 
The 2026 FL3TCH3R Exhibit is excited to anounce our new home at Fischman Gallery!
The FL3TCH3R Exhibit:
The FL3TCH3R Exhibit:
Art has long served as a site of witness, dissent, and imagination; a space in which artists make visible the tensions, contradictions, and urgencies of public life. Across time and place, social and politically engaged art has challenged systems of power, confronted histories of violence and exclusion, and insisted on the possibility that visual culture can do more than reflect the world as it is. It can interrupt, question, expose, mourn, provoke, and propose.THE FL3TCH3R EXHIBIT is rooted in that belief.
Bringing together artists whose work engages the social and political conditions of the present, the exhibition affirms art’s capacity to operate as both inquiry and intervention. The works assembled do not ask for passive viewing. They ask for attention, for reckoning, and for a willingness to remain present with complexity. They engage the unstable terrain of contemporary life -its injustices, fractures, aspirations, and contested narratives, while reminding us that art remains one of the most vital spaces for critical thought and human expression.
At a moment when public discourse
is increasingly polarized, monitored,
commodified, and constrained, the role of artists in naming what is at stake becomes all the more essential. Social and politically engaged art does not offer easy resolution; nor is its task merely illustrative. At its most powerful, it opens a space in which viewers are asked not only to see, but to confront the conditions that shape what is seen, what is valued, and what is too often ignored.
It is in this spirit that THE FL3TCH3R EXHIBIT continues.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
ABOUT FLETCHER:
Fletcher Hancock Dyer, age 22, was lost too soon in a motorcycle accident in Johnson City, TN on November 5, 2009. Fletcher was a senior in Art and Design pursuing a concentration in Graphic Design under a Bachelor of Fine Arts program. Earlier, Fletcher used as a preface in an essay he wrote as a high school senior a quote by Gerald W. Johnson, “Every great work of art is offensive to someone, for a work of art is a protest against things as they are and proclamation of things as they ought to be.” As an artist and graphic designer, Fletcher’s passion for art was a vehicle that allowed him to mirror his passion and marry it to his concern for social and political issues through visual means. Fletcher was always curious and aware of current events; he experimented in innovative ways to create works that investigate contemporary social issues. New, unexpected ideas and perspectives had unique ways of coming to the surface as a result of Fletcher’s creative means of experimentation. Fletcher wrote, “I dream of making a difference in some way with my art, I might attempt to right political, social, and religious wrongs by showing the rest of society a glimpse of how I feel about serious issues in the world…Hopefully the awareness that I can help create will spark an interest in a movement that others will follow.” Fletcher’s work embodies a purposeful, deliberate perspective of his personal endeavor to employ art as social and political commentary.
THE FL3TCH3R EXHIBIT aspires to honor Fletcher’s legacy by providing a venue for artists to exhibit artworks that continue the dialogue. For more information: www.fletcherdyer.com/about.html
Welcoming Jessica “JB” Burke 2026 FL3TCH3R EXHIBI JUROR |
Jessica Burke (who prefers to go by J.B.) has called many places home, but now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. JB is an Associate Professor of Art, Foundations Coordinator and Illustration Co-Coordinator at the University of North Carolina Charlotte. As a contemporary realist working in both traditional and digital drawing media, her work explores ritual, folklore and mortality. Inspired by world-building in children’s literature, her art invites viewers to contemplate their inner worlds. Her work has been curated into group and solo exhibitions that include the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina; the Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts in Tallahassee, Florida; the Kepco Plaza Gallery Museum in Seoul, South Korea and recently at Aqua Art Miami during Art Basel. Her work has been published in Manifest’s International Drawing Annual (INDA) 13; Hi-Fructose Magazine, Hyperlux Magazine; 3X3 Illustration International and Creative Quarterly: The Journal of Art and Design.
.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
(FOR ENTRY FORM: SEE DOWNLOADABLE
PROSPECTUS)
|
