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Josh Kermiet's visual practice has been centered firmly and radically in collaboration for the last decade with the free arts publication he helms as editor-in-chief of Free Spirit News. The Free Spirit News collective comprising long-time Portland artists Eric Mast, Corey Lunn, Raf Spielman, and Jeff Kriksciun have produced fourteen issues of the surrealist art rag along with group shows, events and festivals that engage social practice and prioritize community building. A forthcoming book from Free Spirit is set for publication from Floating World in tandem with Container Corps this year. This plump swirl of established, collaborative absurdity makes Kermiet's left turn into a new body of solo work an unanticipated yet welcome move off the newsprint page. 

With the entirety of the show in black and white acrylic on paper, Tea Gardens doesn't completely abandon the Free Spirit visual language Kermiet has helped to develop and define over the past ten years. It's clear though that putting down the pens in exchange for the paintbrush has given him a rich and boldly graphic upperhand that proves successful in getting his ideas across on a larger scale. Painting actively through the cold-sweat hermitage of 2020 to 2022, Kermiet emerged from the cave with close to one hundred works in various stages of progress which invited a deeper curatorial culling. A conversation and editing process unfolded quickly and naturally between Kermiet and his studio-mate and wife, Jen Olesen (Strange Babes; Valentine's director of music and arts programming, 2006-2012) who have worked together artistically on and off throughout their 17 years. 

The final eight works in Tea Gardens explore the room for nuance and complexity within a black and white construct, pattern play as improvisation, isolation and the invisible tendrils that continue to hold us gently in relationship to each other.