OPENING: SEPTEMBER 2 | 6 PM TO 9 PM CLOSING: OCTOBER 14

Liese Chavez

When I was small, I remember lying on my back under a side table in my Grandparents' house. The tabletop was a round slab of marble, out of which grew a lamp with lead crystal teardrops dangling from a filigree bloom. There was a circlet of these crystals beneath the lamp as well and I watched the front parlor glow in the half-light reflected from these tiny worlds of faceted glass. In that private world just a few inches from the floor, the chairs all had carved feet on the bottom and way above me near the ceiling I could see the undersides of little animal faces in the corners of the moldings. I would climb up the steep stairs to the dusty attic with crates of 45 records and the secret-seeming low doors to mysterious things in storage in the eaves. Sometimes I would hide myself in the tiny sewing room under the stairs or spend hours pawing through Grammy’s costume jewelry, trying on clip-on earrings and peeking into lockets. One day I came into my grandparents’ house and everything looked different. The tiny details were still there, but I was too tall to see them so intimately anymore. Some of the magic had disappeared. I have been trying to get back to that magical world ever since.

This is where my heart is home. These paintings and drawings hold all the nostalgia and strange faces of my past. As a child I wanted to know what was inside, what was under, what was behind things. I still do.

Climb the steep attic stairs with me, let the smell of old faded minks tickle your nose and peek with me up onto the high shelf filled with hatboxes and secrets…