Layer upon Layer, from studio to surface, STRATA III artists fit it all in...
- Jennifer Gillia Cutshall
- Aug 21
- 13 min read
Updated: Aug 25
...and it's breathtaking!
"Layers are how I make sense of chaos. In my work, like in life, nothing exists in a vacuum—there's always something beneath, behind, entangled. Urban Jungle is a response to the density of city life, where beauty and struggle coexist, stacked and tangled like vines through concrete. I use layers to uncover, not to conceal—to expose the truths hidden in plain sight. I like to paint in layers sometimes, especially in works like this.
I see life in layers because life has so many. Growing up in NYC, I was surrounded by them: the layers of noise, the layers of people from every background, the aromas of foods drifting from windows, the layers of buildings, signs, and stories stacked on top of each other. In a city where there’s no space for anything to exist in isolation, we live on top of one another—layers upon layers. That’s what I tried to express in this piece. "
Helene Ruiz
JINSUN KIM
"In my work, I translate the life of the cocoon into sculptural form. I see each layer as a memory, a scar, a whisper of what came before. Some are translucent, allowing light to pass through; others are dense and opaque, holding their secrets close. Together, they tell a story of fragility and resilience — of the tension between enclosure and emergence."
Jinsun Kim
DIANE GILBERT
"When I was searching for a title for the work entered into this exhibition I remembered a poem I loved by Stanley Kunitz called “The Layers”. In it he hears a nimbus-clouded voice directing him to “Live in the layers, not on the litter.”
Whether I am working with wire, printmaking, or open-weave textiles it is the relationship between the layers that gives depth and meaning to the work. It is in the overlap where the magic happens, where they come alive. As I work I create elements that become layers with other elements without a pre-conceived idea about what will be combined. In this way layers created years apart sometimes come together to create a new whole, just as in life."
Diane Gilbert
TERESA SPELLMAN GAMBLE
"Layering is where the magic unfolds. Each veil of paint carries a whisper of what came before - marks that can’t be erased, only transformed. I am drawn to this because, like life, each layer of memory, experience, and emotion shapes the whole of who we become.
Layers are truly whispers of the past, reshaped into something new.
Teresa Spellman Gamble
ELLEN ZIMMERMAN
"The title of the exhibition – especially “through the layers” – captured my heart, because I love mixing images to create new realities, realities that are complex and textured...
In “Thickets of Light,” the watercolor-like washes of orange and gold suffuse the scene with gentle shifts in tone, building a sense of depth and atmosphere.
Elements of nature blend together into a slightly distorted, dreamy reflection. And the final image is a reverie fusing landscape, memory, and imagination."
Ellen Zimmerman
BRIAR CRAIG
"The act of screen printing (the way I do it anyway) is one of building up layers and layers of translucent colour to create nuances and subtleties within the final imagery. Thematically, I am interested in the vagaries of written language. The way I have been trying to pictorialize that interpretability is to create palimpsest-like images where a dominant word, phrase or statement is literally playing off of previous layers of information. Individually constructed meaning can be found somewhere in the midst of those layers."
Briar Craig
SHARON M DUNDEE
"There is beauty in the decay, rust, and detritus of modern materials. By mining a wealth of discarded photos, old newsprint, books stripped of their covers, etc., I seek to repurpose them in my work. Using a collage/mixed-media technique allows me to build layers, creating depth and nuance that lead you below the surface. And, at times, the many “layers” of materials strewn across my workspace can spontaneously inspire the work as well!"
Sharon M. Dundee
JAMIE KOST
"From a distance, my layered works can appear as a unified visual field, yet closer inspection reveals intricate details and subtle nuances.
As an artist and former social worker, I am fascinated by this process of discovery, which mirrors how we come to understand people—surface impressions giving way to deeper layers of history, complexity, and meaning. This interplay between what is visible and what is gradually revealed continues to intrigue and inspire my work."
Jamie Kost
CANDACE HEIDENRICH
"Layers upon layers, a life lived in cities and villages, there have been times of peace and stretches of chaos, periods of being wide awake and of being asleep."
Candace Heidenrich
YANQING PAN
"Beneath each surface,
another weight, another silence—
time faulting through matter."
Yanqing Pan
SANDRA ALDERMAN
"I Love tea! The first distinct memory I have of drinking tea was at my grandmother’s house…
We never lived near her, but when we would go and visit, she would make everything special. She’d brew a cuppa tea for herself and then have a plate of almond windmill cookies for us to dip into her tea.
