Soft Hold - Photo Exhibition
🗓 June 2–25, 2025
📍 Eve Drewelowe Gallery, Visual Arts Building, 107 River St, Iowa City
🕒 Gallery Hours: Weekdays, 8 a.m.–8 p.m.

🎉 Opening Reception: Friday, June 6, 5–7 p.m.
🎨 RITUAL Workshop: Friday, May 30, VAB E318 (Details below)
🆓 Free & open to the public

Soft Hold brings together photographs from Signal by riel Sturchio and before the last lilac blooms by Bianca and riel Sturchio — two series grounded in care, connection, and the act of witnessing.

• Signal honors LGBTQ+ and women spiritual practitioners through portraits shaped by ritual and reverence.

• before the last lilac blooms explores queerness, disability, and siblinghood through images of intimacy and trust.

Together, these works invite a slower gaze — one that lingers with tenderness and attends to what often goes unseen.

RITUAL - Somatic Workshop and Lumen Prints
🗓 Friday, May 30, 2025
📍 Visual Arts Building (VAB) Room E318, 3rd Floor
🕒 Sessions at 2–3 p.m., 3–4 p.m., 6–7 p.m., 7–8 p.m.
14 person capacity. No Registration required.

Join riel Sturchio and Marisa LaGuardia for RITUAL, a collaborative, somatic-based art workshop using UV light to create lumen prints. No experience or materials needed. Participants are encouraged to bring 1–5 personal and small handheld objects. A brief meditation will open each session, followed by art making and a group discussion.
🔗 More info: www.begincollective.com

Support for this event is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Iowa Arts Council, which exists within the Iowa Economic Development Authority.