Rose-Colored Windows celebrates the complexity of human experience and how we choose to find hope and resiliency as it intertwines with emotion, stress, healing, and more.

This interactive installation of 36 individually crafted transparent vinyl works is inspired by stained glass “Rose Windows” which were meticulously crafted in their designs to elicit feelings of awe and wonder and let in light in buildings of worship built throughout the Medieval and Gothic periods. These mosaic tessellations often broached complex subjects such as The Universal Laws of the Cosmos, the human psyche, and celestial planes of existence. And in the spirit of those original pieces, this work, entitled “Rose-Colored Windows” looks to cast the same reverence as the source inspiration, but this time towards the complexity and multifaceted endeavor of living within a human body. Facets of life, like the struggle of living with mental and physical health challenges intertwining with themes of hope, experience, and resilience.

Each uniquely drawn vinyl design represents layers of life, positives and negatives, hopes and fears, struggles and triumphs, and invites the viewer to create their own combinations to add to the larger kaleidoscope. Individually, these window pieces were each deliberately designed to defy organized perfection and welcome incidental beauty: never perfectly fitting in the gaps of the next, oftentimes overlapping, sometimes creating new designs and colors and often creating muddiness and obscurity. Never meant to be a puzzle to solve, each window was created to be a physical manifestation of the awe-inspiring, non-linear journey of our mental fortitude. 

This piece was originally created for and funded by Cascadia Health as their featured artwork for the 2024 HEART Celebration of whole health, women, and art. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

ALEXIS NEWMANN is an artist, scholar, and curator creating work that engages Disability Studies, Theology, and Intersectionality through her interactive installations and mixed media art works. Her work focuses on interconnectedness, intricacy, and resiliency in the body and world to draw attention to the complexities of the human experience, often using bio-medical imagery and accessible materials like vinyl, copper wire, and plexiglass, as well as light and sound. She holds an MFA in Visual Studies and an MA in Critical Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art at Willamette University, as well as degrees in Comparative History and Music from the University of Washington. She lives with multiple invisible illnesses including Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and platforms other artists with disabilities through her curation. She highlights the experience of disability and the unique knowledge and wisdom that it brings to people with similar life experiences and is passionate about advancing equity and sharing the realities of dynamic disability. Her work has been featured in light festivals throughout the Pacific Northwest as well as locally being awarded grants like the Precipice Fund from Portland Institute of Contemporary Art and exhibiting at SATOR Projects, the Center for Contemporary Art and Culture, 4Culture, and more.