Virtual Exhibit: In Dreams Honorable Mentions
This virtual showcase features honorable mention artists from our In Dreams: A David Lynch Tribute open call. These artists offer a dynamic range of mediums and we wanted to provide a spotlight on their work beyond our physical gallery space. Each segment highlights how they connect with Lynch’s vision in their own practice and includes links for where to follow their work online.
Rachel Ann Kendrick
Invite Your Fears in For Tea
My short experimental film, Invite Your Fears in For Tea, is like a doorway to the surreal, a space where the familiar unravels and the unknown creeps in. I'm exploring the 'Refusal of the Call' – that charged moment when the hero's journey arrives at the edge towards the next step. David Lynch's surrealist dreamlike style was a huge inspiration; I wanted to create a visual representation that feels both unsettling and alluring, like the subconscious is bleeding into reality. Think eerie atmospheres, disjointed narratives, and a dash of the uncanny – nods to Lynch's style, but filtered through my own lens. I chose to shoot in black and white, a deliberate nod to David's early work like Eraserhead, to amplify the stylistic vibe. I played with juxtaposing creepy and lighthearted elements, creating this weird tension that's both captivating and unsettling. I created this film as an invitation to confront those whispered doubts, the fears that hold us back from embracing our true callings. I'm drawn to the in-between spaces, where transformation takes hold, and the idea of who we could become is rewritten. I'd love for viewers to find pieces of themselves in the ambiguity of this work. This was my first short experimental art film. I really loved the process of finding locations editing and creating the storyline. I plan to create more short experimental films in the future.
This film was funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation through Queen Rose Art House. You can view part 2 of this series here.
As a multidisciplinary artist and actress, I often explore the intersections of identity, technology, and the human experience. My work, which includes traditional painting, musical composition, experimental video art, and acting performance, is often a reflection of my own journey, a quest to understand myself and the world around me. Influenced by surrealism and Jungian psychology, I create narratives that challenge perspectives. My art robots, films, paintings and performances invite viewers to step into spaces between reality and the subconscious, where transformation and self-discovery unfold. I aim to spark conversations, inspire connection, and convey the complexity of the human experience, fostering empathy and deeper understanding in the process.
Moon
This spring an artist friend was moving to the West Coast, and it felt apt to combine my grief of David Lynch with her sending-off event. The poem I constructed is soon to be published in Red Dirt Poetry’s “Damn! Volume Two”, and contains the wrestling I was doing with Argentine magical realism (Borges), the scientific and spiritual mysteries of the heart, and the death of perhaps the most profound auditory+visual artist in my lifetime.
Collage as a medium has been my preferred method of expression since living close to the Art Institute of Chicago’s Joseph Cornell collection–interactive boxes with the institutional taboo of touch. It was obvious to me that “Magical Realism: Inside the Rainbow with David Lynch” deserved that specific opportunity to be seen and heard, fashioned with a box that allows the poem to be scrolled as it is read. There is also an attempt to provide movement via the Las Vegas light; hanging fabric; and items in the floor of the box including a bag of red glitter. Once upon a time, in San Jose, CA a docent discussed the challenge of glitter in terms of art valuation; meanwhile the local art walk contained example after example of untreated, natural materials alongside taxidermied creatures. That formative time is also manifest in this piece.
Studying Lynch for Uncanny’s event meant turning my attention to transcendental meditation, the West Coast, surrealism, dreams, and just f-ing really big feelings. I watched celebratory documentaries on Criterion Channel, and played compositions by Julee Cruz, Angelo B., and Lynch himself. Oh, and revisited “The Wizard of Oz”.
Along the way I considered changing the collage’s title to “Defying Gravity” because it had become quite the production. The nod to Twin Peaks’ curtains resulted in velour, a messy fabric. I use thread and buttons and mostly whatever is lying around to hold things into place, and sometimes I just have to dive, failing to account for the obstacle one aspect has now created to the security of the other. Still, this technique brings all sorts of life to my hands and heart, using my paternal grandmother’s scissors, and my maternal grandmother’s lessons on reinforcement with straight pins. As I propped up the final collage to take pictures for submission, a lady bug emerged, paused, then slowly crawled into my couch cushions. An apt mystery to close out my study, don’t you think?
