From the 2003 press release: This body of work by Ms. Venables is a result of her detailed investigation and rereading of ordinary interior spaces. In the home, she shows us bedrooms, bathrooms, closets, and stairways. Away from home, she shows us the insides of tents and elevators. The photographs are scaled to relate to the real, physical spaces they show. Hyper-detailed, multiple focal points and paradoxical depth of field brings us to interiors that are at once familiar and unfamiliar. This disorientation casts our everyday sense of space into uncertainty, and demands a more intimate engagement with the ordinary places we inhabit. A history of usage leaps from the floor of an elevator, while the ceiling of another quietly spins; a bedroom's wallpaper, with its discoloration, tears and seams, creates an unnerving pattern. Ms. Venables wants the viewer to have an experience with these places, an encounter, rather than view them as windows.
In our back gallery, we presented color photographs by Deanna Dikeman from her ongoing "home alone in the middle of the day" series. As the artist states, this series of work investigates through limited scenes and the use of soft-focus "..a psychological view into the places we inhabit. Sometimes our vision is too perfect to see the spirit of what is in our everyday sight." Ms. Dikeman has exhibited widely in the Kansas City area, as well as regionally and nationally. Her work could also be seen concurrently on the outdoor Project Wall of the the Kansas City Art Institute's H&R Block ArtSpace, where her photograph "Leaving and waving, 7/02" was commissioned and scaled up to a monumental 19 by 15 feet.