“Souvenirs” will feature a range of work spanning the disciplines of painting, visual poetry, and collage. The exhibition comes as part of the artist’s Best in Show award at the 2024 Life in the City exhibition at Front Street.
“It gave me the motivation to focus on a goal and apply lots of ideas. the end my show is to discover for myself what I’ve done,” Delis said about the exhibition. “I had the opportunity to get some really large hand stretched canvases. I never worked so large before but was excited to explore my ideas in scale.”
On display will be an approximate six months’ worth of work by the self-taught artist. For Delis, it is the greatest expression yet of an artistic dream that began years ago.
“When I was a kid, I had a daydream about moving to Ohio and becoming an artist. I didn’t move here with that intention though, it just kind of happened,” Delis explained. “I find the culture, the people, and the parks very refreshing. I like the size of Dayton, that it is a small-big city. I’m comfortable with that level of community engagement because it’s the same in Albuquerque. There are a lot of things that remind me of home but are also vibrant and different.”
The pieces on show were developed organically according to Delis. Chief among her influences is her environment. No two places referenced in Delis’s work are as vital as Albuqurque, where she was raised, and Dayton, where she has lived since 2018.
“I used personal photos of our childhood home, of me as a child, relatives, or objects that represent my experience and history in New Mexico as well as my transition to Dayton,” she said about some of her exhibition pieces. “You’ll see a lot of elements of that.”
Remarkably, Delis has managed an intense creative schedule while taking care of a newborn. While daunting at the best of times the artist credits effective time management with giving her the ability to create art and nurture her son simultaneously.
“Prioritizing him for me has meant including him in my life, my process in the sense that I have him in the studio with me, talking to him, showing him what I’m doing so that he has that expansion of vocabulary,” Delis said. “He has those fresh eyes that are seeing the world in a way he can’t explain yet. Just seeing those expressions on his face keeps me going, they give me the motivation to finish, as much for him as it is for me and the world I want to share it with.”
The artist hopes her work will spark conversations and challenge perspectives. It is an expression of what Delis calls “post conceptual intermedia visual poetry.”
“My hope for those that come to my show is that they might feel like its safe and beautiful to think critically about life and all its aspects from different perspectives in order to gain a bigger picture,” Delis said.
“Souvenirs” comes hot on the heels of Delis’ visual poetry collection “Analog Glitch,“ which was published by Anhinga Press this year. Both represent a rich and ongoing exploration of mixed media art as well as the exploration of conceptual ideas through traditional disciplines.
“I just want to encourage others to be open to not completely destroying definitions and ideas and structures but to carefully, thoughtfully deconstruct something with the intention of reassembling it into something completely new. I feel that that is at the core of my process. I’m a minimalist maximalist, I try to do the most with the least,” Delis said.
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