Summoning Saraswati: Five Artists Search for Peace in a Restless World
By Avery Anderson | The Arts Passport
If you’ve felt the world vibrating a little too loudly lately, The Werk Gallery has an answer — or at least, a sound.
Their new exhibition, Summoning Saraswati, brings together five artists united not by style or medium, but by a shared longing for balance. The show takes its name from Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, and art — a figure who represents clarity in chaos. It’s less about religion than resonance: how we find peace in the act of making.
“This exhibition is inspired by the beauty and balance Saraswati ushers into being in a violent world often led by envy, lust, and greed,” the gallery’s statement reads. In other words: a timely goddess for a noisy century.
The idea began, fittingly, with painter Minakshi De, who channels her Hindu heritage into what she calls “a meditative practice of oneness.” During the isolation of the pandemic, she started painting to recover a sense of connection. “In solitude, I discover clarity — a space where my thoughts flow freely and my emotions find their voice,” she said. “My painting is my seva — my service, my identity.”
Her intricate linework and layered imagery blend prayer, psychology, and myth. She paints to quiet the mind, and her pieces set the spiritual tone for the exhibition. “Through meditation, I found that connection where silence becomes harmony with all that exists,” she said. “A relaxed mind gives birth to creation, and through creation I find relaxation.”
That search for stillness extends across the room. Karen Mullendore, a longtime St. Pete artist who left a career in interior design to return to clay, sculpts figures that seem to surface from the earth itself. “Protecting our fragile environment is important to me, and I hope to express that idea in my work,” she said. Her muted palette — clay tones with glimmers of metallic — keeps the focus on form and feeling. “I want all finishes to pull together in one unifying statement,” she said. Her sculptures, like the goddess herself, rise from water and return to dust.
Xan Peters, a Clearwater native who once trained to be a paleontologist, takes a more scientific route to spirituality. His ceramic urns merge fossils and vessels, memory and matter. “If a fossil is like a memory of life, then my object is like my own memory made material,” Peters said. “Reverence and research are two sides of the same coin.” His work asks: what does it mean to remember the natural world — not just study it, but grieve for it?
In the adjoining space, glass artists Jodi Chemes and Veronica Dunn build luminous circles of color and light — Chakra-inspired stained-glass pieces that converse directly with De’s painting Five Elements of Life. “Each color and sizing reflects the Chakras in the painting,” they explained. “From there, we chose an animal for each Chakra by thinking about its natural qualities.” A dragonfly, a snail — small creatures, large meanings. “Even when the glass is completely still, it feels like it’s moving,” they said. “It has its own energy.”
It’s a fitting metaphor for The Werk Gallery itself — a place where motion and stillness coexist. Founded by Fritz and Matthew Faulhaber, the space has become a kind of creative greenhouse: one part gallery, one part community experiment. Their mission is both local and cosmic — to give Tampa Bay artists a stage that can hold big ideas.
And Summoning Saraswati is full of big ideas. It’s a show that believes art can be both meditative and urgent, ancient and immediate. Together, these five artists aren’t just depicting a goddess; they’re embodying what she stands for — the patience to look closely, the humility to listen deeply, and the faith that creation itself is a form of healing.
Summoning Saraswati runs November 7–30 at The Werk Gallery, 2210 1st Ave S, St. Petersburg. Opening reception November 7, 5–9 p.m. Artist talk November 30, 1 p.m.
Avery Anderson
Avery Anderson