Off the Page Closing Reception

Join us at The Peale for the closing reception of Off the Page, an exhibition exploring the relationship between literature, painting, poetry, sound, and interpretation through the work of artist Jessica Damen.

Throughout the exhibition, Off the Page has asked what happens when words move beyond the page. For Damen, poems, stories, myths, and other texts become starting points for painting. She reads, researches, and follows what stays with her—a phrase, an image, a rhythm, a memory—allowing it to take another form.

The exchange moves in many directions. Paintings respond to poems. Poems have been written in response to paintings. Recorded voices introduce another interpretation of the same words, while performances and programs throughout the exhibition have extended these exchanges into music, conversation, and collaboration.

For the final afternoon of Off the Page, we invite you to spend time with the exhibition, revisit works you may have seen before, encounter others for the first time, and join the artists, writers, collaborators, and community that have gathered around the project.

The closing reception is not so much an ending as another point in an ongoing conversation. Damen’s Visions Verses Voices project continues to evolve as new paintings, poems, readings, and soundscapes are added, carrying these exchanges beyond the exhibition.

Come look, listen, read, and gather with us as we celebrate the final day of Off the Page at The Peale.

About Off the Page

Off the Page explores Jessica Damen’s longstanding engagement with the written word and the ways reading becomes part of making. Moving between thickly painted surfaces on canvas and linen and thin washes on paper, Damen’s work responds to poetry, literature, myth, memory, and the natural world.

The exhibition brings these paintings into conversation with the writers and texts that surround them, asking us to consider not only what we see when we read, but what we might read differently after looking.