Kenton Parker: Everything Counts in Small Amounts

Everything Counts in Small Amounts consists of life-sized but small structures where people dream, and show gestures of friendship. The gallery will be converted into a landscape for contemplating friendship, sharing, and memory.

A wooden Treehouse made by the artist will invite children to climb into it, lay down, and view a video of the night sky. A Flower Shop filled with potted plants and gardening tools, just like ones you see by the side of the road, can be peered into. Paintings on canvas by Kenton Parker translate the artist’s solitary walks in nature using pastel colors and gestural dots and marks.

Kenton Parker’s work is about setting a stage for innocence, for steadfast friendship, for sharing and helping, and for letting go and moving on. His tributes to friendship and first love take place in modestly scaled vernacular structures. In these structures, re-created in the gallery, Parker channels every child’s escapist fantasy of a hideaway, a special place in which they can dream, be themselves, invite their favorite friends, and be close to nature. The gentle life-cycle of flowers and butterflies provides a mirror for the emotions and transitions of life, for the familiar dramas of being close and then moving apart.

Interactive Area
In the interactive gallery, visitors will create greeting cards — one to keep and one to share with future gallery visitors. Handmade greeting cards that express simple, direct emotions are cultural artifacts on the verge of obsolescence. Parker invites young and old alike to draw, add color, paint, and collage on a paper card, all in the service of wishing someone well. Friendship, love, good health, a beautiful day, deep dreams, and the slowing down to be part of nature happening all around us.