Hexum Gallery owner and curator John Zaso wanted to do a show featuring flowers, he said, but not typical bundles of blooms. He was fascinated by the idea of the wallflower: someone simultaneously showy and shy. The works in “Wallflower,” on view through September 25 at the second-floor Montpelier gallery, aren’t portraits of reticent partygoers but convey a similar complicated psychology.
Kelli Thompson’s “Ginger Blossom” hides the subject’s face out of frame, the weird bloom seemingly growing through their forehead and announcing a strength of personality. Elizabeth Powell’s “Thistle” and Matteo Callegari’s “Telepathine (Self-Portrait as Passiflora)” both present careful, close-up views of flowers that read more bodily than botanical. Danielle Mysliwiec’s sculptural “Spring” demonstrates passion and precision in equal measure. Rather than picturing a blossom or using a brush, the artist made the green-and-yellow gradient relief by piping her paint to create a dimensional, woven-looking surface. It reminds the viewer that, in addition to smelling the roses, touching grass is also spectacular.
‘Wallflower’ On view through September 25 at Hexum Gallery in Montpelier.
The original print version of this article was headlined “No Shrinking Violets”
This article appears in September 2 • 2026.
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