Thoughts in the Visible World
Thoughts in the Visible World brings together three artists with distinct approaches, whose work complements one another through personal and universal visions of life’s undercurrents. Their work offers sensitive, often raw insight into the thoughts, tensions, and interior landscapes that shape human experience.
Featuring work by Sallie Cross-Shore, Lisa Griest, and Megan Merchant, the exhibit will be on view at the Cicada Gallery on the Prescott College campus.
Cicada Gallery at Prescott College
234 Grove Ave
July 3–31, 2026
Gallery Hours:
Thursday–Saturday, 11–3
beginning July 4
Opening Gala:
July 3, 5–7
Closing Celebration:
July 24, 5–7
During Fourth Friday Art Walk
Curator:
Paul Abbott
ARTIST STATEMENTS
Sallie Cross-Shore:
My paintings often reflect emotion, combining contemplation and tranquility. Although colorful, the subject matter may be that of thoughtfulness & uncertainty. I encourage the viewer to take time in looking closely…for there are many stories within the body of my paintings. My Studio 3 is located in The Art Hive, NoCo District of downtown Prescott.
Lisa Griest:
My work begins with paying attention. A face looking up from a weathered branch. A forgotten story. A fragment of bone. Every sculpture begins with one of these moments of recognition. Long before I make a figure, I often encounter it—a quiet presence that seems to have been waiting to be found. Since childhood, I have seen faces and figures in unexpected places. Over time, I have come to trust these moments not as inventions of the imagination, but as invitations to look more closely. I am drawn to materials that have already lived another life: fallen branches gathered from the forest, pieces of bark, worn cloth, plaster, and other humble remnants marked by time. Each carries its own history. Rather than erasing those histories, I try to work in conversation with them, allowing the finished piece to retain the memory of where it came from. There is a quiet melancholy in these overlooked materials, but also resilience. My hope is to reveal the life that still persists within them. For as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to fairy tales, mythology, literature, and dreams. These are not subjects I consciously set out to illustrate. Instead, they have become the symbolic language through which my imagination naturally speaks. The figures that emerge often feel as though they belong to old stories that were never fully told—or perhaps stories we have forgotten, yet somehow still recognize. I have often wondered whether childhood is the only time when we naturally experience the world as alive—when a tree, an animal, or a handmade figure seems to possess an inner life all its own. As adults, many of us forget that way of seeing. Yet I suspect it never disappears completely. The ancient philosopher Thales wrote that “the world is alive, has soul in it, and is full of gods.” That thought has remained with me for many years. My sculptures are less an attempt to create imaginary beings than to recover a way of seeing in which mystery is still possible. If they invite viewers to pause, to look more closely, and to rediscover the sense that the world is more alive than we remember, then they have done what I hoped they might do.