When the humble pound sign became the hashtag, the whole world became searchable—if you can think of it, you can find it. The six artists showing work in “#” at Thompson Giroux Gallery are on a search for meaning.  Combing through their daily experiences and observations, they utilize very different techniques and media as they try to make sense of it all.

Natalie Ferrier works with found items, bits and pieces of daily life that she alters, embellishes, layers, and stiches together—literally—into memory tableaux, combined moments of a personal history rich with meaning.

Spencer Hall’s pieces are intensely personal and sometimes unsettling explorations of an interior landscape. Natural and unexpected, his objects and drawings come forth from a hidden world to face our real world head-on.

Michael McKay’s multimedia work looks to images and processes of the past, walking them into the present by re-imagining their function and repurposing their iconography-- their original purpose fading into our collective memory while a new meaning takes hold.

Lawre Stone’s abstract landscape paintings are inspired by both the natural world and humanity’s impact on it. Her richly-nuanced, glowing color palette captures the eerie beauty of chemical skies while acknowledging their threat.

For Ned Snider, familiar signifiers and words are the subject and the subtext—abstract forms he explores in composition, playfully altered to create new meanings and new contexts.

The men and women in Hazle Weatherfield’s work step out of mid-century fashion and advertising into a new narrative. Through layering and color choices, iconic images are made relevant again through the artist’s vision and curiosity.

“#” is a starting point—a question, a need, a search. The results are unlimited and unexpected.