Seriously Whimsical
Seriously Whimsical
Blending playful humor with a touch of sophisticationSeriously Whimsical is a group art exhibition that invites audiences to reconsider the role of play, imagination, and humor in contemporary art. Featuring works that incorporate elements of whimsy in unexpected and thoughtful ways, the exhibition celebrates creativity that is lighthearted on the surface yet grounded in intention and skill.
The exhibition demonstrates how playful aesthetics can challenge assumptions, disarm audiences, and open space for reflection.
Viewers are encouraged to engage closely, laugh freely, and look twice.Featuring works by four local and international artists, Seriously Whimsical celebrates the imaginative side of art — the kind that nudges, winks, and sometimes giggles in the face of convention.
With mediums ranging from mixed media to collage and paper, the show captures the joyful tension between thoughtful technique and gleeful nonsense.
Participating Artists: Penny Dell, Kelly Edwards, Theresa Gooby, Jinkook Hwang
Penny Dell
Penny's decades of drawing, painting and printmaking are coming together these days in works that combine all three with other adventurous mediums. Presently, she uses collage, encaustic, handmade paper, and gilding to layer over a print—building pattern and color. Hexagons cut from the decorative interiors of envelopes have been a driving force.
Penny was born in Mexico and grew up in Mexico City and Acapulco, before coming to the US at age thirteen. The artist Francisco Dos Amantes and the zoomorphic figures of Aztec friezes influenced her early work. She studied English and French Literature at Simmons College and the Sorbonne in Paris, and painting at the Triveni Kala Sangam Akademi in New Delhi, India. These intersections of cultures, techniques, and philosophies have fueled her investigations of states of mind, scenes from dream, fantasy, and interior life – through drawing, painting, print, encaustics.
Kelly Edwards
Kelly Edwards is a watercolor and mixed media artist and owner of Arbor Gallery in Carmel, NY who finds inspiration in the beauty of nature, expressionism, art nouveau and the watercolor medium itself. Becoming an artist in order to develop an ability to counter a need for control, she allows herself to embrace the unexpected in her work. Her artwork has had exhibits in Arbor Gallery in Carmel, NY, LAND Gallery in Pawling, NY, and participated in group shows at Emerge Gallery in Saugerties, NY, and Botanica Grove in Brooklyn, NY, along with being a featured artist at Putnam Arts Council.
Theresa Gooby
Theresa Gooby holds a BFA from the University of New Mexico and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. In 2024 she received an Individual Artist Commission from NY Statewide Community Regrants Program. She is the 2020 recipient of a Dutchess County Executive Award for being an "Artivist". Her work has been exhibited nationally, including solo shows in Greenville SC and the Hudson Valley of NY. Her work has been included twice in the Every Woman Biennial in NYC. In 2017 she was commissioned by Artspace New Haven to create an installation at the New Haven CT armory. Her work has been seen at Bortolami Gallery in NYC, 111 Minna in San Francisco, the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, and at the Dorsky Museum in New Paltz NY. She is the founder and former Director of Beacon Open Studios. She served four terms on the board of BeaconArts, an organization that promotes arts and cultural events in the city of Beacon NY. She currently lives in Beacon NY with her family.
Jinkook Hwang
The Saucy Kitchen
I've already worked you over, nice and slow— don't you dare think you can just swallow this whole.
Human affairs run like a kitchen in full swing — everyone shamelessly hungry to cook each other up, seasoned to their own taste. Whether I'm the one doing the cooking, or the one being cooked and put on display, makes no difference. Knives and skewers fly, flames flare and oil spits — and yet, tucked in some corner, sugar glitters and gaudy flower petals drift down. It's not all carnage. There's spectacle in it too, even a kind of pleasure.
Tangled like vines around each other — cooking, being cooked, eating, being eaten — this is the theatre of human life. It looks a lot like a kitchen.
The works on view are from the Saucy Kitchen Series, including the Men Cooked Series and the Sushi Series.
