Amygdala, Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, 10/17/25 - 1/19/26

Curatorial text by Haley Clouser “Jana Marie Cariddi presents two new bodies of work, including her signature amorphous paintings alongside a suite of black and white graphite drawings. Titled after the brain’s processing center for memory and emotion, Amygdala features sculptural paintings whose uncanny forms stir an instinctual urge to decode their designs through past experiences, eliciting feelings of familiarity, curiosity, and even disgust. These surreal works, originating from intuitive sketches and meticulous planning, animate the artist's obsession with childhood artifacts, pop culture relics, and early digital interfaces, spanning Windows screensavers, Betty Spaghetti toys, to "Pee-Wee's Playhouse." Cut from CNC-milled wood and embellished with airbrushed patterns, resin, and marbles, their compositions pulsate with color and texture, and mediate tensions between the organic and synthetic, the playful and macabre. Her thirty-two drawings depict abstract ecosystems guided by a personal pseudo-science that favors feeling over logic, coalescing into an alphabet of idiosyncratic petroglyphs. Balancing visually and conceptually opposing forces, Cariddi’s works reflect on the unruly, discordant harmonies undergirding our bodies, feelings, and surroundings.”

Images Courtesy of SCAD