As you can only imagine, she wound up with a cup full of cookie crumbs and not much tea to drink. Such a beautifully fond memory that still comforts me to this day. I likewise have passed on this tradition to my grandchildren, still getting windmill cookies for them to dunk into my cuppa tea. They love this, just as I did, and I’m sure, will pass it down to their children and grandchildren in future years. Enjoy your cuppa and happy dunking!"
Sandra Alderman
BILL SALTZSTEIN
"I’m fascinated by how geographic layers of stone flow and fold over millions of years as if they were layers of paper and cardboard left out in the rain. The unimaginable forces and timescale are on a completely different scale than I can imaging.
The image selected for the show not only shows these patterns created by the eons of time, but the forces of nature that contribute the making of those patterns: wind, ice, water. We seldom think of the geology of the Antarctic, but here it is exposed for us to admire."
Bill Saltzstein
JOANI SHARE
"My art is about the commonality of humanity. I often incorporate abstracted figures into my work which create a visual dialogue representing ways people navigate their daily lives - there are many twists and turns to a day and many ways to solve problems. Life is full of layers, one could go through an entire day without physically connecting with another person. The sense of being alone, whether virtual or real, forces some people to be hidden in their own world."
Joani Share
KATHY COULSON
"As an artist I attempt to capture infinite horizons. My work has always been heavily layered to create light shift and shimmering, reflective color play on a variety of surfaces. I am intrigued by media that can be melded, fused, incised, unearthed. Ever changing luminescent light is reflected from a multitude of vantage points on each mixed media piece. Beyond accentuates this idea in its multiple layers of encaustic, cold wax, oil bar and oil paint with iridescent and interference pigments fused onto an antique Turkish window which I acquired on a trip there 20+ years ago. The clasped windows subtly reveal another interior layer, an encaustic work on copper that glows in the light, almost from within. Each abstracted layer collides and merges like the ever-changing stratified layers of the skies above, which is another recurring motif in my work. The potential to create an oxidized abstract landscape, a dark brooding monsoon, a sky ablaze at dawn or the peaceful calm within inspires and fuels my work."
Kathy Coulson
HILARY SHEEHAN
“My playful compositions are built using multiple layers of drawing and paint, incorporating collage and finished with cold wax. I often include econometric note collage elements, souvenirs from my earlier life as an economist. These fragments of symbols and words add extra marks and energy to the work. I enjoy how all these elements are transformed in juxtaposition to each other in my layered mixed media paintings. Recently I have explored adding a layer of machine sewn overcast stitching to the edges of my paintings.”
Hilary Sheehan
SARAH UYS
What draws me to complexity is the simple truth that nothing is ever just one thing. Our many layers are what make life interesting, what keep us unknowable—even to ourselves. We are composed of truths and secrets, of story and silence, constantly weaving and reweaving the narratives of our personal and collective histories.
In my work, layering isn’t just a visual device—it’s a metaphor for existence. We are a thin film of life on this planet, a fleeting trace across deep geological and biological time. We are also a sediment of decay, of overgrowth, of detritus. We press ourselves onto the earth with our unnatural wants and manufactured needs, suffocating the very systems that sustain us.
We are shaped by nature, and we shape her in return. We are strata of instinct compressed beneath the weight of societal norms, and from that pressure something warped, tender, and human emerges.
Battle-Weary is a way to make invisible pain and psychological trauma visible. It uses embodied wounds as a visceral, tangible expression of what the cyclical wounding of living with CPTSD, ADHD, and OCD-spectrum perfectionism feels like and how each of those layers warps and distorts the others in turn. For those with a more typical psychological experience, the piece offers a momentary, bodily sense of this reality through relational empathy. On another level, it is also a meditation on how the body remembers—how physical form can hold the imprint of emotional and psychological histories.
Felt and reclaimed fiber are ideal mediums for this—they respond to agitation, compression, and transformation. They become something new, something stronger. They hold memory in their layers, just as we do.
My work navigates the tension between nature and culture, repression and expression, beauty and damage, and invites the viewer to peel back the surface and look deeper. These pieces carry a psychological weight—records of the unseen and the unspeakable.
Sarah Uys
NICOLE RUBEL
"My canvas begins in chaos — colors colliding, shapes without form. Layer by layer, I stitch them together, each stroke a thread in a growing tapestry. In time, the confusion settles, and like a quilt pieced from many fragments, the painting reveals itself."
