The Places We Make: A LAB^4 Exhibition

Arts + Literature Laboratory presents The Places We Make, a group exhibition organized by the community curation project, LAB^4, from Tuesday, April 29, 2025, through Saturday, June 21, 2025.

A reception for both LAB^4 exhibitions, The Places We Make (first floor galleries) and Lifting the Veil (second floor mezzanine) will be held on Friday, May 16, 2025, from 5:00 pm to 9:00 pm.

The Places We Make explores themes around place and community and their influence on the artistic process. We have asked the artists selected for this show to consider how their work engages with their community; uncovers people, sites, feelings, or stories; and engages with a sense of place — physical, mental, spiritual, or geographic.

The Places We Make features predominantly local and emerging artists. The exhibiting artists are Leela Benson, Maia Isabelle Brunel, Swan Ferraro, Kate Forer, Liz Light, Richard (R-Lo) Lopez, Desere Mayo, Samantha Jane Mullen, Ciel Skal, Anne E Stoner, and Yan Yang.

Their work covers a broad range of disciplines, including sculpture, painting, multimedia, sound, photography, and textiles. Each discipline involves a unique process that led to the completion of the work on display. To place equal attention on both this process and the “finished” work, we have asked the artists to invite us into their workspaces and share their process with the audience. The final element of this exhibition is a collection of photographs creatively documenting the exhibiting artists at various stages within their process.

The LAB^4 curatorial team hopes that this show uncovers the many places and communities that contribute to and influence the artistic process. We also hope to invite the audience to take a first-hand look at all that goes into creating a work of art. Ultimately, we aim to explore how the places and processes in which we make art are artful in and of themselves.

Leela Benson

I like to incorporate a multitude of different materials and textures into my pieces including manipulated paper and other recycled items. My art is influenced by my environment and explores feelings of fear, nostalgia, and gratitude. I use art as a tool to describe what I cannot explain using words.

Maia Isabelle Brunel

Maïa Isabelle Brunel is a ceramic and textile artist originally from Madison, Wisconsin. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2024 and now resides in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she continues to develop her artistic practice. Maïa's work delves into the themes of girlhood, innocence, and shame, allowing her to explore how her early experiences shape her current identity. Her artistic process is marked by a self-taught and experimental approach, which reflects both the impulsive, imaginative tendencies of childhood and her drive to work outside traditional methods.

Through her ceramics and textiles, Maïa examines the emotional landscapes of her youth, drawing parallels between the freedom of childhood creativity and the limitations imposed by adulthood. Her pieces often fuse folk craft traditions with contemporary art techniques, resulting in work that is both nostalgic and innovative. She is particularly interested... Read More

Swan Ferraro

Swan Ferraro is an interdisciplinary artist working in installation, sculpture, photo/video and performance. Landscape and bodies are explored to abstract identity and space. Individual and collective healing are emphasized in the work through the use of ritual. Their current research is titled Creative Improvisation as a Form of Divination in the Trans Body. By surrendering to the body and the space which holds it, magick can seep into the work. Trauma can be transcended and new realities can be created through this practice. Swan is an MFA Candidate in 4D Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Kate Forer

Kate Forer (they/she) is an visual artist and writer working between Wisconsin and Illinois. Forer received a BA in Art and Art History from Southern Illinois University - Carbondale and an MFA in Fine Arts from University of Wisconsin - Madison. Currently, their practice focuses on soft sculpture and costume as tools for storytelling. To Forer, narrative is a lens to understand the world through, from pop culture to fanfiction, epic myth to the anecdotal. Costumes, props, and objects blur the boundaries between fantasy and reality, acting as evidence of imagined or exaggerated events. Forer is interested in tragicomic stories, enmeshed in modernity, social dysfunction, complex bodies and identities, and hyperbole. They pull inspiration from internet subcultures, ad-saturated visual landscapes, self-indulgent classical references, and cringey biographic episodes. Across all media, Forer prioritizes comedy and levity as important aesthetic elements; at its best,... Read More

Liz Light

Madison based visual artist Liz Light began sewing patchwork textile compositions under the moniker BIG TUB in 2023. BIG TUB started as a refreshing shift from a many years long painting practice, offering new ways to explore color, shape, and spontaneity. Initially using fabric scraps and other materials immediately on-hand in the home, Liz now sources all fabric (and canvas stretcher frames) second-hand, making each work an assemblage of past-life objects such as bedsheets, napkins, curtains, and clothing. Liz’s work examines the interplay between improvisation and control, scarcity and abundance, familiarity and anonymity. As a practice of both making and sourcing, BIG TUB contemplates the lifespan of textiles and making materials.

