Wesley Schmoe & Nathan Starkey
Proterozoic Artifaction
May 2 - 30, 2025
Leedy Underground Gallery II
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PROTEROZOIC ARTIFACTING is a show about the body and how we relate to the internal and external compositions that make up the systems around us. The works exhibited explore the range of emotions (from melancholic to beauty to grotesque) that one feels when displaced from their sense of self, both in the real world and in ethereal spaces like dreamscapes and memories. Wesley’s woven fiber collages engage with memory as an organism that breathes and grows as a way to reflect on questions about identity and self. Her work centers around texture, color and pattern using a variation of media and technique. Nathan’s work responds to the cyclical nature of discovery and reflection of the self in one’s environment. His intuitively constructed organic forms embrace the unfamiliar, exposing the visual tactility of natural materials to confront how we recognize self, body, and identity in things other than us. Together these works seek to be understood through a record of their existence.
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WESLEY SCHMOE
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Artist Statement:
Memory and identity are the primary forces explored within my multimedia fiber collages. I accomplish this by layering vibrant and textured dyed fabrics and weavings to relay my life experiences and memories. As a child I often daydreamed and kept to myself, imagining worlds I could run away to. My artwork investigates these imagined worlds by encapsulating a given moment and its accompanying emotions. Often I still feel that sense of disconnect to the present including within the body and my own identity. In my work, I use nude portraiture and tactitle processes to reconnect with the skin, bone and flesh of my own physical body. I aim to use these narratives to let others into these small maximalist worlds.
I am drawn to tedious and repetitive processes. Whether that be weaving, dyeing, or embellishment, the physical act and the time it takes is necessary to my practice and to the completion of my work. I use the computerized TC2 loom which gives me the ability to weave images. I draft all of my weaving patterns and dye my yarn. The physical nature of being a weaver and the back and forth rhythm of looms is very cathartic, the repetition gives one time to reflect. As my work often relates to myself and my personal experience in the world I feel that it is an extension of and a reflection of myself; it's something to care for.
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Artist Bio:
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Wesley Schmoe uses multidisciplinary ways of making to create densely layered and embellished fiber works. She uses techniques and mediums including weaving, painting, embroidery and dye work to create dreamscape scenes in relation to memory and identity. The imagery is maximallistic in nature and brings about melancholic, colorful dreamscapes.
Originally from Lawrence, KS, Wesley is currently attending the Kansas City Art Institute, where she is pursuing a BFA in the Fiber Department. Wesley has received awards including the Susan Lordi Marker award in 2022 and has exhibited work in Kansas and Missouri.
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NATHAN STARKEY
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Artist Statement:
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I create abstract forms to act as portals for people to experience a deepening of awareness. My work invites people to “zoom in” and get caught in the details that make up the systems around us by bringing explicit attention to the ephemeral spaces, objects, and textures in our environments.
I make soft and hard organic sculptural forms from wet-felted wool, ceramic vessels[clay], found objects, etc. that are reminiscent of the internal body and display unanticipated perspectives. I value the satisfaction of being surprised by what I didn’t know was there, and want to encourage others to notice their awareness of what’s immediately in front of them to experience the same sense of discovery.
I approach creating like a kid building a fort, performing labour with my body and intuitively responding to what’s around me. I do this to expose meaningful relationships between objects in my environment and consider how I relate to them while inviting others to do the same. My practice is highly variable, impulsive, and adaptive and approaches art making from a space of play—letting go of fixed points of view. I am driven by the cyclical, responsive process of asking questions and discovering solutions to expand our understanding of the connection we have to the conditions around us.
The experience the audience has while encountering my art is just as important to me as the experience I have while making my art. I want to create opportunities to share the layers of discovery that come from intrapersonal and interpersonal awareness. We are not our relationships to the things around us; by bringing awareness to these perspectives we can begin to dissect our approaches to exploring our humanness in everyday life.
Artist Bio:
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Nathan Starkey is a Kentucky born artist who explores contemporary installation and performance based sculpture through the mediums of wax, paper, light and shadow. His work seeks to bring awareness of the body’s physical relationship with the spaces it encounters, while constructing his own highly tactile, otherworldly realms to isolate the audience’s perspective. What is shown and not shown–felt and not felt--is intrinsic to the experience Starkey aims to capture. In pursuing a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, Nathan has exhibited work in and around the KC arts community and intends to continue developing his body of work post graduation.