Join us for the opening of LAND OF THE FREE, HOME OF THE LOST, the 2024 Locust Art Builders: Summer Art Intensive for Teens exhibition. Now in its 14th year, , aka LAB, is a unique four-week pre-college program for high school students with an interest in art, design, and exploring creative careers. Each year’s exhibition evolves as a unique and timely reflection of the current issues and ideas impacting youth today.

2024 LAB Co-Directors/Lead Mentor Artists: Loni Johnson and Chire Regans aka VantaBlack

LAND OF THE FREE, HOME OF THE LOST provides us the opportunity to represent, deconstruct, and then criticize the American dream and its components. The nuclear family is a staple of this era, a time where economic and societal harvest was built upon the suffering and labor of those deemed unfit for the perfect America. Discredited as shameful and taboo, the issues that plagued these families were set aside and left to rot under the seemingly gleaming carpets. The result is prevalent throughout Land of the Free, Home of the Lost, the American ideals crumbling throughout the wallpaper and before you even reach the doorstep. Fully interchangeable, the two concepts of dollhouse and American dream are nothing but facades. The grey area of morality, seeping throughout the house, are reminders of the problems that plague society and stain the path of progress.