Art Reception "Songs for the Sun" Artist Erika b Hess

Songs for the Sun Exhibition Events • Exhibition - Oct. 26-Dec. 1 • Center for the Visual Arts, Main Gallery • Arts Commission Workshop - Thursday, Nov. 5 (6-8 p.m.) • 1000 Adams St, Toledo, OH 43604 • Reception - Friday, Nov. 6 (5:30-7 p.m.) • Center for the Visual Arts, Main Gallery Songs for the Sun An exhibition that explores landscape as a space where memory, observation, and invention overlap. Moving between recognizable forms and abstraction, the paintings consider our connection to the natural world and to the inner world of thought. The space in the work does not function naturalistically; rather, it tilts up, folds in and out, and makes sense through the language of painting. Through this exploration, imagined spaces emerge, revealing how light, color, and form can hold place and experience. The title suggests each painting as a kind of offering, a song or response to the experience of looking and being in the world. Rather than depicting a particular landscape, these paintings create something discovered and continually shifting, reflecting how we carry places and experiences with us and how they are transformed over time. Artist Bio 2026 Erika b Hess is a painter, the Sydelle Sonkin and Herb Siegel Artistic Director of Chautauqua Visual Arts at Chautauqua Institution, and the creator and host of the art podcast I Like Your Work. Hess's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, with recent group exhibitions at Morgan Le