A new art exhibit, “Adrift,” paintings by church member Chris Willcox, is on view in the Social Hall gallery space January 6 through February 10.

Chris’s Adrift paintings deal with human migration and, in particular, the global refugee and migrant crisis. She felt morally obligated to create work that might add to the compassionate and sympathetic viewpoint supporting refugees seeking asylum and safety. Media sources have provided a steady stream of now-familiar imagery showing groups of people kept behind chain link fencing, incarcerated children in detention centers or figures in life jackets crowded into flimsy, inflatable rafts. Chris has used media photographs as inspiration and in some cases, actually fixed them directly to the canvas, allowing her to work within the conversation that already exists. The large painting of the sea is meant to disrupt the picturesque ideal of ocean panoramas where the viewer is in the water as if swimming (or drowning.)

Chris was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario. She earned degrees from the Ontario College of Art and Design, a BFA from the University of Guelph and an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She moved to the Twin Cities in 2000 to accept a position at Macalester College where she is a tenured professor and chair in the Art and Art History department.

Chris’s exhibit will be on display January 6 – February 10. She will be available to discuss her work after the 11:15 a.m. service on Sunday, Jan. 13 at an Artist’s Reception.