Opening Party

Friday, March 14, 2025

6-8 PM

Come out and help me open Play Date and donate and/or take art supplies at the swap! Refreshments served.

About the Show:

Feel like a mess? Bust out your best art smock for Play Date, where innocence and irony collide. This debut solo show by Elizabeth Gordon Stilwell unravels the tangled threads of her evangelical childhood and the ideals of American culture, beauty, sex, gender, and home that came with it. Through large, layered pieces—ranging from sculptures to textiles—she stitches together personal memorabilia and found materials to explore the deliciously complicated terrain of girlhood.

Ribbons, pink, mirrors, and religious icons weave through the rooms, echoing the sweet loss of innocence and turning the world’s uninvited gaze back on itself. Here, adorable meets horror, and the absurdity of being a girl is laid bare. Play Date is a grown-up game of show-and-tell where the toys are symbols and the stories are…complicated.

The journey begins at the gallery’s entrance with Have Mercy, Princess Bride, Princess Playboy, Birth Control Altar, and Don’t Let the Bastards Set You Down. Elsewhere, 4 Letter Word and McCrèche perch on pedestals, daring visitors to look closer. In the “baby’s room,” nestled near the windows, a not-so-sweet nursery is furnished with I Am My Own Baby, Daddy Stitch, Baby Mobile, and Babygate.