Martha’s is proud to announce a two-person exhibition between artists Wes Thompson and Calhan Hale entitled Echo, exploring memory, objecthood, and the blurring of time and place. Between each artist’s works rings a reckoning with contrasting simultaneities, including interconnectedness and solitude, the hidden and revealed, the natural and the invented, the sharp and the tender- opposing forces coexisting to inform something closer to a whole.

Please enjoy a short story by Wes Thompson below:

There is a big porch with people playing music at nighttime and dancing. There is warm light on the porch and then dark night all around. I am a little child watching people dance and play music, I am towards the outside of what is happening. My mom leans over into my ear and says, you know we love you very much. And her and my dad go towards the porch to dance. I hear a common poorwill calling behind me and I turn around and start walking towards it. The music gets softer and it starts getting darker. I am walking through a cute graveyard following the sound. In the graveyard there are berry bushes. I pause at one and start eating berries from it. The common poorwill calls again and I continue towards it. I can hear the nightjar better and better. I keep following the sound to beneath a big tree at the edge of a large cornfield. I see the bird call and fly up from the ground in front of me and fly over the cornfield disappearing. I am getting tired and thirsty as I step into the cornfield to follow the calling bird. The corn quickly becomes thick and I can't find direction in or see over or through. I am not afraid, I am curious and focused on finding the bird. I keep moving towards its call. I step out of the cornfield at the edge of an irrigation channel with a small amount of water trickling through the bottom. I drink from the water. I see the common poorwill on the other side as I look up from drinking. It is illuminated by the moonlight. I get a good look at it and then it flies away upward and I follow it with my eyes with peace and presentness until it disappears. When I look down and to where the common poorwill was the sun is rising over a beautiful field with rolling hills of yellow gold grasses and wildflowers. I see an old house brown grey from weathered wood. There is a porch I step up onto and the front door is bouncing between open and shut from a breeze that is blowing through. I step inside and there is a hot roasted chicken on the table with fresh biscuits. I eat.