Petite Galerie - the mini gallery turns one!
The Petite Galerie, our mini gallery that lives on the Art Center front lawn, turns one this week! The Petite Galerie was born out of a love of art and tiny objects, aiming to celebrate playfulness in the arts. We invite artists to experiment with scale. Do they treat the mini gallery as a space to showcase maquettes (small pieces used to test an idea) or are they shrinking their work to fit the scale of the gallery? Are they picturing a tiny viewer walking around the space? By showcasing art of all kinds, from local and national artists, we hope to challenge your idea of what a gallery can be or at the very least make you smile. The mini gallery brings art outside of the traditional gallery; highlighting art day or night, rain or shine.
To celebrate the mini gallery’s anniversary, we’re looking back at the Petite Galerie throughout the seasons. Thank you to all the artists who have made it what it is!
The inaugural exhibition and ribbon cutting at Lake City Arts Fest 2024.
Logan Brody - Inaugural Exhibition
Logan Brody is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in the Champlain Valley of New York. Her approach to artmaking involves sculpture, painting and metalsmithing, exploring the human body and our ability to recognize its presence, condition, and assimilation into the environments it inhabits. The fracturing and disintegration of the figure into its ground, and how those types of relationships come into question when they are viewed across media, are integral to her practice. A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Brody has exhibited nationally and is the recipient of such awards as an Individual Artist Program Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.
Richelle Soper
Richelle Soper (b.1991) is a sculptor working in mixed media. She focuses on the essence of a material and the relationship of their uses in both industrial and domestic contexts. She earned her BFA from State University of New York at Plattsburgh in 2013 and her MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2016. She has been recognized for scholastic and artistic achievement and has appeared as a guest artist and lector at various institutions and universities around the country. She currently is living and working in Washington, D.C.
Kailey Maher
Kailey Maher (b.1988) is an emerging visual artist and dreamer of impossibility. In 2022 she received her BFA from the State University of New York at Plattsburgh with a focus on sculpture and ceramics. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally. She is a second-generation stone carver.
My interpretation of the natural world is explored through the language of exchange between nature and my part in it. I find myself fascinated with non-linear concepts of time and the rhythmic patterns mimicked in nature, which is not about the allocation of time, but the experience of. Mirroring its medium of stone and clay, pushing against and pulling within, my artwork is the expression of my form—an undulating essence of consciousness, a beginning and a beginning-again.
Each work reflects the effects of time—shaping and reshaping, not in minutes and seconds, but a living lifetime of transformative movements of contractions and expansions intertwined in the nature of the self; ever-exposing the causeways of a life lived, unlived and yet-lived. Giving way to what is hidden within and what is exposed without.
Walter Early
Walter Early lives and works in Plattsburgh. His artwork has been exhibited in galleries, museums, and apartments across the United States as well as internationally. He has lectured on art at multiple US universities and undertaken artist residencies at the Kohler Company (Wisconsin), Grand Marais Art Colony (Minnesota), Escula Taller (Honduras), North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop (Canada) and the Museum of Steel Sculpture (England). His work has been supported by grants from the Henry Moore Foundation, the City of Chicago, and New York State Council on the Arts.
Unequal parts Scholar's rock and Willy Wonka Everlasting Gobstopper, these sculptures began as studio castaways. Originally hacked from other sculptures in pursuit of perfection, they established themselves interesting enough to be saved and become contemplations in form, texture, and color. Including them in this Petite Galerie is a nice chance to imagine them at an entirely different scale (bigger!).
Play FULL - Juried Exhibition
Play FULL is our first juried exhibition in the Petite Galerie, bringing together three local artists Abigail Duquette, Kasey Rosselli and Dan Wagoner, whose work engages with our driving inspiration: play! Play can be a force in the creative process, whether as a method for experimentation, inspiration or in the content itself. These artists engage with the theme in their own way, whether through use of color, silly imagery or thoughtful reflection whilst creating the pieces.
Kasey Rosselli - This piece represents all things silly about friendship. It can be playful and fun to combine things that don’t necessarily make sense together but they bring you joy or a smile when you think about them.
Abigail Duquette - Inspired by doodles, retro patterns, and childlike wonder, I use curves, repetition, and layered color to create abstract pieces that feel alive—like the colors are dancing.
The work invites viewers to slow down and get lost in the loops, textures, and playful balance of spontaneity and structure. While each piece stands on its own, together they create a visual rhythm—vibrant, uplifting, and rooted in curiosity.
At its core, this series is about finding joy in the little things—brushstrokes and color combos.
Dan Wagoner - Youngest Energy is a piece I made to exemplify the personality and care-free spirit of my youngest daughter who inspires me every day to push my artistic exploration to the limits.
Nicole Driscoll
Nicole Driscoll is a Charlotte-based photographer and videographer whose work explores themes of identity, memory, and the emotional imprint of personal and collective histories. Her work has been exhibited at The Light Factory, Goodyear Arts, The Curated Fridge, and Click Photo Festival. In 2023, her photograph Hands in the Sky was selected by ArtPop Street Gallery for public display across Charlotte and in Times Square. Driscoll was awarded the Emerging Creators Fellowship in 2024 and has completed residencies at Mudhouse (Crete, Greece) and Walkaway House, where she deepened her exploration of memory and place. Currently, she works as a teaching artist at Studio 345, a free, after-school art program, and as a freelancer in the greater Charlotte community.
My work explores photography as a tool for self-reflection, emotional processing, and connection. I use the camera to document personal experiences, grappling with memory, identity, and vulnerability, in ways that invite viewers to reflect on their own. Through analog techniques like Polaroid emulsion lifts, double exposures, and stereoscopic imagery, I create photographs that feel tactile and intimate, carrying the softness and imperfection of memory itself. These processes allow me to evoke a sense of nostalgia and depth that mirrors the complexity of human experience. I’m especially interested in how emotional residue clings to images, how what’s missing can feel just as present as what’s shown.
In this particular series, I employ Polaroid transfers to further emphasize the themes of fragmentation and reassembly. By deconstructing and rearranging the images, I invite viewers to piece together the narrative and find connections among the disparate elements.
