CAB Art Gallery at UNCW

We are so excited to welcome back Philadelphia based sculptor for her solo exhibition: “Through the Oyster Speculum” on view this summer and start of the fall semester. 

EXHIBITION DATES
June 22-September 9, 2026

RECEPTION 
Thursday, August 27, 2026 from 5:30 p.m.–7 p.m.

SUMMER GALLERY HOURS (May 22 – August 10)
Monday-Thursday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. - closed on Fridays

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Excerpt from press release below:
(full press release with exhibition details, Bio, CV, & image details: www.linktr.ee/cabartgallery)

“Such a predetermination to eat this big universe as her oyster or her egg, and to be absolute empress of all height and glory in it that her heart could conceive, I have not before seen in any human soul,” Thomas Carlyle on American Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller’s hunger for experience. 

In a multimedia exhibition of sculptural installation, light, and sound, Sarah Peoples: Through the Oyster Speculum reveals the stories, legends, myths, and expressions deployed as shorthand to make sense of American identity and culture. At the exhibition’s center, a large diorama recreates the grand American wilderness as a theatrical tableau. This immersive environment invites close inspection, revealing instability and distortion beneath familiar narratives. Using humor and wit, Peoples demonstrates how the very ideas meant to define a place can simultaneously obscure other truths, creating parallel realities or mirror worlds that coexist rather than resolving into singular meaning. 

The world, and specifically American ideals, are Sarah Peoples’ oyster, and she cracks them open through a multivalent speculum. Derived from the Latin specere, “to look,” a speculum refers to three distinct items: a mirror, the iridescent beauty mark on a bird’s wing, and a medical tool for inspection. In these capacities, a speculum reflects, signals, and reveals. The installation of artworks encapsulates all meanings of the word. By foregrounding these disparate functions, the exhibition spotlights the unstable ground on which perception rests. To look through the oyster speculum is to see through the lenses of culture, history, and desire.

Lucas Megson, “Limbo, USA”
Oil in linen

Lucas Megson, “Middlesex”
Oil on linen

Artist Statement:

“Personal introspection forms my painting process. Through exploration of my own thoughts and feelings, I hope to uncover certain universal truths while also investigating the ambiguities of human life. American iconography, particularly through cinema, inspires my work, which exists within a surrealist approach to my upbringing in the American South. 

My medium of choice is oil paint on a variety of supports including panel, linen, and canvas. The transparent and slow drying properties of oil paint allow me to react and sit with a painting. This layered method of working dictates a call and response between myself and the painting. My non-linear process means the features of my painting are undetermined, allowing for improvisation and deep learning while painting.”

Gallery hours are extended this Thursday and next until 7pm. Last day of the .seniorexhibit exhibition is next Friday, May 8th as the seniors graduate on May 9th! Be sure to come by and see this amazing group show!