INHABIT—SARAH BOYTS YODER & ABBY KASONIK: Cary Street Rd Gallery

Sarah Boyts Yoder’s paintings, while abstract, often can be seen as environments, habitats, or landscapes that invite the viewer in with playful forms and celebratory color. They are a point of focus, they give and receive energy, but they also joyfully refuse to settle down. With repeated forms and flashes of familiarity, they insist one looks closer, over and over again, and stays engaged.

The paintings create spaces that encourage the imagination to open up, to bend and stretch, to change course and to develop a tolerance for unknowability. If these are worlds within worlds, who or what might inhabit them? How would those creatures navigate the environments? Could they give the viewers ideas for how to move about and what could be?

Artist Abby Kasonik brings these imagined creatures to life through sculpture, exploring how shape, form, and pattern can muddle our understanding of what is fixed and what is fluid.

Kasonik, now sharing a studio with Boyts Yoder, talks about sensing all the color of Sarah’s work, what kind of eyes you might have to have for something like that; and how your body might need to move or bend to get through those painted places. As each piece becomes more finished, she lets their shapes define their purpose and personality in light of the painted environments.

Each sculpture is named for a purpose that Kasonik believes reflects its anatomy. They have different qualities, personalities, and abilities. The idea is that the viewer gets to choose one to be your guide and to explore with, rather than just looking. They’re your mask, your costume, your avatar, and together you can enter the world of Boyts Yoder’s paintings.