Robert Lemming

Robert Lemming’s Fucoid Arrangements look like alien plant life, but they are actually inspired by fossils produced by ancient burrowing arthropods as they searched for food along the sea floor. Over 300 million years ago, the arthropods’ aquatic pathways filled with sediment, and in 2011, Robert Lemming found their fossilized traces in the gullies and bluff shelters of Northwest Arkansas. Material investigation factors heavily in Lemming’s process. He frequently uses contemporary media like hot glue, acrylic, epoxy, and foam insulation to retrace the steps of prehistoric creatures. Robert Lemming was born in Oklahoma and moved to Northwest Arkansas in 1995 where he currently works as an art educator. 

Louis Watts

Arkansas native Louis Watts currently lives in Carrboro, North Carolina, where he produces large, nonrepresentational abstract drawings in the graphic tradition of Minimalist artists such as Agnes Martin and Frank Stella.  Recalling the ‘golden ratio’ and other theories of mathematical beauty, these meticulous geometric drawings explore formal elements like repetition and scale, but they also invest in questioning conceptual issues like the value of the artist’s time and labor.