Richard (R-Lo) Lopez

R-Lo, a southern-tier New York native, is a self-taught emerging artist. Using simple materials such as charcoal, a handful of erasers, a rag, a brush, and paper, he specializes in creating drawings ranging in scale from small to life-size works. R-Lo uses figures and abstraction to articulate narratives within dark fantasy, thematically exploring concepts of love, conflict, and loss, to encourage self-reflection for the artist and audience.

R-Lo recently broke into the art world in 2023 and started a committed career journey in art beginning with a full-year residency at The Millworks in Harrisburg, PA. This set in motion the first public viewings of his work and sprung R-Lo into his first invited gallery exhibition at Maryland Art Place (MAP). Following his first exhibitions, R-Lo has participated in a number of shows including a solo exhibition and residency with LOUD Gallery in Madison, WI. R-Lo has also been featured in several press releases including... Read More

Desere Mayo

Desere Mayo has the gift of creativity and imagination and it shows in her work. She has been perfecting her craft since an early age and has touched hundreds of people in the process. Every picture drawing is handmade and no filters or edit software was used to create the artwork. With a keen attention to detail, Desere has done everything from painting both original and popular children’s artwork on and walls of both homes and businesses alike; creating graphics, signs, paintings of houses, face painting, and magazines for professional organizations as well as for intimate occasions such as a weddings, and is always looking to expand her craft.

Her artwork is displayed in many schools throughout the country, MATC in Madison, Madison Children’s Museum, and at Malone University in Ohio. She has been in newspapers, on News Stations, and in magazines and journals. Every time she is interviewed, she wants all to know that “Her Creator created her to create!”... Read More

Samantha Jane Mullen

It began in the spring of 1991 in State College, Pennsylvania. A child was born, named after a dog and set loose in the herb garden. Upon graduating from the University of New Orleans in 2013, Samantha Jane Mullen took to wood burning and the creative beast inside her freaked out. Art became her life. After 11 years living, performing, loving and creating in New Orleans, Samantha Jane moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico with her trombone wielding husband and two cats. There, in the high desert, she adopted a disturbed dog and shifted from the medium of pyrography to sculpting full time. The universe then sent this odd family of art and dysfunction to Madison, Wisconsin, where they now reside.

Samantha is a self-taught artist whose work explores elements of the natural world recombined in unlikely situations. She uses polymer clay, paper clay and various other mediums to create playful yet shocking narrative sculptures which focus upon our connection to the land,... Read More

Ciel Skål

As a self described "child of nowhere," Ciel Skål grew up with an identity shaped by caveats. Her childhood was marked by a dividing of cultures and instability, forcing the question of what it means to be home. In adulthood, she found stability through degrees in behavioral research and art history which led to a compelling career in archeological illustration, but after the loss of several family members, she shifted her career to visual arts and writing full time as a means of catharsis. Her work delves into themes of loss, generational grief, and identity within the context of place, drawing inspiration from her lived experiences and research.

Anne E. Stoner

Anne E. Stoner is a sound artist and collaborative ethnographer whose work, informed by disability studies and queer archival practices, focuses on the intersections of identity and geography in both sonic and physical space. Her work brings about and coalesces studies in bodily complexities, human geography, psychogeographies, and contemporary methodologies in ethnographic archiving and queer anthropology, to create a practice with an empathetic methodology that challenges visual standards within 21st century artmaking and scholarship. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, including venues such as the Francis Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, New York State, and the Morley Gallery, London. Anne’s sound and writing can be read and listened to in Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture, Global Performance Studies Journal, and the Struer Tracks Sound Biennial Almanac.

Anne holds an undergraduate MA(h) in Music from the... Read More

Yan Yang

Yan Yang is a Junior at Middleton High School whose artwork is deeply influenced by individual experiences and the world around her. Often working with materials like paper and wire, she enjoys crafting heartfelt, handmade pieces for loved ones– finding joy in transforming simple materials into something meaningful.

For this exhibition, Yan explored acrylic painting, experimenting with various styles and constantly looking for new ways to convey her emotions. While different from her usual craft-based work, painting has been a great way to reconnect with her creative process and bring new ideas to life. Staying true to her desire to create personal meaning in all her artwork, her paintings are influenced by themes of growth, loss, and personal reflection. She also gains much inspiration for her work from music, keepsakes, and personal struggles, which makes each piece unique.

This exhibition is an exciting opportunity for Yan to share her work and... Read More

The Places We Make: A LAB^4 Exhibition

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