Animate Ground
Material Dialogue Across Five Practices
By Xiao Faria daCunha • December 2025
When creating, an artist is always conversing with their tools and material: paint brushes and paint tubes, knives and wood, foraged plants and the pigments they contain, or mud and soil, wet or dry, awaiting transformation. It is through interaction that art comes into shape, like the tango of two spirited lovers: chins pointing upward, eyes glimmering, steps weaving against each other, radiating in the joy of co-creation.
In Animate Ground, Gallery Bogart presents a mesmerizing observation of this tender dynamic between artist and material through works by Jo Archuleta, Mónica Figueroa, Lizzie Ingram, SunYoung Park, and SK Reed. The pieces on display include ceramics, printmaking, painting, and mixed media. The connectivity and collectivism shared by the works feel mutual and abundant. For example, repeated color spectrums appear across the exhibition: yellows, reds, magentas, and oranges from Ingram, Archuleta, Reed, and Figueroa blend into a hazy autumn afternoon dream that resonates with the fall weather outside the gallery. Aquatic spirituality also appears as a shared language, visible in Ingram’s wave-embraced vases, the fluid appearance and scaled surfaces of Park’s sculptures, and the flowing brushstrokes in Figueroa’s paintings. Reed and Ingram investigate the earth and nature, while Archuleta and Figueroa’s pieces highlight internal negotiations with self and ancestry. These universal subjects communicate with one another, reflecting the exhibition’s title and constructing a common ground where the artworks are rooted.
Installation view of “Animate Ground.” Courtesy of Gallery Bogart, photographs by Gallery Bogart. Previously known for rich textures and exaggerated female figures in her mixed media paintings, Archuleta lets go of glitter, fabric, and rough surfaces and instead presents a pair of portraits of her iconic mutt, a representation of female distress, insecurity, and self-loathing. Now independent from its owner, the mutts stand tall and mighty on blazing red backgrounds, glaring down at the viewer from Gallery Bogart’s clean white walls. Their forms carry an ominous, toxic glaze, like a villain towering beneath stage lights.
The mutts’ bodies are covered in carefully laid strokes that mimic strands of dog fur. This method emphasizes an uncomfortable level of texture and detail and nearly triggers a minor episode of trypophobia. As a result, one may find their gaze instinctively turning away from the paintings. And isn’t that how women sometimes look at themselves? We avert our eyes from our own images, attempting to drown out the whisper of insecurities that stare back at us like these mutts from the back of our minds. By omitting the complexity of her usual mixed media approach, Archuleta removes superficial distraction and exposes her audience to the raw discomfort carried by her symbol of female self-disgust, shaped by stereotypical beauty standards and male scrutiny.
Installation view of “Animate Ground.” Courtesy of Gallery Bogart, photographs by Gallery Bogart. Turning the corner, viewers encounter Mónica Figueroa’s paintings, which boast oil-like brightness and saturated color. These works, however, are created with acrylic paint, a medium that tends to appear darker and duller due to its plastic nature. These limitations are carefully countered through the Oaxaca-based artist’s skilled use of various ground media. Like Archuleta, Figueroa grounds her practice in the female lived experience, while focusing more closely on maternal ancestry and intergenerational relationships.
In her paintings, Figueroa captures light and fluidity through layered washes. With overarching sepia and amber tones, the images feel comforting and homelike at times, and suffocating and tense at others. Fluid curves, smooth contours, plump figures, and soft overlapping strokes evoke gentleness, flexibility, and resilience. These women sit in grasslands or wooded spaces, their bodies blending into surrounding botanics. Under Figueroa’s guidance, synthetic acrylic paint becomes natural and organic, moving beyond its chemical and physical properties. These paintings read as visual essays that deepen, enhance, and empower femme narratives.
Installation view of “Animate Ground.” Courtesy of Gallery Bogart, photographs by Gallery Bogart. Two distinct bodies of work by SK Reed appear on either side of Figueroa’s paintings. Drawing inspiration from land and earth, Reed takes the relationship between identity and ecosystem one step further through clay and pigments extracted directly from the ground.
On one wall, three mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock prints) line up horizontally on plain white paper, each embellished with mixed media. Opposite them, a pair of large mixed media paintings loom, framed with sculpted Missouri clay and cast in a darker palette. Sunflowers serve as a central motif throughout these works. Their pointed, withering petals are carved, painted, and sculpted, symbolizing cycles of life, death, and rebirth. The orange clay frames echo the shape of the petals, while a sunflower cups a face in one print and burns brightly in another. Moving between hardness and softness, solidity and fluidity, these works depict a “dueling reality” that challenges fixed gender binaries. The reuse of materials and symbols gestures toward queer identity as an evolving process, one shaped by experimentation and divergence from prescribed paths.
At the center of the gallery, a wooden table holds a group of small mythological figurines by Lizzie Ingram. A resident artist at Kansas City’s Belger Arts, Ingram combines ceramics and illustration in her practice. These figurines feature areas of exposed pale clay alongside vibrant blue, orange, and gold glaze. They rest their heads in orange hands, some with eyes closed, others gazing downward in quiet reflection. The shifting balance between color and restraint creates a layered landscape, evoking ocean water washing onto white sand beneath a blazing sunset.
Installation view of “Animate Ground.” Courtesy of Gallery Bogart, photographs by Gallery Bogart. Behind them, two tall vases stand on pedestals, each crowned with a vivid ocean goddess positioned at eye level. With confident posture and curving contours, the figures beckon viewers closer. Beneath their feet, layered waves rise in blue and white, capturing a sense of upward motion. Color cascades down the vases as Ingram draws atop the glazed surfaces, weaving narratives of childhood, nature, and growth. Standing tall and grand, the vases read as reflections of personal odysseys.
Near the gallery’s only window, one of SunYoung Park’s sculptures rests on a pedestal, bathed in sunlight. A pearlescent bundle shimmers with subtle greens, blues, and yellows, folded tightly and bound by what may be a rope or a snake. Nearby, Holding Tight features a chicken-like hand with slender fingers grasping layers of white ruffles.
Installation (detail) of “Animate Ground.” Courtesy of Gallery Bogart, photographs by Gallery Bogart. Those same ruffles reappear in Glowing Sharp Edges, now rendered in pink and flesh tones, pierced by sharp hooks extending from within. The underlying tension seems to echo the concerned expression on the amber-toned woman’s face in a small Figueroa painting hung nearby. Also a Belger resident artist, Park’s sculptural work bridges imagination and reality, giving form to memory and sensation. How does one catch a fleeting feeling before it slips away? How can a mesmerizing moment be held before it dissolves?
In Animate Ground, Miller Bogart ensures that the artworks on display tell a collective story by uncovering the underlying connections between the practices of the five participating artists. Within Gallery Bogart’s bright, clean, minimalist space, an organic and intimate narrative unfolds. Together, the artists invite viewers to observe how they negotiate and co-create with their mediums to embody inherited and lived experience, identity, and the social and political currents that shape them. The gallery becomes a ground for conversation and interaction, a shared foundation connecting art, artist, and audience.
Installation view of “Animate Ground.” Courtesy of Gallery Bogart, photographs by Gallery Bogart.