SUE HETTMANSPERGER / LILLY MCELROY / STO LEN
through a narrow window

OCTOBER 31 - DECEMBER 19, 2025

EVENTS

ARTISTS’ RECEPTION
Friday, November 14, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm 
Wege Gallery 

GALLERY TALK WITH LILLY MCELROY
Saturday, November 15, 10:00 am - 11:30 am
Wege Gallery

VIRTUAL ARTIST TALK WITH STO LEN
Saturday, December 6, 10:00 am - 11:30 am CST
ZOOM / Wege Gallery

The virtual lecture will be on ZOOM. Please register to receive the link to join the event. Folks in Fairfield may join us at the Wege Gallery for event. 

WEEKEND HOURS
Open Saturdays, 10:00 am - 4:00 pm through December 13

In 1962, Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking work, “Silent Spring,” became a benchmark for environmental activism, paving the way for the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and a newly informed public. “Silent Spring” brought awareness to the potentially harmful effects of pesticides on the environment, highlighting her central argument that our world is interconnected, and that unchecked usage to control one farm pest could have detrimental consequences for other life forms.  In Chapter 13 of her book, she begins, “The Biologist George Wald once compared his work on an exceedingly specialized subject, the visual pigments of the eye, to 'a very narrow window through which at a distance one can see only a crack of light. As one comes closer, the view grows wider and wider, until finally through this same narrow window one is looking at the universe.'”

Through a Narrow Window features the work of Sue Hettmansperger, Lilly McElroy, and sTo Len. Spanning painting, photography, video, and printmaking, the exhibition reveals three artists’ approaches to working through topics surrounding the environmental crisis, and a pervasive sense of tension in the face of climate change. Each of the artists takes a deeply personal approach to this immense and widespread issue and use their studio practices to metabolize the blows that can be felt within the scale of individual experience.

The artists in the exhibition ultimately seek to ask questions and find agency as contemporary humans. What does it mean to respond, what is a suitable response, how might I use my knowledge, craft, and experiences to suitably address such expansive and insurmountable destruction? For the viewer, the work offers methodologies for fine-tuning one’s awareness, remaining engaged, coping, and resistance. Emerging from a small fissure in the systemic climate issues before us, the exhibition also extends a ray of hope, in which the entire universe can be found.

Sue Hettmansperger’s paintings and drawings express an ongoing interest in biological systems, botany, and the complex relationship of humans to their environment. Her work in the exhibition spans over ten years of investigation into the mediated spaces of our present reality, where the hybridization and mutation of form question perceptions of our place in nature.

Lilly McElroy’s work reflects her complex relationship with the American West. Her work explores what it means to be an American in a time of diminished expectations. Working as a lens-based artist, she utilizes the landscape symbolically to address issues of power, gender, and eco-anxiety. The artist’s photographs, installations, performances, and videos acknowledge the possibility of failure in facing the sublime and call its power into question.

sTo Len’s ethos as an artist embodies an in-the-field practice that deconstructs the job of an artist with a collaborative, holistic, and community-minded approach that blends civic stewardship with playful investigations into the lesser seen aspects of the human imprint. His practice takes on many different forms, from printmaking with water bodies to archival activations and site responsive interventions.