Axis Mundi
Georgia Henkel, Liz Swanson, Lina Tharsing
Georgia Henkel
On road trips, whoever rode ‘shotgun’ was assigned the task of tallying roadkill. These tallies—scribbled on receipts, candy wrappers, or
whatever trash was handy—include special categories: UIM (Unidentified Mammal) and UIB (Unidentified Bird) Some of these records are tucked away in the bull bag on “Snapper Love’s” stick. My children grew up with the understanding that boxes in the freezer did not contain what the label claimed.
Seeing faces in inanimate objects is not unusual—there’s even a word for it: pareidolia. The architecture of skeletal systems is a pareidolia’s manna from the upper realm of the Axis Mundi—sacred and perfect, smelly and fragile. The symmetry, intricacies, and lingering energy of what remains from a lived life resonate deeply.
All the organic materials in these tableaus are from a lifetime of treasure-hunting. I knew that someday I would find a purpose for all of the bones, skins, and flotsam, as well as the slice of potato with a chunk of my daughter’s finger on it from a Thanksgiving mandolin mishap and the foot-long hairball (with toothpaste cap and Barbie shoe) that clogged up the shower in 1998.
I’m still that kid who comes home with frogs in her pockets—except mine are usually dead. Animals that are dead, whether on the road, in the woods, or in my walls have always saddened me enough to pause and silently honor their lives. I collect their bones if the decay is far enough along... and sometimes when it isn’t.
Transforming rigid body parts and other detritus into tableaus that evoke humor, terror, desire, and empathy serves as a means to further celebrate and pay tribute to the complexities and histories of discarded lives.
About the Artist: Georgia Henkel lives and works in Lexington, Ky. She recently retired from a 35-year teaching career and continues exploring the natural world with awe and honor. Her work calls attention to the awkward inner states of humanity through an exploration of materials, anomalous figures, and uncanny circumstances.
On road trips, whoever rode ‘shotgun’ was assigned the task of tallying roadkill. These tallies—scribbled on receipts, candy wrappers, or
whatever trash was handy—include special categories: UIM (Unidentified Mammal) and UIB (Unidentified Bird) Some of these records are tucked away in the bull bag on “Snapper Love’s” stick. My children grew up with the understanding that boxes in the freezer did not contain what the label claimed.
Seeing faces in inanimate objects is not unusual—there’s even a word for it: pareidolia. The architecture of skeletal systems is a pareidolia’s manna from the upper realm of the Axis Mundi—sacred and perfect, smelly and fragile. The symmetry, intricacies, and lingering energy of what remains from a lived life resonate deeply.
All the organic materials in these tableaus are from a lifetime of treasure-hunting. I knew that someday I would find a purpose for all of the bones, skins, and flotsam, as well as the slice of potato with a chunk of my daughter’s finger on it from a Thanksgiving mandolin mishap and the foot-long hairball (with toothpaste cap and Barbie shoe) that clogged up the shower in 1998.
I’m still that kid who comes home with frogs in her pockets—except mine are usually dead. Animals that are dead, whether on the road, in the woods, or in my walls have always saddened me enough to pause and silently honor their lives. I collect their bones if the decay is far enough along... and sometimes when it isn’t.
Transforming rigid body parts and other detritus into tableaus that evoke humor, terror, desire, and empathy serves as a means to further celebrate and pay tribute to the complexities and histories of discarded lives.
About the Artist: Georgia Henkel lives and works in Lexington, Ky. She recently retired from a 35-year teaching career and continues exploring the natural world with awe and honor. Her work calls attention to the awkward inner states of humanity through an exploration of materials, anomalous figures, and uncanny circumstances.
