Mya Kerner: These Whispers, These Tellings

Her paintings are filled with barren trees, scattered boulders, and large pastel swaths of color that allow the viewer to fill in seemingly absent components. Kerner emphasizes the quiet, mystical power of ecology, highlighting these totemic symbols that remain standing after destruction. The exhibit suggests a way forward from grief and loss through the literal paths she paints, into the whispering, resilient landscapes that surround us.

“What has burned and what remains. What is left standing. And how does it stand. These have been my guiding questions. I don’t claim to know — I just continue the journey through. I’ve been told that is what my work sometimes feels like.” — Mya Kerner

The show is coupled with a sound installation featuring translated poems from Kerner’s grandmother, whose hundredth birthday would have coincided with the exhibit. There is both an emphasis on the clarity that nature can bring us through its lulling, profound sounds, and its ability to connect and root us to our ancestors.

Kerner received a BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture and Environmental Design from the Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore, MD). From 2011 to 2014, Mya worked primarily in cast metal sculpture at Sculpture Trails Outdoor Museum (Solsberry, IN), Akademia Sztuk Pięknych (Gdańsk, Poland), and Sloss Metal Arts (Birmingham, AL). She now maintains a full-time studio practice, investigating memory and place by integrating her study of Earth- based traditions. Her visual art oscillates between two- and three-dimensions, as she explores ancestry, storytelling, and ecological concern through depictions of the landscape.