From Mountains to Sea

November 8, 2025 – May 10, 2026
Member Preview: Friday, November 7, 2025 

From Mountains to Sea reflects, celebrates, and engages with the inextricable relationship between humanity and the natural world. Featuring work by John Beerman, Elizabeth Bradford, Susan Brenner, Patrick Dougherty, Gene Felice, Greg Lindquist, Jason Mitcham, Ana Vizcarra Rankin, Thomas Sayre, and others, each work of art is more than mere imagery; together they constitute a dialogue with the land we call home. Artists from western North Carolina, including Julyan Davis, Erika Diamond, Bill Green, Selene Plum, and others, respond directly to Hurricane Helene, the deadliest strike on the mainland United States since Hurricane Katrina.

The artists in the exhibition, many of whom have lived through hurricanes, floods, and wildfires, transform memory and grief into healing and hope, highlighting their relationship to the natural world. The landscapes included here are beautiful and provocative, scarred yet sacred; they speak of loss, change, and rebirth, the very rhythms of nature itself.

Although the natural world is a familiar subject, this exhibition includes works in a wide variety of contemporary styles and media. From digital projection and animation to found-object assemblage sculpture, these artists bring new approaches to urgent topics. There is lyrical beauty here, coupled with an exploration of the complex relationship between man and the environment.

Curated by Associate Curator Ben Billingsley with essay and interpretive labels written by Colton Klein

Colton Klein is a PhD student in the History of Art and a Whitney Humanities Center Fellow in the Environmental Humanities at Yale University, where he studies the art of the United States with research interests in material and environmental histories. He guest curated the exhibition The Visionary Art of Minnie Evans (2025) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This exhibition features works on loan from the Cameron Art Museum and builds upon his article “The Turpentine State: Minnie Evans and North Carolina Ecologies”, that won First Prize at the 48th Annual Symposium at The Cleveland Museum of Art and was published in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s American Art journal.

Presented to the community by Wells Fargo

with additional support from Renee and Ralph Snyderman