Melissa:

Sugar & Salt explores the feeling of disorientation. While reflecting upon the struggles of failure, seeking the value and necessity of mistake. Heavy materials such as bronze and concrete crumble under the pressure of loss and longing, but maintain a shadow of their original sweetness. These sculptures process this failure and loss calmly and quietly through restrained, solemn colors. They seek to push beyond and discover what growth can be found among the rubble. From restraint comes elegance, from pressure comes strength, and from failure comes growth. Something more valuable can arise from a mistake, and growth can be found in unlikely places. The necessity of mistake asks if there was ever a wrong choice at all. Yet, it's still best to label the salt.

Melissa Wolf and Gaylin Nicholson explore struggle, failure, and the value reflection and growth that follows using a variety of materials and symbols. These objects carry a permanency in their materials- bronze, plaster, aluminum, concrete- lessons and stories not soon to be forgotten. Many are in a state of distress, and carry the history of their growth and discoveries. Be it a physical manifestation of processing present obstacles, as Wolf's work seeks, or the searching for a lost truth in memory and childhood, as Nicholson attempts to find- these works demonstrate the beauty of growth from struggle. Together, these works show us the value of our trials in a time when truth is as hard to discern as sugar from salt.