Exhibitions
AMY PLEASANT: SENSE OF BELONGING
Sheet Cake Gallery / 405 Monroe Ave. November 22, 2025 - January 17, 2026
Amy Pleasant
Under the banner of Fall of Freedom - an urgent call to the arts community to unite in defiance of authoritarian forces sweeping the nation - Sheet Cake is proud to present Amy Pleasant's Sense of Belonging series in the gallery’s project space. This series, which includes four large-scale paintings and an ongoing series of drawings, began following the Trump administration’s aggressive roll back of DEI efforts and the banning of specific words and phrases termed “woke initiatives”. Pleasant felt compelled to write and re-write this list as an act of preservation and endurance. Each work includes some of the 250+ words including “accessible, activism, activists” to “climate crisis”, and the list ends with “women and underrepresented”. The title for this series, Sense of Belonging, a phrase also included on the list, describes the collection in its entirety, in an effort to create space and visibility for all.
These works utilize a typeface developed collaboratively with designer Michael Aberman for a monograph, The Messenger’s Mouth Was Heavy, co-published by Institute 193 and Frank in 2019. This unique alphabet created by using individual drawings for each character represents Pleasant’s career-long interest in the shared qualities of writing and drawing. Her Sense of Belonging series takes this interest one step further by Pleasant’s use of the typeface in her drawing and painting practice.
Amy Pleasant received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1994) and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University (1999). She has shown extensively across the country including whitespace gallery, Atlanta, GA, Laney Contemporary, Savannah, GA, Birmingham Museum of Art, AL, TOPS Gallery, Memphis, TN, Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN, Geary Contemporary, Millerton/NYC, Institute 193, Lexington, KY, Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson/NYC, Atlanta Contemporary, GA, among others. Pleasant has received numerous awards including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Award, and the South Arts Prize for Alabama. Her work can be found in the collections of the Coca-Cola Fine Art Collection, Birmingham Museum of Art, Hunter Museum of American Art, Zuckerman Museum of Art, Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, Knoxville Museum of Art, U.S. Embassy, Dubai, The Columbus Museum of Art, The Progressive Art Corporation, and The Cleveland Clinic, among others.
Image: Sense of Belonging (Person Centered Care to Women and Underrepresented), 2025
