Opening Reception for 11th Annual Summer Group Show, 'roll the windows down'

roll the windows down

Cassie Arnold, Cristina Ayala, Nosheen Iqbal, Heath West, Marlon Wobst June 21st - August 9th, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 21st, from 6:00 - 8:30pm

Galleri Urbane is pleased to announce our 11th annual summer group show. This year's exhibition ‘roll the windows down,’ focuses on textile art; highlighting 5 artists: Cassie Arnold, Cristina Ayala, Nosheen Iqbal, Heath West, and Marlon Wobst. This selection of artists are actively engaged in avant- garde approaches to explore commentary on the fundamental aspects of civilization, art, and the artists’ unique experiences with their material.

‘roll the windows down’ is an allusion to the overwhelming and sometimes uneasy sensations that emerge when nostalgia washes over. Nostalgia comes on like a wave, instantly transporting the afflicted to a time and place that only exists in our singular perspective. This transient state is a feeling of overwhelming emotion cascading us with a story now past, immortalized only in our memories. Textiles inherently relate to the cultural contexts they have ingrained within, and those contexts are then able to be reworked. The fibers explore place, identity, and childhood echoes through the physical process of coming into being, and the histories entrenched within creating works of art.

By looking back on these experiences that formed us as children, there’s both inspiration and nostalgia for a time now gone by - from visits with extended family to hand-rolling car windows. With these themes explored in textiles, there is a deeper appreciation for how these threads intersect between our perspectives now and the historical experiences that shaped us. Memory is then woven into permanence, threads act as neural networks grounding us as both creator and viewer to the singular experience of nostalgia; the windows open, we breathe again.

Cassie Arnold, a Denton-based artist, works with hand-knitted sculptures often used to ground motherhood, family dynamics, and processing grief. The blooming Bougainvilleas of Cristina Ayala relate in this way, with looping connections of yarn forming the flowered vines of her childhood in Mexico. This theme is prevalent within her oeuvre, with yarn and thread forming figurative and abstracted notions of nostalgia. Nosheen Iqbal’s process is ingrained with both her Pakistani heritage and Islamic art influence, which are revealed in the patterns, textures, and colors employed in her threaded compositions. Heath West’s hand stretched woven and sewn thread abstractions of color call back to historical connotations of woven tapestries, utilitarian blankets, and the color theory of Josef Albers. Lastly are Marlon Wobst's felted wool pieces. The figures in his compositions are always caught in movement, exploring cycles of humanistic patterns; lovemaking, bathing, fighting, running. There are no expressions to read in the figures, as their movement and gestures reveal the underlying ambiguous intentionality in their actions.

Join us in celebrating the opening reception for these five artists on Saturday, June 21st from 6:00 - 8:30pm. Stay tuned for additional events throughout the summer, centered around the art and artists in the show and inviting local communities and business's to collaborate.