Friday, July 10
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Join us for Art Lunch with our exhibiting artist, Savanna LaBauve, as we dine and discuss art and anything else! This is a great chance to walk through their current exhibition, Echoes, and ask questions or connect.
Art Lunch is our routine excuse to gather around the table. Bring a bagged lunch and let conversation roam. Some weeks we’ll toss in a discussion prompt to get things rolling, but mostly it’s about food, company, and a potluck of ideas.
Exhibition Details
Opening Reception: Friday, June 12 from 5 PM- 7 PM
Artist Talk: Friday, June 12 at 5:30 PM
On view: June 12 to July 24, 2026
The Art Base is pleased to present Floral Panic, an exhibition featuring the ceramics of Molly Altman and the paintings of Sabrina Piersol. The exhibition explores the artists’ engagement with natural motifs and abstraction. By loosening the constraints of representation, Altman and Piersol envision new, unrestrained ecosystems. Please join the Art Base at our opening reception Friday, June 12th from 5 – 7 PM, with an art talk at 5:30 PM. Admission is free and open to the public.
The worlds within these abstractions emerge from different motivations. For Altman, there is an echo of the impossible bouquets of Dutch still life painting: arrangements that could never exist in nature and reflect on impermanence. Both appear to overcome natural limitations, creating an uncanny sense of abundance. Altman begins by collecting local flora such as thistle, mullein, and amaranth, coating them in multiple thin layers of liquified porcelain. After a meticulous process, the works are fired in a kiln, which vitrifies the clay while burning away the organic plant material and preserving its hollow shell. These delicate, semi-translucent objects are then assembled at impossible densities to create rich, lush environments.
Piersol approaches painting as a sensory collage—a combination of poetry, energy, and exploration. Floral imagery acts as a point of familiarity within her abstractions; its specificity grounds connections between poppies from California, irises from Colorado, and the mountains of Death Valley, bridging distant settings. The spaces within the paintings often hold moments of instability, as though their physics have not fully settled. For Piersol, this instability is formally similar to the Sapphic texts of Ancient Greece: classical poetry that exists only in fragments yet leaves room for projection in the gaps.
From these processes, fragility emerges as a central condition of being. In Altman’s work, the thin translucent ceramics preserve the delicacy of flora by translating it into a material that retains vulnerability, its intricacy demanding care. In Piersol’s paintings, the soft instability of space allows color, luminosity, and form to gently overtake fixed logic with delight.
For both artists, flora behaves like a melody: a rich interior language shaped through encounters with the natural world.
Generously sponsored by Krista Klees and Palladium Group, and Z Group Architecture & Interior Design
Thank you to our generous 2026 Annual Exhibition Sponsor, Alpine Bank
