Meet our Jurors:
Chris Musina
Chris Musina’s work searches for meaning in both our relationship to animals and to our animal selves. Specifically, how we find that meaning through the lens of culture, both high and low. This work quietly interrogates those interactions with special consideration toward nostalgia, failed paradise, melancholy and dark humor. Via life scale oil paintings, and small text and image ink drawings, he is posing questions about ecology, environmentalism, consumption, and the human condition – opening the floodgates to the realm of existentialism, fear and anxiety – but with a nervous laugh.
Raised between Toronto Canada and Southwest Florida, Musina received his BFA from the University of South Florida in 2004 and his MFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2012. He has exhibited his work in New York City, Richmond, Portland, Toronto, Raleigh, Asheville, Lexington, and elsewhere. Musina has received awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Culture & Animals Foundation and the Puffin Foundation. His work is published in New American Paintings, Beautiful Decay, Antennae: The Journal of Nature & Visual Culture, among others. He currently lives and works in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and published his first widely available children’s book – The Moth – which he wrote and illustrated during a poetry residency at the Vermont Studio Center in 2022.
Chieko Murasagi
BIO
Chieko Murasugi (she/her) was born in Tokyo, raised in Toronto, and based in San Francisco for 20 years before moving to North Carolina in 2012. She has degrees in Experimental Psychology (BA McGill, Ph.D. York U) with a specialization in Visual Perception, and in Studio Art (BFA York U, MFA UNC-Chapel Hill). She has exhibited her work nationally in galleries and museums, and her paintings reside in the collections of the City of Raleigh, Durham, and Duke University. She is a co-founder and co-curator of BASEMENT, an artist collective that promotes experimental works by artists with roots in the American Southeast.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Through my paintings, mixed media, and textile works I investigate the forces that shape an individual’s beliefs and identity. I explore how chance, history, and the perception of current events contributes to one’s sense of self. These influences are visually depicted by employing digitally assisted randomization, evocative materials, personal symbols, and visual illusions.
Chance, accessed through randomization, has a profound effect on events, and therefore identities, beginning with the circumstances of one’s birth. My practice also addresses history’s role, with mine encompassing samurai culture, and the generational traumas of WWII and the Japanese diaspora. I speak to the complexities of perception by using visual illusions and references to contemporary issues. There are among the many factors that interact alchemically to create the individual human’s rich psychology.
More information about the call:
The ArtsCenter is inviting artists to submit their work for a juried show “A Light in the Dark,” an exhibition exploring hope, warmth, and illumination in the coldest and darkest time of year.
What does “light” mean to you as an artist? We welcome all interpretations of illumination and light, whether symbolic or physical. Any artistic reflection on resilience, beauty, and light in the dark will be considered for display in our gallery.
We are excited to showcase diverse perspectives on light and darkness through a wide range of media and expressions. This call is open to all artists and art forms; however, preference will be given to local artists! 🙂
All Mediums accepted. Artists may submit up to three pieces.
The exhibition will take place in The ArtsCenter’s Sweet Bay Gallery
400 Roberson St
Carrboro, NC 27510
December 12th – January 19th
gallery@artscenterlive.org or give us a call 919-929-2787
Submissions will close on November 5th, 2025. Artists will be notified on acceptance into the show by November 19th.