To: The Other Side
An Exhibition by Allison McGovney & Emily Strange
All People Arts Gallery, May - July 2023
"A Walk Into An Addict's Mind" Installation 2023 Emily Strange
"Does This Please You?" Installation 2023 McGovney
"Does This Please You?" detail
Yellow Roses Installation featuring "My Ears Are Ringing", "Getting A Grip", & "Zapped with Yellow, Filled with Blue" McGovney 2023
"Intersection/Connection" (McGovney 2023, center) (Strange, left) (Strange, right)
"Survive" Strange 2023
"Holding My Own Hand" (McGovney 2023, top) "It's A Cycle" (McGovney 2023, Bottom)
"Plenty of Time to Think" McGovney 2023
“This exhibition follows a dreamy narrative colored with grief and escapism. I create paintings and installations inspired by my real-life experiences of loss and trauma. Two and a half years ago, I lost my best friend, Skylar, to an unexpected overdose. I have since been using my art practice to navigate insurmountable feelings of grief. I create illusive thought-scapes existing somewhere between life and death; somewhere between memory and imagination. Images of tightly clasped or interlocking hands reveal tension and a longing for connection. Repeated objects and mark making styles reflect bouts of obsessive thought patterns and repeated habits. Tangled masses of caution tape are strewn across walls, creating a sense of danger. Collections of dead roses are reminiscent of funeral bouquets. Chaotic scribbling depicts a sense of fast-paced opposition to intention. Segments of faces and hidden portraits reveal memories of Skylar herself. This work has become a diary of grieving and invites viewers to reflect on their own experiences of loss, and feelings about life and death.” -McGovney
“Each person has a deeply personal story. With my work I aim to create a visceral connection with the viewer and provoke an internal dialogue. My artistic vision is to educate the uneducated, make the comfortable uncomfortable (and vice versa), and become a voice for each individual’s most hidden struggles, and generate a second thought, discussion, and debate.” -Strange
Emily Strange was born in Columbus, OH. At a young age she found herself involved in anything creative, however the “dark side” got to her and took her away from creating for a umber of years. During this time, Emily went through a number of traumatic events and decided to move out of Ohio. She sought help from a homeless shelter and began creating again. This shelter offered her a job in the art department after seeing her talent and helped her get her GED, take her SAT, and apply to colleges. Emily got a full scholarship to Parsons School of Design. She moved to NYC where she lived for the next 11 years. Her senior year of college, Emily’s best friend took her own life due to heroin addiction. This moment was when Emily chose sobriety. Art became a way for her to stay on her path of sobriety, painting her “monsters” as a way to get them out of her head. Thinking on a larger scale to be a voice for others like her, she creates installations hoping to educate the uneducated on what addiction is really like and surviving mental illness, PTSD, rape, homelessness, and suicide. She strives to be heard for the people that are seemingly invisible.
Emily is now a full time artist living in Columbus, OH with 8 years of sobriety.
To: The Other Side
An installation of letters by Emily Strange, Allison McGovney, and community participants, 2023
To create this installation of letters, we invited friends, family, and community members to write to the people they have lost, or to people in their lives that have faced the opioid crisis head on. Thanks to the involvement of Community Medical Services, we were able to host a writing workshop for the community. The opioid crisis has devastated individuals, families, and entire communities, heightening in its severity throughout the pandemic. This installation aims to hold space for grief and amplify the voices of people grieving in our community. We invite you to read these letters that took strength and bravery to write and display, and reflect on your own experiences of loss or encounters with the opioid epidemic.
view below
This Must Be The Place
Thanks to the involvement of our friends at local nonprofit This Must Be The Place, we were happy to offer Naloxone overdose reversal training and FREE Naloxone kits for any and all gallery attendants during our opening reception for this exhibition.
To learn more about how This Must Be The Place is working to fight the opioid crisis and provide cross-country access to Naloxone, head to their website: https://betheplace.org/mission