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Held
by Shaun Cassidy & Lucy Cassidy

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Center for the Arts | Dalton Gallery
121 E. Main St. Rock Hill, SC

EXHIBITION

Sept. 12 - Oct. 18, 2025

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RECEPTION

Thurs., Sept. 18, 2025

5:30 - 7:30 PM

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GALLERY HOURS

Monday - Saturday 

10 AM - 8 PM

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SPONSORED BY

O'Darby's Fine Wine & Spirits

Rock Hill Coca-Cola

Bottling Company

DALTON GALLERY

Held brings together a father-daughter duo's distinct visions, exploring the profound beauty and contained fragility of shared memories and landscapes. Through their intuitive practice, artists Shaun and Lucy Cassidy transform collected fragments and emotional experiences into evocative sculptural forms. This exhibition invites you to explore the relationships between these pieces, building a deeper connection with their personal history and a call to find beauty in preservation.

EXHIBITION STATEMENT

 

 

The collaborative team of father and daughter, Shaun and Lucy Cassidy, has been working together for over three years. Held is the third collaborative body of work they have exhibited.

 

Their practice is driven by an intuitive engagement with materials, where small moments—like a scattered pile, a textured scrap, or a fractured piece—guide their next steps in making. They draw inspiration from shared memories, travels, and emotional experiences, with a heightened sensitivity to landscapes and containment. This informs both the processes and forms of their sculptures.

 

The exhibition features a series of freestanding steel structures that hold multiple ceramic fragments. These fragments—encased within steel cages—serve as archives of previous collaborations. Over the past three years, the artists have collected and reorganized these pieces into curated collections. For instance, an army of tongues hangs around an ambiguous form, connected through color, shape, and narrative. By placing objects together in this way, the artists highlight relationships between the

fragments—relationships viewers are encouraged to explore through form, texture, narrative, and visual language.

 

The steel structures act as frames, holding the fragments in relation to one another. The upper steel frame outlines an empty cube of space, alluding to a room or container. In doing so, the steel rods create a sense of volume and emptiness, spatially

juxtaposing them. The container of space creates an implication that something is about to happen, while the fragments, sunken into the steel beds, are preserved in their newly formed relationships.

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PERIMETER GALLERY

The Process of Nature

works by Vanessa Cassidy

EXHIBITION | September 12 - October 18, 2025

RECEPTION | September 18, 2025 | 5:30 PM

Vanessa Cassidy’s The Process of Nature is a collection of small abstract works that beautifully translate subconscious memories of English landscapes into vivid form. Through an experimental and intuitive practice, Cassidy uses a range of media to explore themes of growth, decay, and the inherent beauty found in the natural world. This exhibition invites you to witness the captivating relationship between chance and creation, reflecting on the cyclical rhythms that shape both art and nature.

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ARTIST STATEMENT

The Process of Nature is comprised of a series of small abstract works on paper. They explore color, shape and rhythm to capture subconscious memories of specific landscapes and individuals from their experiences in England. The works are created with a very intuitive, experimental and process driven approach. Glue, bleach and inks are manipulated, scraped, and rolled, each new layer a reaction to the previous one. The artist is driven to let chance, the excitement of discovery and the relationship between the media, tools and time, create images that are evocative of growth, decay and beauty–all things that apply to the process of nature.

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BIO

VANESSA CASSIDY

Vanessa Cassidy is a professional calligrapher based in Kent, UK.  Her clients include the Royal Medical Colleges’ and Medical Faculties’. She was asked to write the certificate when Princess Catherine of Wales was made Patron of the RCOG. Her work is in various Royal Medical Colleges and Faculties.  She has worked in collaboration with Nick Veasey (x-ray artist) exhibiting at the Process Gallery in Kent, UK. Vanessa has also done sign writing for various restaurants in London and Kent.

CALL FOR PRIVATE VIEWINGS

(803) 328-2787

INQUIRIES

Annie Heisel, Gallery Manager

aheisel@yorkcountyarts.org

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