"Salad Days," curated by Cassidy Petrazzi and Krystle Schilling
Tina’s, August 23, 2026
Philbrook Art & Gardens, Tandy Pavilion, August 28, 2026
The enigmatic invitation for Salad Days featured an angelic photo of iceberg lettuce, splayed and luminously lit. As I fingered the postcard in sweltering August, a month before the start of fall but already in the school year’s swing, I was intrigued. Was this an exhibition about heydays, that retrospective way of romanticizing the past that masks the mess of how we actually experience time? Or was it about the everyday of eating salads? At every turn the elegant and funny Salad Days made me wonder: What is gained by dwelling in ambiguity, and what is lost?
Curated smartly by Cassidy Petrazzi and Krystle Schilling, Salad Days slipped between categories through a tight selection of recent works by five local artists and a floral designer. Over two weekends in August it featured the art-historically traditional—abstract watercolor and oil images by Josh Jones, paintings by Ruth Loveland, glazed vessels by Dejon Knapp—alongside the less conventional—cast beer cans and fries by Shane Darwent, leafy flora arrangements by Katie Allen, photographic lettuce by Richard Zimmerman. It was presented first at a bar and then a museum. Even its approach to venues was slippery.
At the packed opening celebration at Tina’s, the beloved bar owned by Schilling and her husband, I was blissfully confused. Was that bar décor or art on the bathroom wall? Had I found all 50 objects? After I gave up on my urge for guiding clarity, I enjoyed the uncanny experience of watching bar-goers drinking beers and eating fries near trompe l’oeil sculptural versions of the same items.
For example, installed on a shuffleboard table were a dozen cans cast by Darwent this year in colorless earthenware. The ghostly pallor of the sculptures advertised not brands but shapes (crushed, sliced) and threw into relief piles of golden French fries cast in clay by Darwent and wild bouquets of flowers arranged by Allen.
Completing the mise-en-scène of a party’s aftermath was a bright red whoopee cushion slip cast this year by Zimmerman. The fragile clay of the prank toy’s inflated shape and puckered folds generated a shivery tension between begging for and forbidding touch. It was thrilling to take in an exhibition that delighted in blurring distinctions—including between high and low art—in a packed bar.