UCSB Honors Artists Present ‘A Stare Into the Sun’ at the Glass Box Gallery

UCSB’s upcoming Glass Box Gallery exhibition, A Stare Into the Sun, will feature five artists working in different mediums, but all with shared themes of memory, identity, vulnerability, ritual, childhood, and transformation.

One of the exhibition’s artists is Jennette Wolfe, who is graduating from UCSB’s Art and Honors programs this spring. 

After decades of working in accounting and raising children, Wolfe reentered the academic world, describing her decision as both exciting and terrifying. “I was stepping into something completely unfamiliar creatively,” she shared. “Over time, I realized that art gave me a language for experiences and emotions that I had carried for years but never fully processed or expressed.” 

Returning to school was also significant to her personally, as she described wanting her granddaughters to see that “growth, learning, and creativity do not have an expiration date,” and to witness “dedication, vulnerability, and the willingness to begin again.”

As for Wolfe’s work itself, she is incorporating paintings from her “Internal Architecture Series,” which “explores the body as both a physical and emotional structure shaped by accumulated experiences and responsibilities.” She added that her interest stemmed from the idea that the things we carry emotionally eventually become embedded into the spaces we inhabit.

Wolfe’s experience as a mother and caregiver greatly influenced her work, particularly in examining the physical and emotional toll that responsibility can take in the long term. Her surreal art focuses on trying to give visual form to complex emotional systems that words alone cannot explain.

Why surrealism? For Wolfe, this art form allows her to explore concepts that she doesn’t need to define literally. “I’m often trying to create spaces that feel psychologically familiar rather than realistic,” she said. “The large scale is important because I want the viewer to physically experience the work rather than just observe it from a distance. I want the paintings to feel immersive and emotionally expansive in the same way emotional experiences can feel.

“I hope viewers feel emotionally connected to the work in their own way,” Wolfe said. “Even though the imagery comes from personal experiences, I think many people understand what it feels like to carry responsibility, memory, exhaustion, love, pressure, or care over long periods of time.”

A Stare Into the Sun, which will be featured on UCSB’s campus, will run from May 26 to 29, with a closing reception on May 29 from 5 to 7 p.m. that will include food and wine. Alongside Wolfe will be artists Tyler Alexandar, Bethany Close, Alex Edrozo, and Tomiko Osawa.