Sunia Gibbs: Vacated Spaces
February 11- March 11, 2023
Sunia's series "Vacated Spaces" exists to make the invisible visible, engaging the intangible and unseen in the city of Cincinnati. Influenced by early German expressionism and post-WWII French lyrical abstraction.
Click to watch Artist Talk >
Opening Reception
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Artist Talk
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Closing Reception
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Bios
Bio
Korean born and Portland based, Sunia has been creating abstract art since 2012. Preferring a palette knife, she primarily uses acrylics and charcoal to express and interpret the feelings and emotions of people and places. Influenced by early German expressionism and post WWII French lyrical abstraction, Sunia relies on instinct and quick movements to create impulsive marks, textures, and color. She is driven towards a pleasing aesthetic, building to the beauty that layers of emotive brush strokes and knife swipes leave over time on a canvas. For her, like life, there are no mistakes, only experiences culminating in a fuller, richer story.
With degrees in piano performance and sociology, Sunia’s love of music and passion for understanding culture inform and drive her artmaking process. Her work can be seen in venues along the west coast in Seattle, Portland, and San Diego.
Artist Statement
Artist Statement
This artwork series exists to make the invisible visible, engaging the intangible and unseen in the city of Cincinnati. Walking neighborhood streets, I observed, reflected, and absorbed, experiencing various and diverse locations with intention through all my senses. Freeing myself from the confines of representation or realism, I went to the canvas and intuitively produced images to capture each place's essence. While familiar colors and shapes may appear in my artwork, the intention is not to replicate what I see but to express how a city feels her spirit, and her soul.
In this work, I explore what is being communicated nonverbally by our environment and how we are profoundly interconnected. Each piece attempts to draw attention to something unseen, allowing the viewer to take notice and engage as [though] it truly exists.
Sunia Gibbs: Vacated Spaces
February 26-28, 2026
Sunia's series "Vacated Spaces" exists to make the invisible visible, engaging the intangible and unseen in the city of Cincinnati. Influenced by early German expressionism and post-WWII French lyrical abstraction.
Click to watch Artist Talk >
Opening
•••
Artist Talk
•••
Closing
•••
Bios
Bio
Korean born and Portland based, Sunia has been creating abstract art since 2012. Preferring a palette knife, she primarily uses acrylics and charcoal to express and interpret the feelings and emotions of people and places. Influenced by early German expressionism and post WWII French lyrical abstraction, Sunia relies on instinct and quick movements to create impulsive marks, textures, and color. She is driven towards a pleasing aesthetic, building to the beauty that layers of emotive brush strokes and knife swipes leave over time on a canvas. For her, like life, there are no mistakes, only experiences culminating in a fuller, richer story.
With degrees in piano performance and sociology, Sunia’s love of music and passion for understanding culture inform and drive her artmaking process. Her work can be seen in venues along the west coast in Seattle, Portland, and San Diego.
Steve Kroeger
Steve Kroeger, a special educator and action researcher for thirty years, uses his current research to focus on supporting voice. Steve is involved in national and international projects including the Palestinian West Bank, and Ireland. While teaching, graphic narrative emerged as a powerful medium of expression. Since the last election, volunteering in a food pantry doing Spanish translation stirred thinking about abundance and scarcity of food. Comics helps tell the stories of people who are doing the amazing work of collecting, growing, cooking, distributing, educating, and serving in our regional Food Shed.
Karen Boyhen
Through illustration and graphic design, Karen Boyhen helps people communicate with their customers with a delightful and relatable approach. Her portfolio includes editorial illustration, illustrated maps, merchandise, brochures, posters, and annual reports for non-profit, education, and healthcare companies. In the studio at Visionaries + Voices, she facilitates artwork and builds relationships. Last summer she led a project entitled “Tiny Cincinnati” with the community while on artist residency through the Contemporary Arts Center. Karen is focused on making art and building creative partnerships.
Scott Hand
Scott Hand is the Chief Brand Officer at Urban Artifact, Principal Architect with Trilobite Design, and Station Manager for Radio Artifact. A licensed architect specializing in acoustics and sustainability, Scott spent years mastering how physical structures sound and feel. Today, he translates that rigorous design philosophy into the visual realm. He approaches brand development with an architect's eye, treating every illustration as a foundational block of a larger narrative. Scott’s goal is to build an internal world for folks: one that offers a rich, immersive experience and rewards curiosity with intentional whimsy.
Amaha Sellassie
Amaha Sellassie is a afrofuturist, peace builder, social healer, freedom fighter, network weaver, student of cooperation and lover of humanity. He’s an Associate Professor of Sociology at Sinclair Community College in Dayton Ohio. amaha is a practitioner scholar and participatory action researcher dedicated towards building bridges of trust, healing historical wounds, and harnessing the unique gifts and talents of every human being as we press towards a just and equitable society. His areas of interest include health and education equity, praxis, cooperative economic development, dismantling structural violence and getting the voice of marginalized communities into the center of public policy in order to emerge structures of belonging that acknowledge the dignity and worth of every human being. He is co-founder and board chair of the Gem City Market, a community driven effort to address food apartheid through a food coop dedicated to increasing access to fresh fruits and vegetables within west Dayton.
