Deep conversations pave the way to ‘Chasing the Light’

Oftentimes, group exhibitions will begin with a concept, the curator then putting out a call in an effort to find artists whose work could live comfortably within these established parameters. 

“Chasing the Light,” which opens at the McConnell Arts Center on Thursday, Sept. 24 and runs through Nov. 12, originated in entirely different fashion, the participants having first gathered as friends nearly two years ago in the Clintonville home of artist and curator Loren Bucek, who was then in remission from a bout with cancer.

“And there was lots of joy, lots of, ‘Let’s do something together,’” said Bucek, who invited artist friends old and new to the initial gathering, which soon blossomed into routine meetups where the diverse crew engaged one another on a range of evolving subjects but always returning to the concept of light. “And we would talk about it from all angles: scientific and aesthetic and philosophical and spiritual and artistic. … And you never knew what direction it was going to take.”

In looking back, Bucek said she can now see how the tone and the tenor of these conversations mutated and evolved over time, often shifting in response to a social and political landscape that became increasingly harsh and less forgiving with Donald Trump’s return to the presidency. “People became afraid, isolated, less willing to share until we came around the circle a second or third time,” she said.

All of these dynamics – joy, fear, defiance, a pull toward the divine – are represented within “Chasing the Light,” which could be described as a visual representation of these years-long group conversations, and which features artistic contributions from the likes of Richard Duarte Brown, Jackie Calderone, Gaye Reissland, Lance Johnson, and April Sunami, among numerous others. 

“I’m not someone who is going to go out and march at my age, and maybe not in my health, but this project is an act of resistance, my act of resistance,” said Bucek, a longtime dance choreographer who has taken up visual art in recent years and will display one of her paintings, “Focused Optimism,” in the exhibition. “And every single person I invited showed up with their heart. Nobody backed off. Nobody said, ‘It’s too much for me now.’ In fact, it was just the opposite. … So, I know it’s much larger than just me.”

Bucek is no stranger to seeing the local arts community step up in support, recalling how in 2023 she spearheaded Global Water Dances Columbus, which visited 29 sites throughout the city with dance performances meant to advocate for equitable access to clean water. The day the production hit Arts Fest, however, Bucek was at home on the couch, recovering from a cancer surgery she’d undergone that morning. “I couldn’t even attend my own event,” she said. “And that was another way the community rose up to help me.”

In the months that followed, Bucek leaned more heavily into visual art, seeking out advice from the likes of Queen Brooks, Eric Murphy, and Sunami, who pushed Bucek to set aside her self-doubt, pick up the brush, and paint. “I fret sometimes, and she’d be like, ‘Loren, just do it,’” Bucek said.

This hesitancy Bucek sometimes carries has a tendency to fade when she starts on a canvas. The artist described her approach as intuitive, the sense of movement present within her visual work reflective of the years she spent in the practice of dance. “It’s really very spontaneous. I just go for the texture, touch, kinetic piece of it,” she said. “I just enjoy color, I enjoy movement.”

Within both Bucek’s contribution and the larger exhibition, there also exists a sense of blurring, of cross-pollination, with the artist’s works having been informed and molded in sometimes subtle ways via months of conversation that challenged perceptions, sparked new ideas, and carved out deeper rivets in entrenched beliefs.

“And I’ll be interested to see what people think of the show, because it’s really a composite of all of these voices,” Bucek said. “It’s exactly what I was hoping for from the title, ‘Chasing the Light,’ and then the artists speak.”