Summer Ventis – Held Breaths

The last year and a half has been one long held breath; a time of caution, of waiting, of restraint, of restriction and withdrawal. It has brought new hardships and magnified existing ones, but it has also forced us to find new ways to connect. The works in this exhibition are a meditation on the times in which we find ourselves. They are a way of externalizing and processing the tension and fear with which we live, and also a celebration of new forms of connection and communication that have emerged as a result of our separation from each other. I offer my held breath to you; I offer to hold your breath for a moment so that you might find a better way to breathe.

Summer Ventis

Summer Ventis’s work uses the printed surface to address internal and external landscapes and their intersections; the imprints we leave on each other and our surroundings and the imprints that our surroundings leave on us. She received a BA in Art from Grinnell College and an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Colorado Boulder. Her work has appeared in national and international exhibitions, and is held by collections including those of the Denver Art Museum and Proyecto ’ace in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is a member of Axis Gallery and of the Colorado-based collectives Hyperlink and ARTNAUTS and is Assistant Professor of Printmaking at California State University Sacramento.