'Looking back, it felt like providence when a few short months into this endeavor we all sheltered at home due to the pandemic,' Parham says. Each committed to the process of really opening their artistic lives to one another and to the time that would be required. I reached out to six artists in our area - Cindy Arsaga, Laurie Foster, Danielle Hatch, Pat Hennon, Aimee Papazian and Guirl-Phillips - and shared the premise behind this group exhibition. Driving home from Little Rock and still dazzled by what I saw, I began to think about doing something similar in Northwest Arkansas with an equally serious and committed group of artists. The culmination of exploring how one part of work inspires the whole was profoundly evident in 'Part to Whole' and the forward thinking, exquisitely rendered work which seemed to share a common thread. 'This environment of honest critique encouraged experimentation and new directions. 'At the foundation of the group was mutual trust and respect for one another,' Parham goes on. What they held in common was a dedication to sustaining a career as a professional artist and a commitment to creating excellent work. 'This exhibition featured the work of six artists who had formed the Group of Professional Artists in 2016 in order to remedy an absence of collegial community. 'The inspiration for this exhibition was the premise behind 'Part to Whole: The Making of Art, the Artist and the Artist Group,' an exhibition curated by Rachel Golden and shown at the Roberts Library & Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in June 2019,' explains Parham.

'In liminal space, we cross a threshold that allows for transformation, the metamorphosis, the shredding, so new growth and change can happen,' adds Jeanne Parham, who organized the 'Resilient Together' exhibit for Fenix.Īt its heart, the statement reflects the current nature of the world - with the 'pause' button of the covid pandemic hanging over everyone's heads - and also the change that was being wrought on the artists by the formation of their artists' group. We stand on the edge of a threshold we will be leaving one thing and someday will enter something entirely new.' 'We are living in liminal space, a transitory state of being. The exhibit currently on show at Fenix Arts is titled 'Resilient Together: The Artist's Journey through Liminal Space.' The title was born of a statement by one of the six core artists, Martha Guirl-Phillips:

in the liminal state between life and death. of, relating to, or situated at a sensory threshold : barely perceptible or capable of eliciting a responseĢ: of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition : in-between, transitional

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