Event Calendar

Francis Marion University’s Gately Gallery is proud to present Thunder and Wonder, a solo exhibition by Charleston-based artist Jennifer York, on view from October 21 through December 5, 2025. Known for her large-scale papercuts and intricate dioramas set within vintage suitcases and mirrors, York’s art straddles memory, myth, and recovery, offering audiences both visual beauty and deeply personal storytelling.

The exhibition opens with a joint reception on October 21 at 5:30 p.m., celebrating both Thunder and Wonder and the 2025 FMU Student Juried Art Show, which will run concurrently. This year’s student show is especially notable, as York herself serves as juror, bringing her expertise and unique artistic perspective to the selection of student works.

York will also offer an Artist Talk on November 19 at 6:00 p.m., inviting the community to step deeper into her world of layered narratives and meticulous craftsmanship.

Raised in rural Indiana and trained at Pratt Institute (BFA, Sculpture, 1997) and Savannah College of Art and Design (MFA, Fibers, 2000), York has spent decades shaping a multifaceted career as an artist, educator, and innovator. Inspired by travel residencies across Europe and the Americas, as well as her coastal surroundings in South Carolina, York’s works blend careful observation—sketches of Charleston’s iron gates, tombstones, and marshlands—with visual storytelling. Her work continues to evolve into ambitious papercut installations from tyvek house wrap—epic, lace-like structures reminiscent of Hawaiian quilt patterns— and intricate dioramas housed in castaway suitcases and mirrors, encouraging viewers to wander, reflect, and imagine.

Through Thunder and Wonder, York brings her personal journey and artistic mastery to the Pee Dee region, offering audiences a chance to encounter both the monumental and the intimate in paper, line, and light. Like the enchanted wardrobe in The Chronicles of Narnia, her work invites us to step through a threshold into a world at once familiar and otherworldly—one that asks us to follow her path and imagine where it might lead us next.