Liz Swanson
Architectural education relies on the study of precedents, and thus reproductions of architectural work—as photographs, slides, or images projected on screens—have always served as an essential tool for teaching design. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, print reproductions served as a primary conduit of sharing information about current and canonical works. Architects and libraries collected vast archives of these prints, often mounted on sturdy cards, for student use—a kind of pre-digital Instagram made for browsing and flipping through in the search for inspiration or learning how buildings are made. Yet architectural drawing as a mode of production has undergone massive change in recent years, moving from an embodied experience drafted by hand on physical paper to a predominantly digital experience housed in a virtual cloud of data. Likewise, many publications have moved online while libraries—facing financial or space pressure—have decommissioned these collections, deeming them too bulky, damaged, or stylistically irrelevant to maintain. Consequently, finding these vintage reproductions (let alone an entire archive of them) is increasingly rare. They, like so many things from our pre-digital history, are relics of human processes no longer necessary: painstaking, dated, material, beautiful, obsolete. I am fascinated by these reproductions and the many stories they represent. I am equally fascinated by the questions they pose as I paint into them, forever transforming/erasing/obscuring the delicate information they once conveyed—an act that feels careful and controversial at the same time. How does a thing gain or lose value, and who is the judge of its worth? What makes an ‘original’ and why does it matter? What do we keep, lose or choose to renew as individuals or as a society, and when is memory enough? Each cloud in this collection is time I’ve spent in search of a calming peace. I’ve found it there, all the while knowing its presence is a sacrifice. I am a culprit. You will never know what was there before. I am savior. You wouldn’t have seen it otherwise. Drawings, clouds, life. So it goes.
About the Artist: Liz Swanson is an artist, writer, and cloud-lover. She is also an Associate Professor of Architecture who has been teaching at the University of Kentucky since 2001. Her projects span a variety of scales and media, and represent a lifelong love of drawing, painting, collage and mixed media in 2- and 3-dimensions. Her work centers on drawing as a physical and psychological process of construction that relates to the social, cultural, political and spiritual aspects of human experience. She is fascinated by the many ways that line, color, and materials influence the reading of form and space.
Architectural education relies on the study of precedents, and thus reproductions of architectural work—as photographs, slides, or images projected on screens—have always served as an essential tool for teaching design. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, print reproductions served as a primary conduit of sharing information about current and canonical works. Architects and libraries collected vast archives of these prints, often mounted on sturdy cards, for student use—a kind of pre-digital Instagram made for browsing and flipping through in the search for inspiration or learning how buildings are made. Yet architectural drawing as a mode of production has undergone massive change in recent years, moving from an embodied experience drafted by hand on physical paper to a predominantly digital experience housed in a virtual cloud of data. Likewise, many publications have moved online while libraries—facing financial or space pressure—have decommissioned these collections, deeming them too bulky, damaged, or stylistically irrelevant to maintain. Consequently, finding these vintage reproductions (let alone an entire archive of them) is increasingly rare. They, like so many things from our pre-digital history, are relics of human processes no longer necessary: painstaking, dated, material, beautiful, obsolete. I am fascinated by these reproductions and the many stories they represent. I am equally fascinated by the questions they pose as I paint into them, forever transforming/erasing/obscuring the delicate information they once conveyed—an act that feels careful and controversial at the same time. How does a thing gain or lose value, and who is the judge of its worth? What makes an ‘original’ and why does it matter? What do we keep, lose or choose to renew as individuals or as a society, and when is memory enough? Each cloud in this collection is time I’ve spent in search of a calming peace. I’ve found it there, all the while knowing its presence is a sacrifice. I am a culprit. You will never know what was there before. I am savior. You wouldn’t have seen it otherwise. Drawings, clouds, life. So it goes.
About the Artist: Liz Swanson is an artist, writer, and cloud-lover. She is also an Associate Professor of Architecture who has been teaching at the University of Kentucky since 2001. Her projects span a variety of scales and media, and represent a lifelong love of drawing, painting, collage and mixed media in 2- and 3-dimensions. Her work centers on drawing as a physical and psychological process of construction that relates to the social, cultural, political and spiritual aspects of human experience. She is fascinated by the many ways that line, color, and materials influence the reading of form and space.
