SECOND NATURE
June 13 through August 1
OCHI is pleased to present Second Nature, a group exhibition featuring works by Brittany Fanning, Matthew F Fisher, Elijah Ford, Emily Marchand, Andy Mister, Maggie Shafran, Polly Shindler, Sam Shoemaker, Ian Stanton, and Anna Valdez.
Second Nature gathers a group of artists whose works reveal the deep entanglement of memory, daily life, and the natural world. Across paintings, sculptures, and ceramics, the exhibition explores the artists’ instinctual need to create with place as their muse. Andy Mister’s pastel and acrylic snapshots of domestic life focus on everyday flowers in a jar on a windowsill. Meanwhile, the interior and exterior worlds collapse into one another in the paintings of Brittany Fanning, Polly Shindler, and Anna Valdez. Elijah Ford and Ian Stanton’s clouds fleetingly shape-shift, folding together reflection and wonder, while Matthew F. Fisher and Maggie Shafran’s paintings consider shifting perspectives. Emily Marchand’s large companion vessels celebrate the often-overlooked labor of pollinators, positioning her lush, hand-painted ceramics as elegies to a fragile ecological balance. Sam Shoemaker’s mushroom sculptures introduce the mythology of adaptation and survival.
Through considered observation and surreal improvisation, the artists of Second Nature instinctively embed the natural world into their works, not as a static backdrop but a living, breathing presence within memory, routine, and imagination. Whether tied to home, studio, ocean, or mountain, the places we carry within us contain abundant narratives.
Captions:
Round:
Alaska Landscape Painting in Reflection with Moose Antler
by Anna Valdez
2025
oil on canvas
47” x 47”
Portrait Oriented:
At This Moment
by Andy Mister
pastel and acrylic on linen on panel
20” x 16”
Images are courtesy of the Artist and OCHI. Photos by Deen Babakhyi
Ochi Gallery
119 Lewis Street | Ketchum
208.726.8746
ochigallery.com