Nicole Rubel
SCOTT FIELDS
"As an exhibition theme, layers is about as good as they come for a collage artist. In fact, the presence of layers is usually hard to avoid in my work. A piece like The Good Bomb, which is assembled in an old letterpress type-drawer, utilizes layers on a whole different level <hey, puns are layers, too>—taking full advantage of tightly confined but clearly three-dimensional space to create tiers of imagery; to accentuate in some cases, to unify in others.
This particular piece has additional layers in that the concept of the good bomb (which I’d been thinking about as one or another of the Bushes was dropping bombs on one country or another) first materialized as a poem, and some of those lines are now pasted to the back of this drawer (which I was assembling as Russia was invading Ukraine—showing that war is forever and always a relevant topic for art of all kinds). <There will be no more bombs when the good bomb falls>"
Scott Fields
ELENA LIPKOWSKI
"For me, layering has become less of a technique and more of a ritual. I begin with my own photographs, taken with my cellphone as a form of visual journaling. Each image marks a moment and sets a memory. As I weave them together digitally into my collages, I move pixels with mouse and breath, burnishing and clarifying that memory into my present awareness. The work comes alive even further when I begin stitching into the surface. Thread, beads, and sometimes trims or embellishments, each addition becomes a pause, a breath, a mark of time.
The process slows me down. A stitch cannot be rushed; materials will not be forced. Instead, the work unfolds in rhythm, layer by layer, decision by decision. This practice has become a ritual, meditative in the way that neither ocean nor sky is ever a single thing, but always depth within depth.
Nature continually reinforces this truth for me: clouds stacking across the horizon, petals spiraling open, clouds carrying hidden worlds across the sky. That layered complexity is what I seek to honor in my art. Beauty is never flat. It carries memory, resilience, and transformation within it.
In the end, each piece becomes a record of that ritual: a layered meditation stitched into fabric and time.
Elean Lipkowski
ZHEN WEI
"For me, the meaning of "layers" is quite diverse.
From the perspective of the picture itself, I really enjoy creating "layers" within the image through different painting techniques or various artistic media. In my opinion, this contrasting approach of expression can better convey the story I want to tell.
Beyond the image itself, the concept of layers exists in many more places. "layers" can be the relationship between the clouds and the sky in a painting; it can be the relationship between the viewer and the artwork; or even the relationship between the viewer and the artist - through the artwork, the viewer sees the world as the artist perceived it at that moment.
I am fascinated by this layered and multi-faceted relationship. This "layering" allows everyone to have their own interpretation of the world, and it also fills art with possibilities."
Zhen Wei
JENNIFER WALLER
"In my studio practice I often layer, stack and pile materials. Sometime I try to make them stick around and become permanent , like a capturing of a thought. This piece asks the questions...what is in-between the inhale and exhale and what accumulates after the departure?"
Jennifer Waller
I love the quote by Agnes Martin "Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings."
ALINA DOLITSKY
This image is very significant for me because I wrote it after I started volunteering at Pennsylvania's most secure prison SCI Phoenix and the impact the men in the prison had on me.
The picture is of the layers of razor wire going all around the property and inside the grounds, which seems like it goes on for infinity.
Redemption Through the Blades
The play of light is blinding
Glint flickers off each loop
The wire loops incessantly
It snakes along the chain links
of the electronic fence.
Sharp blades,
positioned perfectly
to cut, to maim, to hurt
to serve as a reminder
You're here to serve your punishment
You're guilty! YOU have sinned!
Repentance doesn't matter
nor does time served
Your soul, damned for eternity
Your guilt is your finality
God's law or our morality
has deemed you irredeemable
So don't even pray.
Your amens, they evaporate
like morning dew
on the sharp edges of the blade.
Mundane days are spiraling
Same loop day after day
Monotony is deafening
Same food, same clothes, same space
But then...
Like a bolt of lightning
monotony is broken
by thumping piercing shrieks
Fulminant sparks are flying
These are the sparks of faith
Here, fulmination has its place.
I hear them all louder
as I approach the fence
They seep through concrete housing
The prison walls wear thin
And as we sit together
I hear all your journeys
through darkness and through pain
Relentless and determined
You show your humanity
as you walk towards the light.
I take in every moment
I see your path, your faith
I know that reality
is grimmer than this verse
But know that you matter
That you are seen and heard.
