Be.jeweled

Commons Gallery Opening Fri, Feb 13, 2026 @ 5:30

On the Artist: 

HUNTER & GATHERER

MIXED MEDIA ARTIST

Everything that GAE knows about Collecting Broken Things, she learned from her Grandpa Kline. 

In the sixties, she would spend hours in his workshop in the garage- admiring the dirty cracked and dusty treasures that he would bring back from the town junk yard. The shelves that lined the walls were full of old doll heads missing their bodies, the rusty parts of random toy cars and trucks, faded & torn photographs and wooden boxes filled with discarded jewelry & beads. It was a Place of Magic. Eventually the Treasures became hers. 

These inherited THINGS, are the kind of lost and found objects that GAE likes to use in her Mixed Media Assemblages and Sculptures. A visit to her Happenstance Studio in Uptown Marion is proof positive that Six Decades Later, the Hedge Apple Does Not Fall Far From The Tree. Shelves and cupboards overflowing with boxes labeled: Keys, jewelry, doll parts, teeny tiny bones, rusty wire, gauges & pulleys, little frames, vintage photographs and bras plaques, fill GAE’s head with curious wonder.

What will she make from This & That, and The Other Thing?

A self taught artist, GAE sharp RICHARDSON has been making art from found objects for over twenty five years. She makes mobiles from weathered bottles and vintage enamelware rescued from the Cedar River. Intrigued with visual story telling, she constructs ladder journals by attaching the gatherings she finds on walks to antique barbwire from Colorado. Worthy of the Runway, GAE dresses mannequins and dress forms in a layered art garments made from mop heads, silver caution tape, brass drawer pulls, and crystal chandelier prisms. She constructs Shadow Boxes out of old clocks that chime the time and black boxes protect vintage framed decoupaged photographs embellished with the whimsical pieces of jewelry. 

“If it’s dirty or broken or ugly - Give it to Gae,” her nine siblings say. She’ll figure out something to make from what we all know, is one man’s junk... But GAE’s treasure.

On the Exhibit:

First: It’s the people in the photographs. Mixed Media Artist, RICHARDSON collects the black & white images at estate sales and second hand stores. The people in the photographs call her name: “Are you curious, Gae?” She is, and she takes them home and studies the slight smiles. The vacant stares. The quiet hands. The chairs. The tables. The clothes.

They are someone’s lost friends and family. 

Gae decoupages the antique photographs to create a layer of texture and depth that brightens the scuffed and faded patina on the paper - revealing long forgotten curtains hanging in the background and soft curls in carefully pinned hair. 

Second: It's the story. How are the people related to each other? GAE observes the frozen expressions and the uncomfortable stiff postures in the photographs, and at once she understands what they are trying to say, she sets the stage. RICHARDSON reveals the secret they are keeping by attaching a piece of abandoned vintage jewelry to the photograph that will tell the story to her audience. You. 

GAE matches each embellished photograph to a deconstructed vintage frame and tucks it inside a black shadow box to create the finished: BE.jeweled “THINK BOX” - adding a carefully chosen quote that narrates the story.

The rest is up to You, Dear Curious Friend, as you think about what an old photograph has to say aver being discovered again. Is this the beginning... or the end of a story?