The Salem Art Gallery

ON VIEW SEPTEMBER 11TH-NOVEMBER 11TH

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW is an immersive art installation which will envelope visitors in a surreal experience as it showcases the mesmerizing paintings and intricate set designs of KTRON.

KTRON is a local artist who specializes in illustration, scenic painting, set design, and costume creation. She attended Rhode Island School of Art and Design (RISD) then moved to Boston and started working as a set designer and builder for Club Nights at Avalon. She was also a costume maker for Kaiju Big Battel (a performance inspired by both professional wrestling and the tokusatsu kaiju era films of Japan). Kaiju.com After leaving Avalon, KTROn spent time working at various theaters like the American Repertory theater and the Huntington Theater. Ultimately, KTRON joined the Motion Picture Union and works full time as a scenic artist on various movies such as “The Town” “Grown Ups 2” “Castle Rock (season 2)” “Ghostbusters” “Beetlejuice 2 (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice)” as well as many others over the span of 17 years. Some recent highlights of her career include working on the immersive speakeasy inspired by Prince, “When Doves Cry” located in Beverly MA, and in Salem MA, creating sculptural set designs for Professor Spindle Winks World of Wizardry. KTRONs artwork can be found online at Ktronart.com and on Instagram @ktronix7.

CROOK concerns those who hold great power over us as individuals, and who can freely lead us towards or away from salvation because of our position within their lives. Our history is full of ‘shepherds,’ leaders among us, for better or for worse, that herd us like cattle and steer us closer to their personalized agendas. Those who are influential can sway us with their guiding hand, and alter our overall decision-making, especially in our highly politicized modern world. CROOK showcases all manner of shepherds, both righteous and serpentine.

Scott Hayden is a New England based illustrator and writer that utilizes narrative to make sense of a world that can otherwise be enormous and terrifying. He believes that stories are not only how humans have communicated with one another for centuries, but are how we share our individual experiences, and empathize with those around us both past and present. Hayden recently graduated from Montserrat College of Art.

ON VIEW NOVEMBER 11TH-JANUARY 1ST

HEXMAS is a Salem Art Gallery Exhibition that embraces the vast range of interpretations of Winter Holidays, including the Satanic Holiday, Sol Invictus, as well as many other winter myths and legends across the regions, throughout history. The Satanic Temple observes December 25th as Sol Invictus, a celebration of being unconquered by superstition and consistent in the pursuit and sharing of knowledge. The cult of Sol existed within Rome since its early days as a republic, and Invictus was an epithet used for Jupiter, Mars, and Apollo (among others). The festival celebrated these gods and may have also been used to celebrate the winter solstice.