Tobiah Mundt + Sarah Boyts Yoder — Second Street Gallery

Second Street Gallery is pleased to present Ditto, a collaborative exhibition featuring the work of Tobiah Mundt and Sarah Boyts Yoder, to be held in the Main Gallery June 2 - July 21, 2023.

The exhibition will open on First Friday, June 2, 2023, 5:30-7:30PM. The artists will be present during the opening evening to chat with visitors.

This exhibition is generously sponsored by the Galdencio-Pontillo Family, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The artists will showcase collaborative works developed at the intersection of their individual practices: Mundt’s fiber techniques and Yoder’s symbolic abstraction. Executive Director and Chief Curator, Kristen Chiacchia conceptualized the exhibition after witnessing the collaborative art-making process between Mundt and Yoder during the December 2021 Gallery Rally at Second Street Gallery. Chiacchia's vision for the exhibition was to highlight the unique ways in which these artists explore the tension between sameness and difference in their works. Through this collaborative exhibition, the gallery aims to encourage viewers to engage with the works on a deeper level and to consider the broader themes of repetition and variation in Contemporary Art.

Tobiah Mundt + Sarah Boyts Yoder
Fused Form 2, 2023
Acrylic and wool on MDF
48 x 42 inches

Tobiah Mundt + Sarah Boyts Yoder
Fused Form 1, 2023
Acrylic and wool on MDF
48 x 42 inches

Tobiah Mundt + Sarah Boyts Yoder
Fused Form 3, 2023
Tufted yarn and acrylic on MDF
48 x 42 inches

Artist Statement (Courtesy of Tobiah Mundt + Sarah Boyts Yoder)

Ditto is a collaborative collection of painting and fiber arts that seek to show how personal iconic symbols are amplified and animated through repetition and abstraction. Repeating the same form over and over does not fossilize a thing but sets it free, turning it into a vehicle for generating infinite variation, transformation, flexibility, and personal narrative. These symbols, created with distinct processes and materials are zoomed in and out, mirrored, inverted, and combined to create playful iterations of shape and color, a rhythm for the artist and the viewer to explore and explore again.

Form joyfully evades our need for categorization, and we can imaginatively refuse preconception and inevitability, building a way forward for ourselves while holding a middle ground that celebrates exploration and discovery rather than invention and creation*.

*Quote adapted from Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Tobiah Mundt + Sarah Boyts Yoder
Nest 1, 2023
Acrylic and wool on paper
30 x 22 inches

Tobiah Mundt + Sarah Boyts Yoder
Duo 1 (shown in situ on painted wall), 2023
Acrylic and wool on acrylic sheet
24 x 24 inches

Tobiah Mundt + Sarah Boyts Yoder
Nest 2, 2023
Acrylic and wool on paper
30 x 22 inches

Tobiah Mundt is a self taught fiber artist from Houston, Texas. She studied Architecture at Howard University in Washington, DC and eventually left the field of Architecture for sculpture. Tobiah uses rug tufting, wet felting, and needle felting techniques to sculpt abstract and figurative pieces centered on animal symbolism and ancestry that illustrate and invoke emotion. She enjoys teaching the slow, meditative process of needle felting, blurring the line between art and craft. A New City Arts Initiative Fellow and former Artist Residence at The Bridge Pai and Welcome Gallery in Charlottesville, VA, her work has been exhibited in Texas, Virginia, Maryland, and DC.

Sarah Boyts Yoder is a painter based in Charlottesville, VA. She received an MFA in painting from James Madison University in 2006. Since then her work has been featured in numerous publications, almost 50 exhibitions, and in corporate and private collections throughout the United States and abroad, including the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art. Sarah has been the recipient of a professional fellowship in painting from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and has been a fellow multiple times at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and 100W Corsicana in Corsicana, TX.

Photo of the artist courtesy of Kyle Hobratschk.