Pond is pleased to present, no bones, the Arkansas debut of painters, Claire Downes Whitehurst and Jack-Arthur Wood. Focused on color, craft, and interests in spiritual abstraction, no bones represents two artists’ search for joy and magic within a society defined by binaries.

Claire and Jack-Arthur’s work is colorful. Describing her approach to color, Whitehurst states “color is a sensory-driven language shot through with synesthesia,” capable of conveying sensations and memories that hold deep, personal meaning. Referencing religious ornamentation, stained glass, and architectural decoration, Whitehurst suggests color can be a vehicle for collective thought and spiritual direction. 

In the world of flowers “color exists as a chemical reality – functioning outside human symbolism, tied to a plant’s survival.” As a queer woman raised in the American South, Whitehurst is interested in ornamentation and beauty as a coded language and a place of refuge. Color is never passive. It is charged, erotic, spiritual, and political. 

Wood’s multi-layered, collaged surfaces suggest complex, “mirrored” spaces. Trained as a printmaker, Wood approaches symmetry as an opportunity to puncture and antagonize metaphorical binary spaces. The reflected images in Wood’s paintings are imperfect, creating tensions and fractures between reflected halves that, upon first glance, might be considered “twins”. Centered around Buddhist concepts of ‘emptiness,’ Wood’s work uses similarities to emphasize differences, creating liminality within binary spaces. 

Please join us on Friday, August 22nd from 5:30 - 8:00pm, to celebrate Claire and Jack-Arthur’s work. Libations provided! Can’t make it to the opening? Join us Saturday morning, August 23rd at 11am for coffee and an artist’s talk with Claire Downes Whitehurst. You’re in for a treat!

Claire Whitehurst (b. 1991, Baton Rouge) is a painter, printmaker and sculptor. She received her BFA in painting from the University of Mississippi in 2015, and her MFA in painting from the University of Iowa in 2020. Whitehurst was the recipient of the Stanley Fellowship for International Research at the University of Iowa in 2018. She worked in the Dordogne region of southern France where she studied polychromatic cave paintings and engravings. She has exhibited nationally and internationally at Monument Gallery, the Schuylkill Center, Furman University, Steve Turner Gallery, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, My Pet Ram, and Wartburg College; to name a few. In 2021, a book of Whitehurst’s drawings and poetry was published through Drum Machine Editions in Asheville, North Carolina. Her work has been featured in New American Paintings, Oxford American Magazine, ArtMaze Magazine, and the Graphite Journal in collaboration with the Hammer Museum. She lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Jack-Arthur Wood (b.1990, Cincinnati) is a visual artist, writer, curator and educator based in Ridgewood, Queens. Wood received their BA in printmaking from Guilford College in Greensboro, NC in 2012, and their MFA in printmaking from Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi in 2017. In 2024, Woods received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in painting. They have been a resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, the Wassaic Project, the Jentel Foundation, Little Bear Hill, and Tiger Lily Press. Wood has exhibited work at Rachel Uffner Gallery, Conduit Gallery, Geary Contemporary, Soloway Gallery, 5-50 Gallery, Field of Play, Ortega Y Gasset Projects, No Place Gallery, and Heaven Gallery; amongst others. They currently teach at Montclair State University in New Jersey.