I am an American polymath who believes if we, as residents of this nation, would just focus on that “pursuit of happiness” bit, everything would fall into place. I resist the socials, so if you would like to reach out to me about this piece, please send a note to the e-mail link above. Last, I am extremely grateful to Uncanny for the opportunity to explore this legacy. It has been an honor to honor Mr. Lynch in this manner. And thank you, Artistic Community, for the conversation.
Marium Rana
Awake Like Me
Awake Like Me was painted in the middle of a haze. Sleeping when what seemed like the rest of the world was awake. Awake when only a few neighboring lights were ablaze from my view. Awake Like Me is part of a series of six acrylic paintings created for the series, Sleepwalk Daydream.
In our brick home in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, I hopelessly, or hopefully, stared out of the kitchen window looking for connection. A home we’ve since long left behind with mixed feelings of nostalgia, relief, and muted chaos. The sky was as dark as it could be. I was met with the soft glow of other small, neighboring suburban windows. Windows floating, unified in the solitude of blackness, only weird midnight hours could also know.
When you are too exhausted to be awake and too awake to go to sleep, the mind finds rest in the optimism of sleeping soon. For me, this series was inspired by the feelings accompanied by sleep deprivation. I reflect on the nights and early mornings, when I stayed up with my newborn daughter desperately waiting for sleep. I was thrown into the liminality that comes with dependence on another human being. Mercilessly waiting for rest. When resting, the familiar wave of solitude that washes over you when the rest of the world is wide awake. And never quite knowing when this cycle will end.
Sleepwalk Daydream exists because of the optimism and the limitless love for others and the self that grows as a result of such unpredictable, previously uncharted parts of myself I found in profoundly solitary moments. Some paintings reflect on childhood memories while others reflect on more recent experiences, the common denominators are the discomfort of personal growth and accepting a momentary reality. Sleepwalk Daydream is the tangible search for hope when it is most needed.
In the year 2025, after David Lynch passed away. I watched as many of his films as I could. I found myself drawn the most to his first widely-known film, Eraserhead. In Eraserhead, I observed parallels between the series I’ve painted and this work. Both entertaining ideas of isolation, deep-seated fear of parenting for the first time. I revisit the memory of telling my gynecologist that I was afraid of delivering my child. How would I handle the chaos in a world getting numb to chaos, in the middle of an era of Corona virus? In the most unexpected places one can find comfort and humanity. In the words of a doctor, in the glow of the television screen, in the yellow light of your neighbors home.
I could also relate to the feeling of wondering around aimlessly in the late hours, as Lynch often did in his youth, whether literally or by rumination. This is so beautifully captured in his film Blue Velvet. The protagonist of the film finds himself deeply entangled in throws of nighttime secrecy and unexpected violence. The night is a beautiful, dangerous, mysterious surreal landscape.
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Marium Rana is an American-born Pakistani visual artist. She is a graduate from Florida State University, where she has received a B.F.A. in Studio Art and a Masters in Arts Education. Marium has taught fine art and art history in Tampa, Florida and now in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her current works delve into the complexity of belonging to two different cultures and trying to make a home out of stories of places and moments one has not personally experienced. These paintings depict landscapes that do not exist in our tangible world and seem as imaginary as the places that have existed before us.
Ray MatsuMOTO
The Celebrity Suit, Look 9 by Ray Matsumoto
The “Celebrity Suit” is an Oxford cotton dress pant and cinch waist jacket featuring a repeating camera motif. This piece is Look 9 in my debut project, A Place Where Chameleons Stay, a surreal concept collection following characters from a dream. The suit explores themes of visibility, performance, and identity, using the camera print as a symbol of constant observation and the pressure of being seen. My work aligns with Lynch’s philosophy in resistance to being easily digestible. This suit specifically connects to Lynch’s use of uncanny imagery, psychological themes, and the blurring of dreams and reality, presenting multiple interpretations. Art is the process of gaining insight and confusion is a tool to encourage the viewer to ask questions. This suit, my work, and David Lynch aim to provoke emotion and start conversation because normalcy needs extremity to function in art.
I’m a self taught designer from Oklahoma with a focus on surrealism and storytelling. I started making art because language did not give me the full capacity to thoroughly or accurately express thoughts, feelings, experiences. I started the brand Ephemeral to explore the impermanence of clothing and the people that wear them. My work is not meant to be timeless. It’s meant to be cherished, then outgrown. Clothes remain the same. It’s people who change.
