By: Sandra Kugenieks & Erica Dornbusch
Vignette No. 6:
Night Spark / Pond View
Present Bodies will unfold as a series of vignettes—forest quiet thresholds that mark shifts in light, movement, and attention. Each vignette pairs painting, sculptural presence, and prose, inviting viewers to move slowly through a shared landscape of perception.
Vignette No. 6 brings us to the culminating destination point, including the largest painting and some of Kugeniek's most ambitious ceramic pieces. The Inspiration: A pond’s edge lined with reeds and lilies stretching along the left. The pond, modest in size, its far shore visible and lined with rocks. Light plays across the surface, revealing boggy water colored by conifer runoff—browns and layered yellows highlighting stems, stones, and reflections.
Process & Making
This timelapse captures the making of the largest painting of Present Bodies. Working at this scale required sustained stillness—returning again and again to the same horizon line, the same gestures, allowing light and color to accumulate rather than resolve quickly. The painting developed over multiple sessions, following the rhythm of ambient sunlight, heron visits and imagined bug songs.
The Works
Pond View (Detail Only)
60 × 40 in
Acrylic
Pond View Clay Piece (Detail)
Ceramic
Companion Prose
Things can be as deep and lyrical as a song when described visually.
We have walked nearly a full cycle of hours to reach this place. Perhaps
we have met others, or perhaps it has been a solo journey in which we meet no one. Maybe we have gone alone to more fully meet ourselves, arriving back into this quiet and reflective space.
There is Poetry
in Seeing
And Depth
In Perception
Vignette No. 6 is part of Present Bodies, opening February 2026.
02.13 - 03.07.2026
BAYarts Sullivan Family Gallery
Opening Reception Friday 02.13, 5-8p