August 2026 Exhibition

Our July 2026 Exhibition features Juliana Castro, Ashlyn Furillo, and M. Mickley

Opening Reception: Friday, August 7, 2026 | 6-9PM

Closing: Saturday, August 29, 2026 | 12-3PM

About the Show

Juliana Castro

Bio

Juliana Soares de Castro (b. 2003, São Paulo, Brazil) lives and works as a multi-disciplinary artist in Columbus, OH. Castro earned her BFA from the Columbus College of Art & Design in 2026. Castro decolonializes her body and reconfigures herself by intertwining sculptural processes with painterly glazed exteriors, connecting her soul and body into one. Castro has shown her work throughout the region, including at Manifest Gallery (Cincinnati, OH), Sean Christopher Gallery (Columbus, OH), and the Massillon Museum of Art (Massillon, OH).

Statement

My practice is a reconstruction of the bridge between my rational mind and fleeting physicality; a careful operation to process my experiences as a woman. Inspired by intimate memories with others, from sexual trauma to delicate relationships, the elusive fear and desire of my body is examined.

I oscillate between painting, moldmaking, and sculptural installation. My gazes and body language in the paintings intimately engage with the viewer, creating a moment of hesitation, curiosity, or embarrassment. The concrete casts are emptied-out shells of skin, absent of the soul. Metal is anxious, where its shine is alluring and weight suffocating. The surfaces of these materials allude to skin and externalize emotions embedded in the body. The body’s condition is conveyed through abstractions, ranging from hyperrealism to its complete collapse into waves of flesh. The work then becomes a vessel for healing and renewal of my identity through these expressions, challenging who and what previously held power over my body.

Connect: @unlikecrayon

Ashlyn Furillo

Bio

Ashlyn Furillo is a painter who uses art as a means of control and self-affirmation, channeling her mental state and emotional psyche as a trans woman directly into her work.

She explores how the transformation and abstraction of the body can lead to new forms of representation. With a deep appreciation for comics as a medium, she incorporates text and blends high and low artistic influences in her art. Furillo also examines how humor and absurdity can be intertwined with the grand narratives of human existence. She has exhibited at CCAD’s CHROMA, Acock Gallery, Byers Gallery, Beeler Gallery, and Sean Christopher’s 14th Annual Juried Young Hearts Exhibition.

Ashlyn earned her BFA from the Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD) in 2026 with a concentration in painting and was the class Valedictorian.

Statement

I work in large-scale, colorful figurative abstractions representative of my psyche.

I deal in the continuous fragmentation and recompositions of the figure, of a body pulling itself apart, of continuous growth and decay of the mind and flesh. I am influenced by the othering and policing of trans bodies in America, how what gives us hope is simultaneously what marks us as unforgivable monstrosities. The desire to exist, fully, completely, and the wretchedness of not being able to. The works present are growing and dying; they are what is to come, and what has already passed. They are beings of energy, absorption, and pain. They are the sound of shrieking metal, and the sound of your heart beating through your chest.

They are the teeth in a smile, and the underglow that a soft joy brings; they are wet turmoil and gentle rest.

The bodies are desperate, and I am desperate to live before I die.

Connect: @misamayus

M. Mickley

Bio

M.Mickley is a sculpture and installation artist living in Gambier and working in Columbus, OH. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Columbus College of Art & Design. By transforming functional found objects into unusable things, her work questions assumptions about worth and permanence. She has shown regionally, including The Art for the Heartland Juried show (Indianapolis, IN), 1221 Art Space (Columbus, OH), and Beeler Gallery (Columbus, OH). She is currently pursuing a MFA at The Ohio State University.

Statement

Ideas around loss, resilience and transformation inform my work and process. Through actions, particularly repetition and accumulation, I connect this process to ritual and habit. In creating through destructive processes, or through rendering multiples of a thing that has been worn, weathered or forgotten, the lingering energies of familiar items and bodies is explored. This alteration marks the transformation from a functional object into an unusable thing, at this intersection of change I question assumptions around worth and permanence.

Connect: @madsmickley