrusive thoughts, humor, and harm. Like gossip passed between trusted mouths, these objects transmit discomfort and care in equal measure, asking us to sit with the unresolved, the ambiguous, the charged.
Waldrep Appl鈥檚 work has long highlighted the beauty and complexity of the seemingly simple and ignorable鈥攖he quiet. Her latest paintings feature arrangements of the objects that fill her periphery鈥攈er husband鈥檚 handmade ceramics both broken and unbroken, bits and pieces of her children鈥檚 discarded toys, utilitarian objects rendered ambiguous through their decontextualized unuse, single use plastic, and so many plants living and dead. This pairing of the immortal with the mortal draw attention to the omnipresence of time. It is a slow drone and easily overlooked, but we are bound to it. The most beautiful and meaningful things are often impermanent. Plastic trash, frustratingly, lives forever. All of the objects are rendered life size. They feature scrapes and scratches and piped on impasto. They are insistent in their physicality. They speak to your body. They remind of yourown physicality, and consequently, your own impermanence.
Together, Overby and Waldrep Appl construct a murmured dialogue鈥攁 soft call and response that hums with tension, resonance, and memory. A Whisper Campaign invites viewers to consider what it means to listen closely, and how power can move鈥攏ot through volume, but through persistence, repetition, and care.
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A whisper is not always a secret. Sometimes it's a suggestion, a cue, or an offering. A whisper implies intimacy, a closeness between speaker and listener. But it also implies distance鈥攕omething overheard, elusive, hard to grasp. A whisper can spread without origin, carried ear to ear, image to image. It鈥檚 persistent, gentle, and full of tension.
A whisper can be the start of something鈥攁 ruffled mumble of quiet, a voice not yet certain of itself. Whispers are tentative expressions of possibilities. Whispers can carry with them the strength of thousands or the whimper of a dying effort. In A Whisper Campaign, artists Jacqueline Overby and Lana Waldrep Appl probe the subtle yet insistent presence of whispers鈥攖hose quiet, context-rich messages that challenge us to listen more closely. The exhibition explores what is peripheral, ambient, and often ignored, making space for what typically fades into the background. Whispers are messages that you have to work to receive. You have to lean in and choose to hear. Whispers do not demand your attention, they appeal to curiosity. They provoke your attention.
Like gossip鈥攐riginated in the Old English word "god-sibb," meaning "godparent" or a close female friend鈥攚hispers can travel along invisible networks, misunderstood or mischaracterized by dominant power structures. What began as god-sibb, meaning close kin or confidante, was reshaped by patriarchal forces into something idle, immoral, and feminine in all the wrong ways. But gossip, like whispering, is not inherently harmful. It can also be an act of care, resistance, or solidarity鈥攁 way to connect, share, and survive. This exhibition asks: what do we lose when we dismiss what is quiet? What truths are carried by the whispers we overlook?
Overby鈥檚 sculptures gesture toward bodies, but remain unnameable鈥攍ike half-remembered dreams. Stitched and suspended, their plush surfaces and bulbous forms pull from the language of toys and childhood aesthetics, but carry with them an adult unease. They flirt with familiarity, only to resist it. Drawing on influences from cartoons, gendered archetypes, and the surreal tension of body dysmorphia, her work whispers rather than declares. Meaning unfolds here not in clarity, but in suggestion鈥攊n hints, innuendos, and incomplete forms. Her palette, at once saccharine and venomous, evokes the warning colors of poisonous creatures鈥攁n instinctual alert dressed in sweetness. The act of felting, of stabbing fiber into shape, becomes a method of quiet confrontation, a slow reckoning with intrusive thoughts, humor, and harm. Like gossip passed between trusted mouths, these objects transmit discomfort and care in equal measure, asking us to sit with the unresolved, the ambiguous, the charged.
Waldrep Appl鈥檚 work has long highlighted the beauty and complexity of the seemingly simple and ignorable鈥攖he quiet. Her latest paintings feature arrangements of the objects that fill her periphery鈥攈er husband鈥檚 handmade ceramics both broken and unbroken, bits and pieces of her children鈥檚 discarded toys, utilitarian objects rendered ambiguous through their decontextualized unuse, single use plastic, and so many plants living and dead. This pairing of the immortal with the mortal draw attention to the omnipresence of time. It is a slow drone and easily overlooked, but we are bound to it. The most beautiful and meaningful things are often impermanent. Plastic trash, frustratingly, lives forever. All of the objects are rendered life size. They feature scrapes and scratches and piped on impasto. They are insistent in their physicality. They speak to your body. They remind of yourown physicality, and consequently, your own impermanence.
Together, Overby and Waldrep Appl construct a murmured dialogue鈥攁 soft call and response that hums with tension, resonance, and memory. A Whisper Campaign invites viewers to consider what it means to listen closely, and how power can move鈥攏ot through volume, but through persistence, repetition, and care.
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