Join us this September, as Spiralis Gallery presents Tides of Memory, an exploration of water, ecology, and cultural memory grounded in Maryland's Eastern and Western Shores.

Land and water hold their own kind of archive here, carrying environmental history, migration, labor, Indigenous knowledge, and diasporic memory all at once.

The Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries have shaped generations of families, Indigenous communities, African Americans, immigrants, watermen, and farmers, whose stories remain woven into this region's land and waterways. These waters have carried commerce and opportunity, but also displacement, enslavement, environmental change, and resilience.

Tides of Memory features the work of Dane Tilghman, whose richly textured palette-knife paintings tell stories without words. Tilghman often points to a line from Bill Withers to describe his own practice: “The wisdom of the future is the past. In city brogues and wise old southern drawls. The words that say the most say things that last.”

The exhibition also includes new work from Steve Walker, whose oil paintings and pastels turn everyday life on the Eastern Shore into something worth pausing over.

“The paintings in this show are based on my local experiences and memories,” Walker says, “The Chesapeake, watermen, hunting, and the scenery we see here every day. All of it is part of what makes the Eastern Shore such a complex and magical place.”

Both Tilghman and Walker will be at the reception, on hand to talk about their work and the stories behind it.