The SNARL: new works by Erin Holscher Almazan and Anna Lee | On View in the Main Gallery from 17 April - 7 June 2026

Member Preview
          6:30 to 8 p.m. Friday 17 April 2026
Public Opening
          1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Saturday 18 April 2026
          Gallery talk at 2 p.m.

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Snarl, verb
1: to cause to become knotted and intertwined 
2: to make excessively complicated

Snarl, noun
1: a tangle especially of hairs or thread 
2: a tangled situation

Snarl, verb
1: to growl with a snapping, gnashing, or display of teeth
2: to give vent to anger in surly language
*From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary

     This exhibition brings together two artist friends of 30 years, each of whom brings their voice and interpretation to the snarl.  This collection of recent works by both artists is a conversation between and within, an untangling of the complexities of identity. The work is a tousle between fury and softness, expression and contemplation, proving that the philosophical, late-night conversations of our youth can tumble forward into both wisdom and rage.  

Erin Holscher Almazan, 'A Precarious Position II
,' Oil on canvas, 2025

Artist Statement

My mother taught me that the longer you
keep that howl trapped inside your body,
the more wolf you become,
but she never showed me how to let the howl out.
Womanhood is also this:
a violence louder on the inside that it is on the outside.
Smiling when truly all you are doing
is baring your teeth.
​
Poem by Nikita Gill, This Wild Violence Visits Again

     These self-portraits delve into a primal place in which the female body exists; a place of physicality, yearning, resilience and agency.  We continually evolve, raised with narratives on which we must push back, our bodies shaped by fluctuations and a nearly endless capacity to endure, love and protect.
     These self-portraits convey gestures of balance, containment, vulnerability and control, or lack thereof. I am navigating in-between spaces and that I am both hard and soft, dark and light, unmasked and barefaced.

     --Erin Holscher Almazan, 2026

Biography

     Erin Holscher Almazan is a Professor of Printmaking and Drawing at the University of Dayton in Dayton, OH. Erin is a native of North Dakota. She received her BFA in Fine Arts from Minnesota State University Moorhead and her MFA in Printmaking from Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, New York. She has completed two printmaking residencies at the Frans Masereel Centrum in Kasterlee, Belgium. Erin’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work has been most recently featured in a solo exhibition of paintings, “What These Arms Hold” at the Contemporary Dayton and a traveling group exhibition of work by women artists titled “Mirror, Mirror.” She resides in Dayton with her husband and two sons. 

Erin Holscher Almazan, 'The Hunt III,' Oil on canvas, 2025

Anna Lee, 'Anagnorisis,' 
Oil on canvas, 2026

​Artist Statement
     The creative snarl is a place we all find ourselves at one time or another- overwhelmed and tangled in old stories, new fears, or the unknown itself. We rarely recognize that the snarl is part of the process of creation itself. It is encouragement to proceed and to be forever changed, not a sign that we are failing. 
     The core of my work has long been informed by investment in the creative process and the transformative nature of the disintegration and subsequent reintegration of the artistic self through the heroine’s journey. 
     Through my years as both a mediumistic painter and beekeeper, I have also found a rhythm and spirituality in the cycles of nature and the wisdom of the bees. 
As my inquiry into alchemical study met up with my desire to know more about the work and influences of artist Hilma af Klint, I came across this 17th-century Latin alchemical and Rosicrucian motto: "Dat Rosa Mel Apibus", which means The Rose Gives the Bees Honey.
     We are forever in collaboration with each other and with nature itself. The rose needs the bee, the bee needs the rose. The bee needs her sisters of the hive. The hive is enlivened by each and every bee, dancing her heart in rhythm with each other.  

--Anna Lee, 2026

​     Anna Lee is an artist, designer, educator, medium, beekeeper, and creativity coach who has helped artists of all genres expand their creative endeavors for over twenty years. 
     She founded Fashion Week in the Twin Cities in 2005 via the non-profit MNfashion and fashion incubator Voltage: Fashion Amplified, advocating tirelessly for a community-focused independent fashion industry in MN. She has worked in the industry in a diverse set of roles and institutions- from corporate to contract, entrepreneurial to academic. She is currently a Visiting Lecturer at North Dakota State University in the Apparel, Retail Merchandising & Design Program in the School of Design, Architecture, and Art. 
     She also produces multidisciplinary collaborations with creatives who want to “play” in their fields via the Gray Matter Series, teaches workshops on creativity + nature, and provides Creative Guidance Sessions for folks on the verge of a shift or expansion in their creative practice or career.

Anna Lee, 'Prima Materia,' 
Oil on canvas, 2025