Solo Exhibition: “On Homesickness” at Art Reach of Mid-Michigan
September 13, 2019
Whitney Lea Sage: On Homesickness
The Morey Family Gallery
Art Reach of Mid-Michigan
October 2nd – October 31st, 2019
I’m so excited to announce that for the month of October, the entirety of three of my newest bodies of work will be on display in the Morey Family Gallery at Art Reach of Mid-Michigan in Mt. Pleasant. This is the first solo exhibition featuring these three bodies of work and I’m so thrilled that their first solo display will be in my home state, the great state of Michigan. Many thanks to Kim Bigard and the staff and donors of Art Reach of Mid-Michigan for the opportunity to exhibit this series so close to so many friends and family.
On Homesickness features three bodies of work by native-Michigander, Whitney Lea Sage. A multidisciplinary artist originally from suburban Detroit, Sage’s artistic practice largely relates to American industrial history, representations of blight and the problematic tropes and stereotypes that representations of urban Midwestern cities create. On Homesickness features three ongoing bodies of work by Sage, Homesickness Series, Portraits of Home and Domestic Fragments, which through their various media address issues of loss as related to the space of the home and the individual stories lost in the life cycles of urban degradation. Midwestern cities are places of increasing cultural relevance with parallels to larger American struggles, big industry and suburban migration leaving behind empty storefronts, ghostly architectural skeletons and scarred empty plots of land. In attempting to connect viewers of the work to the issues surrounding these cities on a personal level, Sage’s work often alludes to the domestic shape of the home and artifactual knick-knacks as a metaphor for the psychological interior of the mind, the root of emotional longing and nostalgia for place. By focusing on empty homes and sites of homes lost to demolition, the expanding series aims to show the devastation wrought by suburban flight on Detroit’s once dense, close-knit neighborhoods while symbolizing the loss of familial and identity and the loss of memories these sites recall.
For more information about Art Reach of Mid-Michigan, visit: https://www.artreachcenter.org/exhibits
Art Reach of Mid Michigan
111 E. Broadway
Mt. Pleasant MI 48858
989-773-3689
Hours: Monday-Friday 10:00-5:30, Saturdays 10:00-4:00