Collection: Patterns Never Cry, Selected By Amy Spencer (online exhibition)

About the exhibition

Patterns are a way to create order from chaos. But patterns can also grow, shrink, move, blend and break. This exhibition brings together works that use pattern and repetition to make sense of the world in ways that do not necessarily show it as organized and regulated.

The title for this exhibition is taken from a lyric by Devo, "You can rearrange the patterns so unkind / Don't bother asking why a pattern never cries." If patterns are templates through which we experience the world, then the artists in this exhibition share a delight in blurring the lines between organizing visual surfaces while also challenging the authority of them.

About the selector

Amy Spencer is the Exhibitions Director at the Richmond Art Center. Exhibitions she has recently organized include Faces Without Noses: The Visual Laboratory of M. Louise Stanley, Empowering Threads: Quilts from the Social Justice Sewing Academy, and Here is the Sea featuring Jos Sances' lifesize drawing of a sperm whale. She has over ten years experience supporting community art at regional art centers, government entities and museums. Formerly, Amy served as community arts development coordinator at the Nevada Arts Council and as program coordinator/curator at Pro Arts in Oakland. A seminal role in her career was working at Injalak Arts—an indigenous arts enterprise in remote western Arnhem Land, Australia—where she experienced firsthand the vital role art can play in shaping a healthy community.