Reframe the Frame: A Gallery of Becoming

Mixed media assemblage by Cheryl Fudge

This is a wall of transformations—quiet ones. The kind that begin in shadow, in silence, in the soft tremble of not being seen. Together, these works offer a protest without placards, a chorus stitched from fragments. They ask: What if difference was never something to overcome, but something to become?

In the top right (16”w x 17.5”h), a once-traditional portrait of a dancer has been physically altered—flipped, reframed, and reoriented—until the original figure disappears into something entirely new. The dancer’s body, once defined by exaggerated proportions and an impossibly narrow waist, becomes a dreamlike embrace between a child and an ethereal creature, somewhere between horse and bird. In this act of transformation, the artist challenges the ideals we are taught to idolize and reframes them into something freer, more intuitive, and whole. This is not a correction—it is an unveiling.

To the left (11.5”w x 9”h), a vintage clipboard holds the traces of a painter’s life: worn brushes, torn pages from a Paris guidebook, layers of memory lacquered into place. Parisian Relic is less about travel than translation—the movement between selves, languages, and identities. A relic not of conquest, but of curiosity.

Below, Fierce Grace (6.5”w x 12.5”h) stands watch. A lion-faced goddess, folded from momigami paper, her textures layered like armor, like skin, like story. She is ferocity and tenderness combined—a symbol for every young person who has had to roar simply to be allowed to exist as they are.

The wall does not explain itself. It listens.

This is a protest for those navigating worlds that were not built with them in mind—for those adjusting, adapting, and radiating anyway. It speaks to the necessity of diversity, equity, and inclusion not as policy, but as survival. As joy. As truth.

And in its layered silence, it says what every young person deserves to hear:
You are not a mistake.
You are the masterpiece.