Your journey, it continues
through this sameness of days
But I will keep disrupting
by visiting and listening.
Because of you
I am
Forever changed.
The play of light is blinding
Glint flickers off each loop
Sharp blades positioned perfectly
They're everywhere you look.
Alina Dolitsky
VIKTORIA FORD
"Connections is my interpretation of the changes the brain experiences going from a normal activity state to a meditative state, moving from bottom to top of the painting. I also created a depth of layers to draw the viewer into this inner world. I made Connections during Covid when I discovered repetition in my art practice could calm my own mind."
Viktoria Ford
BARRY JORDAN
"So often it seems that the larger truths gleaned from meaningful experiences tend to unpack themselves over time, tend to unfurl their truths as layers of understanding manifest before the mind’s eye and become known to the heart as they settle into the seat of the soul. Still, those truths can remain veiled, not fully uncloaked until such time when they find their bare-naked wholeness through shared expression. It is then when the individual layers become indistinguishable, indivisible, and find their complete form through the full expression of love."
Barry Jordan
ANN-MARIE DELAUNAY-DANIZIO
"Creating layers for me, is to emulate natural phenomenons that compress space and time in a single entity like the rings of a tree or the sheets of ice in a glacier."
Anne-Marie Delaunay-Danizio
WALTER JAKUBOWSKI
"My photography based abstract art originates from rusted metal and layers of deteriorating paint. The images not only emerge from the substrate but can create a portal of transcendence into another realm determined by the viewer’s imagination and interpretation of the ambiguous imagery."
Walter Jakubowski
ANDREA G SNYDER
"I’ve always liked to go “In and Out” in making my art. To me, art is not on the surface, but buried in layers upon layers.
If you could unwrap my art what would you find? I am embedded in the layers of the media I use. I am my art."
Andrea G. Snyder
ILEANA SOTO
"I approach a new piece through layering. I lay down a foundation in dye or paint. Through dialogue with the piece, I create a middle layer that includes the addition of color and shape through dye, paint and surface layers of more elements. The final layer is the stitch. Sometimes, I have an intention about the meaning; other times, the meaning only becomes clear as the piece nears completion. A final layer, the title, is the ultimate step. The title may come to me immediately or other viewers may help me to see what I couldn’t see myself. This piece has come to represent the sacred space or layer of experience between the moments of waking and dreaming.
“Between Waking and Dreaming” has an additional layer: it is revised from an earlier version. It has been cut, simplified, yet deepened, with new, surprising elements that reflect my growth as an artist. That is satisfying. As history is revealed to us in the strata of rock, clay, paint, shards, tile, cloth, so my pieces go through stages of attention to each square inch, until the moment of knowing that it is complete."
Ileana Soto
LINDA LAINO
"I work mainly in watercolor on mulberry paper, exploiting the transparency of the two. This physical layering is built-in to my materials and never fails to produce many interesting opportunities during the making of a painting. Transparency and layering in a painting leaves a history for the viewer to witness where an artist has been. My process of layering images visually is similar to the way we hear sound in our daily lives. Incongruous sounds enter and exit our space without consent resulting in a tapestry of song that needs no composer. We encounter the world visually in the same way, but mostly in a blur, unconscious and un-awake. I attempt harness the stillness of the moving picture in an effort to arrest the viewer and create a vivid sense of experience."
Linda Laino
EMILY SORTOR
"In my work, I examine how physical work and observation create a composition. I began this process using monotype printmaking and painting, observing how the application and removal of medium created a composition. In recent years, I have taken his process into collage. I use my previous artworks to create new compositions, allowing forms and patterns that emerge in the material and in my process to guide the composition. Incorporating past work deepens my examination into how cumulative labor and learning can create a composition. In this way, the time that goes into a composition extends across many years and iterations of my artistic practice. Since the beginning of my practice, paper has taken center stage. I gravitate towards paper for its flexibility and ease of use, which allows me to foreground physical engagement while minimizing barriers to production."
Emily Sortor
KERRY SCHROEDER
“For me, life is layered. Everything I’ve lived—memories, experiences, the beautiful and the painful—stays with me in some way. Some fade, some I wish I could erase, but they’re always there underneath, shaping who I am and what I make. My paintings come from that same place, built on what’s underneath, seeing what parts emerge clearly while others fall away, but are never completely gone.”
Kerry Schroeder