Lina Tharsing
My paintings are rooted in real places I have visited, yet they exist in a space between the tangible and the ephemeral. They capture the fleeting nature of light—how it shimmers on water, fractures through trees, and dissolves into the horizon—both present and intangible, just beyond reach. This transience mirrors something deeper: a meditation on presence and absence, on grief, and on the liminal spaces between worlds. Many of my paintings contain double suns—the sun itself and its reflection, equal and opposite. Drawn to the brilliance of the reflection, one might dive toward it, only to find it is not the sun, but a mirror. This illusion feels like a metaphor for loss: those we grieve remain with us, yet remain unreachable—both there and not there, their absence forming its own kind of presence. Grief has altered my perception of life, expanding my understanding of what might lie beyond what we can see or know. My paintings attempt to visually translate this felt experience—how a moment of beauty can become a portal, revealing the porousness of our world. Through nature, I find moments of connection woven into the everyday. My work searches for evidence that reality is not as solid as it seems, that light itself—elusive and shifting—can act as a threshold to something greater. Grief, too, is a threshold, an invitation to transformation. It has deepened my awareness of our collective sorrow: for the planet, for the losses of war, for the suffering woven into human existence. But within grief, there is also love—an opening. Each painting becomes an entrance, a window into what I call “thin places,”—those moments when the veil lifts and we sense the unseen. My work is an invitation to step into that space, to linger, to wonder, and to feel the presence of something just beyond reach.
About the Artist: Lina Tharsing is a Lexington, Kentucky based artist whose work has been shown across the United States. Her most recent exhibitions have been a two person show with Scroll in NYC and a two person show at Side Door in Charlotte, NY. She was recently featured in BRINK, a literary magazine as well as Burnaway. The most recent exhibitions she has been included in are Weighted Blanket at Heaven Gallery, Chicago, Still at the University of Kentucky, Spring at PRIMARY in Miami Florida, The Dallas Art Fair, Inside Out at Scroll NYC, and Small Paintings at Venus Over
Manhattan. She has been featured in Garden and Gun Magazine, Whitehot Magazine, Burnaway, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Journal, Oxford American, Hyperallergic, and Booooooom.
My paintings are rooted in real places I have visited, yet they exist in a space between the tangible and the ephemeral. They capture the fleeting nature of light—how it shimmers on water, fractures through trees, and dissolves into the horizon—both present and intangible, just beyond reach. This transience mirrors something deeper: a meditation on presence and absence, on grief, and on the liminal spaces between worlds. Many of my paintings contain double suns—the sun itself and its reflection, equal and opposite. Drawn to the brilliance of the reflection, one might dive toward it, only to find it is not the sun, but a mirror. This illusion feels like a metaphor for loss: those we grieve remain with us, yet remain unreachable—both there and not there, their absence forming its own kind of presence. Grief has altered my perception of life, expanding my understanding of what might lie beyond what we can see or know. My paintings attempt to visually translate this felt experience—how a moment of beauty can become a portal, revealing the porousness of our world. Through nature, I find moments of connection woven into the everyday. My work searches for evidence that reality is not as solid as it seems, that light itself—elusive and shifting—can act as a threshold to something greater. Grief, too, is a threshold, an invitation to transformation. It has deepened my awareness of our collective sorrow: for the planet, for the losses of war, for the suffering woven into human existence. But within grief, there is also love—an opening. Each painting becomes an entrance, a window into what I call “thin places,”—those moments when the veil lifts and we sense the unseen. My work is an invitation to step into that space, to linger, to wonder, and to feel the presence of something just beyond reach.
About the Artist: Lina Tharsing is a Lexington, Kentucky based artist whose work has been shown across the United States. Her most recent exhibitions have been a two person show with Scroll in NYC and a two person show at Side Door in Charlotte, NY. She was recently featured in BRINK, a literary magazine as well as Burnaway. The most recent exhibitions she has been included in are Weighted Blanket at Heaven Gallery, Chicago, Still at the University of Kentucky, Spring at PRIMARY in Miami Florida, The Dallas Art Fair, Inside Out at Scroll NYC, and Small Paintings at Venus Over
Manhattan. She has been featured in Garden and Gun Magazine, Whitehot Magazine, Burnaway, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Journal, Oxford American, Hyperallergic, and Booooooom.
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209 Castlewood Dr. Lexington, Ky. 40505 Email: [email protected]
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