City Tracing/Tracing Line

City Traces/Tracing Lines

In City Traces/Tracing Lines, artists Sam McLeish and Sarah Sandoval come together to explore the ways in which art both informs and is informed by the self and our environment. Through a myriad of mediums including print, soft sculpture/sculpture, collage, painting, and embroidery, McLeish and Sandoval explore the elements of line, shape, form, and colour to create a visual mapping of our abstract conceptions of selfhood, otherness, place, home, and the unknown.

Tracing Lines: While highlighted by a thorough investigation of the element of line, McLeish’s inquiry into the unknown nature of self is anything but linear. Whether through the literal lines on the page, like in works such as Discovery, or the figurative flow of time embodied by The First Stitch, viewers weave through the space, encouraged to reflect on the visual and invisible connections between ourselves, the past, present, and the future. These lines, however, are not always straightforward. As portrayed in Movement, this flow is often fragmented; identity interrupted by gaps in memory, loss, and misunderstanding. Yet, as McLeish’s work demonstrates, this nothingness shapes us, the empty spaces playing as vital a role in discovery as the marks on the page. The journey to self discovery, then, comes not from uncovering the unknown or invisible, but instead through embracing it. Not unlike Sandoval, McLeish’s work reveals that the relationship between the seen and unseen is not dichotomous; instead, the self is an amalgamation of the two.

- Curator Zachary Scola-Allison