Passing Bittersweet: A Tribute to Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights

January 9–February 9, 2020
Williams Center Gallery

Elizabeth Johnson, guest curator

Passing Bittersweet features work that embodies ideas garnered from reading Lafayette alumnus Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights. His chatty, humorous, open-ended essays were culled from a year of daily asking himself: “What delights me?” Self-study and identity merge with the places, people, books, and routines that make Ross Gay happy. From inside what he calls “intense fleeting attentions,” Gay maintains a practice of acknowledging what is beautiful in the midst of the brutal.

The artists of Passing Bittersweet were chosen not because they illustrate Gay’s delights or process, but because their personal delights find aesthetic, physical ways to reframe negativity. The gathered artworks echo Gay’s conviction that numberless, small, positive human actions and transactions dispel what is dark, lonely, and unjust. Passing Bittersweet honors Ross Gay, The Book of Delights, and artists who validate vulnerable, peripheral, and oft-overlooked treasures of common experience.

Featuring Work By:

pat badt
pedro barbeito
kim bello
greta bergstresser
berrisford boothe
jase clark
enrico gomez
rachael gorchov
femi j. johnson
chawne kimber
tom mcglynn
alex paik
scott sherk
karina skvirsky
anthony smith, jr
lisa stefanelli
mark street
taller workshop/nestor armando gil
kate teale
jim toia
fritz van orden
tenesh webber
eileen weitzman
luke wynne

ghen zando-dennis

Free for all! No tickets required.

Presented by Lafayette Art Galleries.