Different Shades: A Virtual Exhibition
The Starkville Area Arts Council is excited to announce Different Shades, a virtual exhibition highlighting the many expressions of Black artistry in Starkville
This exhibit will be on view online from March 3 - April 6, 2026.
This exhibit will be on view online from March 3 - April 6, 2026.
About the Exhibit
Featuring works by four local artists, Different Shades is a peek into the diverse range of Black artistry in Starkville. From striking sculpture to mellow landscapes and journeys into the fantastical, each piece reveals a unique voice and offers insight into each artist's different perspective and lived experience.
Works available until April 6, 2026
Hover or click on images below to view title, medium, and pricing. Click image to view fullscreen.
Please CALL OR EMAIL SAAC (info at bottom of this page) if interested in purchasing available works.
ASHIA GANDY
Ashia Gandy specializes in clay, drawing, and painting. Though trained in different mediums, she has found a deep connection to working in clay, which allows her to explore and communicate her ideas in both 2D and 3D formats.
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Faith
Stoneware sculpture with slip and gaze 15 ¼" x 11" "Faith is a clay sculpture that captures the unseen internal battles many people endure in silence. The surface is etched with dark words, symbolizing the constant presence of negativity, self-doubt, and judgment that weighs on the human mind. Emerging through these marks are lighter words that rise above the darkness, diminishing its power. Together, these contrasts reflect resilience—the ability to confront inner turmoil and overcome it through hope, strength, and unwavering faith in God." |
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Leave Plate
Pewter sculpture 8 ¼" x 5 ¼" |
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Textured Pot
Stoneware, glazed 5" x 4 ½" |
You can explore more of Ashia's work at https://agstudio-ms.com/
KURDARIUS KEYES
Kurdarius Keyes was born in Laurel, MS in 2000. He is primarily a multimedia printmaker and illustrator and works as an exhibiting and vending artist in Starkville, MS. While inspired by Art Nouveau artists like Alphonse Mucha, he's equally inspired by printmaking like Ugo da Carpi. He's also a creative writer, seeking to intergrate narrative concepts with visual arts. Honorably mentioned by the Academy of American Poets, Keyes has visual works internationally published in multiple editions of The Hand Magazine. Currently, he is producing works for his senior year thesis in preperation for his BFA in printmaking.
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In the Midst of Creation
Relief ink, charcoal, micron pen, conte crayon on Stonehenge and Kitakata 42" x 57" |
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Subject 0
Charcoal on Stonehenge paper 22" x 30" |
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The Amalgan Collector
Relief ink and etching ink on Stonehenge and Unryu paper 12" x 18" |
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The Corvurratus
Relief ink and acrylic on Stonehenge paper 11" x 14" |
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Vari[e]nt Lupiax
Relief ink, etching ink, acrylic, coffee, on Somerset paper 19" x 29" |
SAMUEL LAWSON
Samuel Lawson is a visual artist in Starkville MS. Mr. Lawson received his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree with an emphasis in Painting from Mississippi State University in Starkville, MS. He was born and raised in Greenville MS, and was first introduced to art as a child through his mother, books, reading, television programs, and preschool teachers. His inspiration comes from both abstract and realistic subjects. His abstract work implies actual and implied surface texture using watercolor, acrylic, and oils. He has taught students from elementary age to senior citizens. He has participated in art and music festivals, displayed his work in various settings, worked on commissions, given workshops, and volunteered for various roles in the Starkville community. Samuel strives to be an inspiration for individuals to pursue art goals, work hard at their craft, and give back to individuals and their community.
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Oktibbeha Scene
Oil 15" x 28" |
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Shoes and Gloves
Acrylic 24" x 36" |
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Mountain Scene
Pastel 24" x 18" |
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Sunrise
Acrylic 15" x 28" |
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Just Me
Acrylic 24" x 36" |
Follow Samuel on Facebook!
DONOVAN WEATHERS
Donovan Weathers is a multimedia painter and illustrator who merges traditional and digital processes to create surreal environments. Meditating with themes of distant memories, artifice, and time, his work exists as a form of "subconscious archaeology." Searching through long past emotions and sensations within fleeting moments of his everyday life, and giving them formal structure through a mix of visual languages to create new expressions.
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To Surrender
Digital 10.75" x 10.5" "Showcasing a dense stacking of forms and objects within a shallow interior space, "To Surrender" is a surreal piece that served as a full exploration into different digital processes to abstract vague, visual memories. These details were gathered from experiences of giving up something as a physical act or a self-acknowledgement. Through this process, each detail in its abstraction and arrangement connects with the other, creating an isolated language of relinquishment." |
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Waste :: Sanctuary
Mixed Media on paper 15" x 21 ½" "Waste :: Sanctuary is a mixed media painting of an abstract billboard scene, focusing on themes of nature and our relationship with it. In observing these structures, they serve as a staging ground for constant natural phenomena and adaptations, as adjacent flora and fauna react to their presence in their own time. Overgrowth, new homes, resources seeping back into the earth in ways never demonstrated before. These billboards present a fundamental awkwardness in succumbing to the spaces they were made to distract us from. In this way, there was resonance between my own circumstances with which I needed to cultivate to exist with the present world around me. Through this painting, I sought to meditate on a billboard's ultimate impermanence, how it returns to nothing fundamentally different from how it was, and how that relationship reflects itself over countless things in our ecosystem today." |
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Obsession in Waves
Mixed Media on wood 9 ½" x 9 ½" "With "Obsession in Waves," I wanted to create a piece looking back on the peculiarities of the older domestic spaces I used to shift between as a child. They each had staples of geometric decoration such as the gem-like faucet knobs and blocks that shifted between presentation and obfuscation on a whim. This piece joins these intricate interior furnishings into a bathroom to complicate the relationship of glass as a tool for privacy." |
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Dancing :: Oblivion
Oil and acrylic on paper 15" x 21 ½" "Dancing :: Oblivion is an oil painting of a surreal billboard landscape, focusing on themes of nature and our legacy of existing within it. In my time traveling on different highways around Mississippi, my idle time on empty highways began to be filled up with a fascination with the dilapidated billboards, out of commission long ago, but still standing tall above trees and farmland. How they eventually were stripped of their previous role and left to decay, to eventually migrate back to the raw materials beneath the land that made them. With that in mind, I sought to create an intense passage of time, to encapsulate the hundreds of billboards I've seen suddenly thrashing themselves free of vinyl and paint, of wood and metal. Not to impose a reverence to what once was solely to capture our attention, but to acknowledge the impermanence and inevitable change of structures so rooted into our perception of a modern landscape." |
About AiPP
As part of SAAC's AiPP series, works may be listed for sale, including framed and unframed pieces. SAAC collects and pays sales taxes on behalf of the artist for any work sold, and the artist keeps 80% of the proceeds.
Please CALL or EMAIL SAAC if you are interested in purchasing any of these works.
Please CALL or EMAIL SAAC if you are interested in purchasing any of these works.
