This annual exhibition highlights the work of Wheaton’s 21 graduating visual art and design majors.  It features animation, painting, sculpture, app design, architecture, apparel design, photography, drawing, and textiles.

In the Weeds: Art and the Natural World showcases six artists who are examining the complicated relationship between humans and the environment. Many of these artists bridge art and science to bring to life processes that may otherwise elude the general public. Through seed collecting, camouflage, performance, video, and artists’ books, artists Kwang Choi, Rachel Frank, Jenny Kendler, Next Epoch Seed Library (a collaboration between Ellie Irons and Anne Percoco), and Tammy Nguyen consider issues of rewilding and human influence on the natural world.

The exhibition runs October 23—December 12, 2019

Image: Rachel Frank

The Center for Social Justice and Community Impact, in partnership with Safe Zone at Wheaton, invites you to join Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell, authors of the book “LOVING: A Photographic History of Men in Love, 1850s-1950s” in a discussion and Q&A-style program.

In-person seating is first come, first served. Registering for the in-person event enterers you into a raffle to win one of eight, signed copies of the book! 

You can also register for the live Zoom here

“In the late 1990’s Neal & Hugh started collecting photographs purely by accident. The first photograph came from an antique store in Dallas. The photograph was of two men in a loving embrace mixed within random photos of a Dallas neighborhood from the 1920s. [Their] collection of over 2800 vintage photos of romantic couples spanning the 100 years between the 1850s and 1950s is the basis for [their] book.

LOVING: A Photographic History shines a new light on the most written about, dramatized, or filmed emotions – love. The pages of our book portray love, but also courage – the courage that it took to memorialize that unmistakable look that occurs between two people in love. LOVING: A Photographic History celebrates a loving past. A past that points towards the future. It’s message is for everyone. It’s universal.”

Feel free to send questions, comments, or accessibility concerns to [email protected].

African American author, columnist, and public speaker Deesha Philyaw will read from her debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, which won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award in fiction.

This event will also be available virtually via Zoom, register here.

Part seance, part collective automatic writing, part investigation of philosophical texts, Ancient Evenings will be a collective spiritual awakening in our own Cole Memorial Chapel. Come and explore the Western Canon through your own subversive and politically aware writing. Discover how you creatively think about rational thinking. Participants should bring a pad of paper and a writing implement. Light refreshments will be served before the event outside the Chapel.

Kuo is known as one of Hawaii’s premiere Slack Key (ki ho’alu) guitar artists playing in the traditional nahenahe (sweet, soothing) style. In his illustrious career, he has accompanied and collaborated with Hawaii’s major artists such as Eddie Kamae and the Sons of Hawai’i, Dennis Kamakahi, Cyril and Martin Pahinui and Aaron Mahi. His recordings for the Slack Key Guitar Masters Series on the Dancing Cat label, Love for the Elders and Hawaiian Touch, were awarded Instrumental Album of the Year by the Hawai’i Academy of Recording Arts. In addition to his performing career, George is a Board Member of the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame and Museum, where he has supported initiatives to perpetuate Hawaiian traditional music.

Overwhelmed by endless streams of content, sophisticated audiences are demanding deeper, more powerful experiences. Innovative technologies enable and inspire new forms of stories and participation, but immersion is not a property of technology, it is a product of a great experience. Mike Monello, Co-founder of Campfire and one of the creators of The Blair Witch Project, shares secrets from over 20 years on the frontline of emerging technology and storytelling.

a nerve is not a nerve but a bundle of fibers showcases seven contemporary artists, Caroline Wells Chandler, Pilar Sans Coover, Gabrielle Ferreira, Sean Paul Gallegos, Sarah E. Jenkins, Saberah Malik, and Sarah Zapata, all of whom are working with textiles in innovative ways. Though textiles are often thought of as decorative or functional, the artists in this exhibition address complex ideas of identity and cultural history with large-scale crochet, narrative embroidery, deconstructed sneakers, public sewing circles, and traditional dyeing and weaving.

In the Weeds: Art and the Natural World showcases six artists who are examining the complicated relationship between humans and the environment. Many of these artists bridge art and science to bring to life processes that may otherwise elude the general public. Through seed collecting, camouflage, performance, video, and artists’ books, artists Kwang Choi, Rachel Frank, Jenny Kendler, Next Epoch Seed Library (a collaboration between Ellie Irons and Anne Percoco), and Tammy Nguyen consider issues of rewilding and human influence on the natural world.

The exhibition runs October 23—December 12, 2019

Image: Rachel Frank

Join artists Ellie Irons and Anne Percoco of the Next Epoch Seed Library (NESL) for a multisensorial experience with the wild, disturbance-oriented plants of the Wheaton Campus. We’ll get to know Wheaton’s local weedy plants by finding, collecting, sorting and processing their seeds for inclusion in NESL’s popup library in the Beard and Weil Galleries. NESL re-imagines the conventional seed bank for a new epoch defined by massive human impact on the global environment. Rather than focusing exclusively on human utility or agricultural heritage, they champion the contributions of weedy plant species most likely to survive and thrive in an unpredictable future.

Meet in the Beard and Weil Galleries at 2pm, 2nd Floor, Watson Fine Arts.