“Sweet Discord,” a new exhibition at the MINT Gallery, gathers works by emerging artists in the gallery’s 8th Annual Juried Exhibition. Partnering with the BWVA organization, or Black Women in Visual Art, MINT brings together a diverse collection united by themes of lightness and darkness. Lauren Jackson Harris and Daricia Mia DeMarr are the founders of BWVA and jurors for this year’s show. Jackson-Harris and DeMarr joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes along with Victoria Sauer, a featured artist, to talk about the show, its origins, and the artworks it spotlights.
Commenting on the exhibition’s title, DeMarr said, “‘Sweet Discord’ is basically what we received…. It’s an open call. It was the 8th national artist call, so artists from all over the country were able to submit to the juried exhibition. These pieces really resonated with us, and for some reason, they all had this beautiful sweetness, but there were also shadowy components to them.” She continued, “The title and the artwork is representative of, we think, being on the heels of the global pandemic, and artists wanting to move things in a more normal direction… but also very reflective of the changes that have occurred.”
Victoria Sauer spoke about her art in the show, for which dreams are her muse. With her painting “Cereal,” she presents an image from her dream – a bowl of cereal being boiled on a stove. “There’s a sort of logic that resides in dreams, where, ‘Oh, this makes sense. Of course, I’m boiling my cereal. That’s how you eat cereal,’” said Sauer. “Then you wake up, and you let a few minutes pass, and you start to become re-acclimated to reality, and you’re like, ‘Oh, that was not normal. That’s actually really, really absurd and funny.”
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