Interactions with people fill our everyday lives in ways large and small, but rarely do we stop to ponder how those seemingly ordinary encounters may shape us.
A new art exhibit at the indie venue and eatery Stardust Video & Coffee aims to explore the beauty of “humans being.” Local artists Justin Luper and Hayley Boulicault are the creative forces behind the exhibit, simply and aptly named “People.”
Luper said the couple utilizes their art to explore connections in a world that’s never been so interconnected, but felt so disconnected.
There is depth, humor, curiosity, and sly social commentary in these works. A kissing couple is rendered in celebratory colors, but a closer look reveals a frown of doubt on one lover’s face. A piece called “Thank You for Everything” features a woman holding and clearly adoring another person who somehow looks like both an infant and a gray-haired elder. A pleasing portrait challenges beauty norms with its title: “A Whole Lot of Ugly.”
The kissing couple and the “ugly” portrait are Boulicault’s creations. She said she finds a lot of inspiration at the intersection of the personal and the universal. “I typically do portraits or comics of silly interactions, of everyday things. I'm obsessed with the little mundane things in life, and how we all are so different and so similar at the same time while interacting with each other.”
“It’s just a way for people to connect,” Boulicault said of her art highlighting these shared experiences.
“We started with the premise, ‘people love people,” said Luper of the show’s theme. One example he cited is the tendency of social media photos featuring faces to collect more likes. “So we wanted to just investigate that, to explore why people love people, and how they do it. All the W's – who, what, why, where. We wanted something simple to explore as a starting point.”
Luper pointed out that the show has a more active goal than just sharing the works for an audience’s passive observation.
“One of the things that we hope to achieve is to really just create a sense of empathy and understanding for the people who come and see it, and choose to kind of spend some time with the work,” he said. “And I think that's just important to us, to bring people together, and wherever you find yourself, to have that empathy for other people, and just to find those little things that you can relate to.”
Maybe it’s something small,” he added, “and maybe that’s all it takes to find the humanity in everyone else.”
