Spectrum Art Gallery presents
Tridentity | Wendy Denton, ed Gillum, Kris Kessey
November 5 – November 29, 2026
ArtHop Reception: November 5th, 5-8PM
Friday Photography Live – November 27th, 7PM
Aging is a lot like tending a garden.
You don’t expect a garden to look the same every season.
In spring, there’s new growth and energy.
- In summer, things flourish.
- In autumn, leaves change, some things fade, and the garden becomes quieter.
- Winter can look bare, but underneath the soil, life is happening.
Aging works similarly. It isn’t simply a process of losing things; it’s a process of changing what you cultivate. Some abilities may decline, while other things—wisdom, perspective, patience, relationships, self-knowledge—can deepen.
The beautiful part is that a garden doesn’t have to be young to be beautiful.
An old tree can provide the most shade.
Mature gardens often have the deepest roots.
Wendy Denton
TRIDENTITY words 2026
Two years ago, November 2024. the three of us – Kris Kessey, Wendy Denton and myself held an exhibition in the SPECTRUM Art Gallery. That exhibit was titled TRIPLEX. Showing together was such a great experience that we signed up to do another show together. During the. month of November 2026 the three of us will again be showing together at the SPECTRUM Art Gallery. This time the title of the exhibit is TRIDENTITY. Various aspects of the human experience are explored. Wendy’s work for this show is focused on AGING. Kris has chosen VESTIGES as her theme. My part of the exhibit is subtitled STAGES.
I chose to present pieces of my artwork that depict and delineate significant moments in my creative life. Merriam Webster defines STAGE as a point in a process, a raised platform for performances, or as verb meaning to organize an event. My intention is to avoid the familiar linear progression of most retrospectives that take the viewer through the artist’s life and how one piece led to the next. My work has been more concerned with ideas first and foremost. The style and content changes from piece to piece and can seem chaotic, but always creative. As a sculptor who taught sculpture at the university level, my work has been influenced by the interchange of ideas that come from working with creative students. Much of my work has been in the form of sculpture and installation. For this show, I have chosen works of my art that have photography as a significant part of the work and share the STAGES of my development. The earliest piece in the show is the result of having taken an advanced photography class the same semester as my first sculpture class at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California. In the sculpture class we were introduced to sculpting in clay and mold making that would allow casting of the forms that we created in various materials. I was drawn to clear resin and chose to use my face making a self-portrait. Simultaneously, in the photo class we were introduced to Kodalith graphic arts film that offered extremely high contrast and a durable substrate. My mind went directly to what if a photo of my face was developed at extremely high contrast that only went black where there were shadows, leaving the rest of the sheet of plastic transparent. I then set about casting the three-dimensional version of my face with the sheet of Kodalith providing the shadows that further defined the form. This piece opened my mind to different ways of doing things and paved the way to seeking an ongoing path of creative experimentation.
Ed Gillum
Vestiges 2026
During our discussions of which topics we each wanted to explore for a unified exhibit Wendy chose ‘Ageing’,and Ed was looking at ‘Stages’. I was drawn to the final conclusion of what comes next in our lives and once dead what we leave behind.
Beyond the physical remains of flesh and bones what are the things which somehow hold who we are or were while alive? Are they photographs or artwork we’ve made? Clothes we wore, a stone, seashell or piece of driftwood we brought home from an adventure or outing to place on a windowsill as a gentle reminder of a moment? Perhaps a toy from childhood or a treasured heirloom from a previous generation . There are many things which hold our essence I think.
Unless we’ve written a memoir or diary our memories mostly die with us. Poof. Photographs can document some of those memories but the objects we held and cherished – do we somehow linger on in their physicality? Will those people that we leave behind be able to connect to or experience who we were by holding the things we found dear? Or is it just another object?
Having recently moved from one house to another I was confronted with decades of stuff I had found precious enough to keep, things stuffed into drawers or boxes out of sight. What is all this stuff? What will become of all of it. Will it go to thrift stores or landfills or what? Do I need to keep this or that? Many things have been easy to pass along but some things I chose to continue to keep and surround myself with. Some things that I inherited I wanted to pass along but in reality no one these days wants that stuff and I was not yet ready to consign them to thrift shops and trash heaps and so they continue to sit taking up space in dark cabinets and corners of closets waiting for someone to possibly (hopefully) come along and covet it.
Kris Kessey
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