EXHIBITIONS ON VIEW
Josh Maxwell’s Working Woods: Altered But Not Erased
On view June 10 - July 18, 2026
Burton D. Morgan Foundation Gallery, 2026 Artist In Residence
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Opening Celebration: Friday, June 12, 2026 from 5:00 - 7:30PM
In Working Woods: Altered but Not Erased, Josh Maxwell examines Northeast Ohio’s forests as living records of change, resilience, and interconnected systems. Through a combination of painting and sculptural works, Maxwell approaches the landscape not as a static subject, but as an evolving archive shaped by time, human impact, and ecological processes.
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His paintings focus on moments of encounter—tree wounds, hollows, and surface textures—revealing layered histories embedded within a single form. Sculptural works extend this inquiry, transforming timber into physical translations that move between observation and interpretation.
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Rooted in long-term engagement with regional landscapes, the exhibition reflects a practice of attention and stewardship. Maxwell invites viewers to reconsider their relationship to the natural world, positioning themselves not as observers, but as participants within cycles of loss, renewal, and care.
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“A central section of the exhibition considers hollows, tunnels, and openings as active spaces. Cavities, tunnels, and hollows are not voids; they are architectures of survival. In a forest, what is missing can become shelter. A puncture can become a nesting place. A fallen trunk can become a nurse log: a fallen body becoming ground for what comes next. The mood is not one of catastrophe, but of reverence after rupture: a quiet recognition that change is already underway, and that life continues to organize itself through cycles of loss, shelter, decay, resilience, and renewal.”
– Josh Maxwell
About the Artist Josh Maxwell:
Josh Maxwell is a Cleveland-based multidisciplinary artist, designer, educator, and tree steward whose practice translates careful observation into public understanding. Trained in Biomedical Art & Design at the Cleveland Institute of Art, with minors in sculpture and graphic design, Maxwell developed a precise method for studying bodies, life stages, and complex systems. His work as a scientific illustrator with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and interpretive experience designer with Cleveland Metroparks extended that training into public-facing experience: helping people feel connected to place while learning how systems work. Across art, design, civic practice, and stewardship, Maxwell works through immersion. He enters a landscape, community, or visual system; studies its visible and hidden patterns; and translates that experience into accessible forms of meaning and action.
Kristen Mimms Scavnicky’s Siting Ritual: Holding Renewal, Inscribing Resilience
On view June 10 - July 18, 2026
Burton D. Morgan Foundation Gallery​
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Opening Celebration: Friday, June 12, 2026 from 5:00 - 7:30PM
Siting Ritual: Holding Renewal, Inscribing Resilience explores how everyday acts—washing, eating, and gathering—carry the weight of memory, identity, and cultural continuity. Through sculptural soaps and etched tablescapes, Kristen Mimms Scavnicky creates a series of “soft architectures” that exist between the intimate and the communal, inviting both personal reflection and collective experience.
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Grounded in research on spatial justice and cultural resilience, the work draws from bell hooks’ concept of the Black homeplace as a site of care and resistance, while also acknowledging histories of exclusion that have shaped shared spaces. By translating ritual into tactile form, Scavnicky elevates ordinary gestures into sites of renewal and affirmation.
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The installation asks viewers to consider how acts of care—often overlooked—function as powerful expressions of belonging, memory, and survival across generations.
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“In Akron in 1851, Sojourner Truth delivered the speech ‘Ain’t I a Woman?' at the Women’s Rights Convention. She challenged systems of exclusion and affirmed dignity across race and gender. Her presence in Akron reminds us that spaces of gathering—whether a convention hall, a church, or a kitchen table—can be charged sites of both activism and belonging. My project draws from this lineage by transforming everyday rituals like washing and dining into acts of resilience and resistance, echoing how Truth’s words turned ordinary space into revolutionary affirmation.”
– Kristen Mimms Scavnicky
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About the Artist Kristen Mimms Scavnicky:
Kristen Mimms Scavnicky is an artist, designer, and educator who explores how the spaces around us hold memory, identity, and emotion. Through drawing, installations, and design projects, she creates work that reflects on culture, community, and how environments shape our well-being. Her projects have been supported by grants from organizations including Kent State University and Akron Soul Train, and have been shared through exhibitions, publications, and talks in the United States and abroad. Kristen earned a Master of Architecture from the University of Cincinnati and a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from the University of Kentucky. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Kent State University, where she teaches students to think about design as a way to care for people, tell stories, and make communities more visible.
Nick Lee’s Through Our Nikkei Eyes
On view June 10 - July 18, 2026
CapSOUL Gallery​
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Opening Celebration: Friday, June 12, 2026 from 5:00 - 7:30PM
Through Our Nikkei Eyes is a group exhibition curated by Nick Lee that brings together artists of Japanese descent from across the United States. Through painting, sculpture, animation, printmaking, and documentary, the exhibition explores the layered identities and lived experiences of Nikkei communities—Japanese and Japanese-descended individuals living outside Japan.
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At its core, the exhibition challenges perceptions of visibility and belonging. Lee’s own portrait-based practice centers representation as a means of asserting presence, inviting viewers to engage with the complexity and individuality of each subject.
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By presenting multiple artistic voices in dialogue, Through Our Nikkei Eyes expands the narrative of Japanese American identity while fostering connection, understanding, and cultural visibility within the broader community.
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Featured Artists:
Gwen Waight
Joey Leppo
Akira Maynard
Matthew Hashiguchi
Ritsuko Lee.
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“As Western perceptions of Japanese people are often that they are "foreign" or "unknown," I use portraiture to assert my sitter's full personhood. My paintings invite the viewer into a world of vibrant color palettes and playful compositions, asking them to get to know the community I am depicting.”
– Nick Lee
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About the Artist Nick Lee:
Nick Lee (b. 1996) is a painter from Akron, Ohio. Lee received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art from Kent State University in 2021 and he is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Iowa. Lee’s work is inspired by the diversity of human experience. As a Japanese-American, he strives to better represent minorities like himself in American portraiture and Western art. Another motivation for his work is self discovery. Lee uses symbolic Japanese objects in his paintings to connect with a culture that was never taught to him growing up. Lee is the 2023 recipient of the Distinguished Citizen for Art Education for the Northeast Ohio region by the OAEA. Lee is also the recipient of the 2024 Arts Alive Emerging Artist award by Summit Artspace.
Inflection by Ian Brill
On View May 23, 2026 through October 2026
Located at Outside the Box, at TrueNorth Akron
Akron Soul Train presents Inflection, an immersive audiovisual installation by Pittsburgh-based artist Ian Brill, with live, responsive musical accompaniment by Akron jazz musician, Theron Brown.
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Inflection was made possible through a grant to Akron Soul Train from The John S. & James L. Knight Foundation.
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