Outside Ourselves… Outside Ourselves is an exhibition of painting and sculpture presented by Black Creek Studio. Located just beyond the hamlet of Highland, the Cortes’ studio is nestled in a rural landscape of apple orchards, wooded trails, mountain views, and winding creeks—an ideal setting for reflection and artistic exploration.

The exhibition brings together the work of five local resident artists—Jill Ziccardi, Leticia Ortega-Cortes, Archil Pichkhadze, Mauricio Cortes, and Dionisio Cortes—whose distinct practices enter into dialogue through shared themes of perception, identity, and transformation.

Each artist offers a unique lens:

• Jill Ziccardi blends nature, symbolism, satire, domesticity, and American slang in paintings that confront historical and contemporary stereotypes with sharp humor and irony.

• Leticia Ortega-Cortes explores the expressive potential of nature, the human body, and portraiture through a language that moves fluidly between realism and abstraction.

• Archil Pichkhadze captures the poetic resonance of the everyday; his cinematic, narrative paintings invite viewers to witness the magical within the mundane.

• Mauricio Cortes merges the surreal and the familiar in mixed-media still lifes that explore the persistent tension between nature and technology.

• Dionisio Cortes works across two and three dimensions, using abstraction and realism to reimagine architectural space and visual perception through a variety of materials and forms.

Spanning a range of mediums, scales, and techniques, Outside Ourselves highlights the artists’ shared impulse to transcend the self—inviting viewers to make their personal connections, discoveries, and imaginative possibilities.