Join us in the gallery on Sunday, April 26th, 2-5pm for our Artist Reception, featuring the imaginative and immersive creations by guest artists Hanna Fridholm & Lisa J. Mullikin! Enjoy special refreshments, meet our artists, and enjoy live music by jazz guitarist Roger Davis! This exhibit will run through June 7th, alongside a new selection of featured works by our 30+ Gallery Artists.
Art in Bloom Gallery will be introducing you to the ceramic sculptures and paintings of guest artists Hannah Fridholm & Lisa J. Mullikin – two recent arrivals to our region with fresh perspectives to share! Ceramicist Hannah Fridholm explores the fragility of memory and the fleeting moments that shape our lives, using clay as a medium to reflect transformation and impermanence. Through hand-built sculptures and textured forms, she captures the delicate nature of human experiences. Painter & architect Lisa J. Mullikin focuses on the relationships we have with regional landscapes, and the cultural connections we have to place. Since moving to Wilmington, Lisa’s oils have reflected the area’s unique relationships between the placid land, dynamic sky and the formidable ocean. Both artists incorporate mixed media into their works to explore our relationships with nature, history, and self – crafting tranquil expressions of our underlying experiences.
About the Artists
Clay, for Hannah Fridholm, is not just a material but a vessel of memory. It has a life of its own, requiring attention and care throughout its journey. Like us, it is vulnerable—subject to cracking, breaking, and sometimes even exploding. The process of working with clay becomes a sanctuary, a space where emotions can be expressed and explored. The fragile results of this process mirror the fragility of our own lives. In creating these precarious objects, Hannah’s aim to make a statement about the precious, fleeting nature of existence.
Each piece becomes a personal shrine, a small altar dedicated to memories of what could have been—the moments we were supposed to share, the things we should have done together. Through her work, Hannah seeks to connect to those lost moments and honor the many versions of ourselves that arise from our experiences of loss and renewal.
Lisa J. Mullikin’s painting career has been a continuation of her architecture career. She continues to be intrigued by nature, light, and space, and what decisions we make when we are passing through “in-between spaces” – those moments when we move from one space to the next, when the light opens up or closes down and we become hyper aware of our surroundings.
Lisa’s larger pieces are dedicated to exploring the dreamlike experiences that are tenuously tied to reality, but have roots in real life experiences, like ancestral memory, myth, and the power that comes from hardship and adversity. Lisa’s current works are dedicated to the women in her family and her friends, and these pieces are the most difficult to resolve. To Lisa, these women are quietly holding up the world and protecting us. Animals, including Lisa’s pets, are central characters. They are messengers, storytellers, and the deep thinkers. The women are doing the hard work, and often the animals are helping them.