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At St. Paul’s new Interact Gallery, a colorful, mischievous energy fills the room for 

 a new exhibition where landscapes and otherworldly creatures blur the line between the real and the imagined.

There, curator Bob Cozzolino and artists Carl Clark, Jill Reedy and Jesse Ferdinand gather before their newly hung pieces, including Clark’s painted landscapes of blue skies and roiling clouds, Reedy’s felted perched owl and Ferdinand’s psychedelic canvases of alien rituals and animal bridegrooms.

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“When I'm making the art, images come from like a subconscious place, it's almost more like channeling,” Ferdinand says. “I'm usually almost as surprised about it as anyone else is.”

The work was curated by Cozzolino for the Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, a nonprofit that supports artists with disabilities. Interact moved into the new space, a few blocks from the old gallery, in January, effectively doubling the exhibition square footage.

Cozzolino is part of a guest curator program that tasks curators to create an exhibition from works in Interact’s archives, which date back to 1996.

“I'm drawn to artists who are trying to imagine the otherworldly, the intangible, things like that, and make it in tangible form,” Cozzolino says. 

“There's so much in this show that is really about going to other places, going into the landscape, into nature, encountering fairies and hybrid creatures and sometimes scary things in the woods, but really about immersing yourself in another place.”

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“Something There in the Woods…” will be on view through May 15, 2026. 

Interact recently opened another exhibition, too:

up through Dec. 18,  featuring the work of more than 70 artists. On view are paintings, jewelry, wall textiles, clay skulls, and a wall of glossy ceramic masks — a menagerie of tigers, unicorns, foxes and more.

“It's really a chance for people to kind of put their best foot forward and show the things that they're really excited about that they've been doing for the last 12 months,” says Brittany Kieler, gallery director for Interact.

There will be a free public reception for both exhibitions Nov. 22. 

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Alex V. Cipolle

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St. Paul’s Interact Gallery debuts its newly expanded space with an otherworldly exhibition drawn from its deep artist archives, spotlighting the imaginative work of creators with disabilities.

Alex V. Cipolle | MPR News

artists posing for photo in interact gallery

A group art show at the new Interact Gallery shows 'scary things in the woods’

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