When Ideas Evolve: ‘I’ve Been Wrong Before’ and the Art of Changing Perspectives, a Fall Exhibition.

On View: October 19 – November 29, 2024

Featuring: Abigale Avey, Marcy Chevali, Jeane Cohen, Alejandra Cuadra, Bo Dennis, Betsey Feeley, Lifu Hu, Tectonic Industries, Catie Joyce-Bulay, Juliet Karelsen, Molly Knobloch, Tara Morin, Lisa Mossel, Dylan Ouellette, Taryn Pizza, Phoebe Pope, Caroline Routh, Kathryn Shagas, Rachel Sperry, Maya Stein, Barbara Sullivan, Anthony Welch, and Daniela Wenzel

Curated by Annika Earley

Creativity is a process in constant flux: ideas return and shift, forms transform in surprising ways, and processes often feel cyclical. The works in this exhibition explore this state of constant change in diverse ways. Anthony Welch, Barbara Sullivan, and Dylan Ouellette repeat similar imagery and forms, finding new nuances with each iteration. Betsey Feeley, Rachel Sperry, Kathryn Shagas, Maya Stein, Molly Knobloch, Daniela Wenzel, and Catie Joyce-Bulay edit, cut, reposition, and weave their imagery, creating new meanings. Jeane Cohen, Lisa Mossel, and Abigale Avey investigate revision by layering images, allowing viewers to revisit their first impressions. Juliet Karelsen, Lifu Hu, Tara Morin, and Phoebe Pope infuse their approach with surprise and humor, upending expectations. Alejandra Cuadra, Bo Dennis, Taryn Pizza, Marcy Chevali, and Caroline Routh offer a more poetic perspective, inviting viewers to reflect on their own experiences.

Together, these 22 artists embrace the idea that being wrong—reconsidering a stance and responding with openness—can lead to something beautiful and thought-provoking.

What happens when we admit we’re wrong or mistaken—not just once, but as a regular practice? This everyday re-examination shapes us, often subtly, as ever-changing beings. By bringing the habit of reconsidering into the gallery space, the featured  artists shed light on what we often overlook. Through their aesthetic explorations, we are drawn into a rhythm of looking back, rethinking, and moving forward—each time in a slightly changed form.

This exhibition captures that moment of transformation—pausing the constant evolution that usually goes unnoticed. It shows us who we are in a moment: layered, woven, and saturated with creative expression. Despite the control seen in these works, there’s also an embrace of letting go—of keeping both the mind and body open to new possibilities. This openness allows for a freedom beyond our usual ways of being in the world.

We invite you to join us on Saturday, November 23rd from 1 to 3 pm for an afternoon of poetry and performance featured in “I’ve Been Wrong Before.” Witness Caroline Routh’s dance performance and hear poems by Maya Stein and Catie Joyce-Bulay. Routh’s dance performance, embodies the rhythm of revision and reinterprets Anna Pavlova’s iconic ballet, “The Dying Swan,” set to Camille Saint-Saëns’ score; fusing technique and innovation into a visceral lived experience of change.  

Maya Stein, Belfast’s Poet Laureate, will read 

Catie Joyce-Bulay is a writer focused on poetry, creative nonfiction, and how to meld her writing and her visual arts practices using print-making, watercolor, collage, and whatever medium her daughter is into that week. She draws inspiration from motherhood, nature, and the beauty and incongruencies held within the everyday. 

Other works in I’ve Been Wrong Before span themes of loss, reflection, and transformation. Phoebe Pope’s “Sever” confronts the aftermath of divorce with visceral clarity, capturing raw emotion in a severed hand—a symbol of fractured commitments and re-examined life choices. Bo Dennis’s “Flower Daddy” series brings to life his own evolution, crafting floral sculptures that engage with the lasting impact of the AIDS epidemic on rural queer communities in Maine. Barbara Sullivan’s heart sculptures intricately weave her own heartbreak into art, melding found objects with mapped memories of places she and her former partner shared, as if piecing together a fractured past. Taryn Pizza’s house drawings, rooted in a childhood sketch, reflect a fragmented memory of home; each piece becomes less defined, evoking how memories fade and reshape over time. Together, these artists invite viewers to dwell on the beauty and complexity of change, loss, and growth.

The Clifford Gallery at Waterfall Arts is open to the public Tuesdays through Fridays, from 10 am until 5 pm, and Saturdays from 11 am until 3 pm. For more information about the exhibit and other events at Waterfall Arts please visit waterfallarts.org, or call our office at (207)338-2222. Waterfall Arts is located at 256 High Street, Belfast, Maine, 04915. For more information about Annika Earley visit annikaearley.com