Spandrel Spaces: A Shared Moment in Patillas

As I share this photo album from Spandrel Spaces: The Art of In-between, exhibited from May-July 2025,
at the Museo de Arte e Historia Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos, Patillas, Puerto Rico, I am struck again by how much this exhibition was shaped not only by the paintings on the walls but also by the people who entered the space.

If you visited the exhibition, there is a good chance you will find yourself here, caught mid-conversation, leaning into a painting, moving through the galleries with curiosity, or arriving as part of one of the many Patillas school groups who filled the museum with questions, laughter, and careful looking. These images hold moments of encounter between art and viewer, between ideas and lived experience, and between generations.

The Link to the album is at the end of this blog

Spandrel Spaces explored thresholds, those in-between places where form, ecology, memory, and imagination overlap. Yet what truly animated the exhibition was the way people inhabited those spaces together. Students encountering contemporary art for the first time. Families returning more than once. Elders sharing stories sparked by color and movement. Visitors allowing themselves time to pause, to feel, and to ask.

This album is not documentation in the formal sense. It is a record of presence. Of attention, of the quiet courage it takes to step into an unfamiliar visual language and make it your own. For me, seeing these images now is a reminder that painting does not end with the final brushstroke. It continues in dialogue, in reflection, and in the lived moment of looking.

Sharing art is a privilege. To have had this work held by a community, by Patillas, by its students, educators, families, and visitors, is something I carry with deep gratitude. Thank you to everyone who came, who lingered, who returned, and who allowed these paintings to become part of a shared time and place.

May these photographs bring back your own memories of the exhibition or offer a glimpse into a moment when art became a meeting ground.

See opening speech by Richard Druitt and Andres Rua
See opening speech by Antonio Walker
See opening speech by Ana Pagan and the 3t’s welcome speech (English)
See 3t’s welcome speech (Spanish)

Thank you to Ive Felix and Indio Jose J. Rivera Lebron for great support and love, as well as Nancy and Luis.

Thanks to Hon. Maritza Sánchez Neris, Mayor of Patillas, and far right, Sheila Colon, Director of the Museum.

Appreciations to my botanical team, who all made it to opening night (17th May 2025), to support me. I am very lucky. L-R: Kurt Miller, Joel Mercado, Steve Maldonado, Eugenio Santiago, Amelia Merced, Erid Roman, and Roqui Bello. 

Thanks to Bill Davidowski for the handmade mahogany frames and to Andres Rua for help installing the exhibit.

Big appreciation to Antonio Walker, who was the MC for the opening. 

Tom Elicker and Joel Asker deserve a huge thanks for cusine and drinks!…it was Tom’s birthday as well.

One of the moments held in this album shows me standing with the children, listening as a young child points and slowly traces his finger along the surface of a painting titled Umbracala sylvaticus. I am not explaining the work to him. I am listening to how he is reading it. This was one of the great gifts of the exhibition. Watching children encounter the paintings without hesitation or self consciousness. They approached the work as terrain rather than object. They followed lines, paused in dense areas, and returned to places that caught their attention. Their bodies told the story of looking.

In these moments, the gallery shifted from a place of display to a place of shared attention. The paintings did not ask to be understood quickly or verbally. They asked for time. For patience. For presence. Children seemed to understand this instinctively.

Umbracala sylvaticus carries the density of forest shade, of layered growth, of spaces where light is filtered and movement is slow. Seeing a child trace its forms felt less like observation and more like recognition. The painting became something navigable, something that could be entered without instruction.  For me, this was a reminder of why sharing work publicly matters. Art does not live only in the studio or on the wall. It lives in these exchanges…the quiet act of listening…allowing meaning to emerge without control.

Sharing art is a privilege. It requires trust in the viewer and humility in the maker. This exhibition offered both, and this photo album holds the evidence of that shared experience.

CLICK TO SEE FULL ALBUM: https://photos.app.goo.gl/4v5NvExW8UkNynQW6

With Thanks,
3t