Alison Brynn Ross Asks Us to Look Again in Kindred Occult
What happens when the familiar becomes unsettling? When creatures, plants and everyday objects carry meanings shaped not by what they are, but by the stories people have attached to them?
Those questions run through Kindred Occult, a solo exhibition by Machias Arts Council member Alison Brynn Ross, on view September 10 through November 4 at the UMM Gallery in Powers Hall.
Working across painting, ceramics, wire sculpture and illustration, Alison explores the intersection of nature, folklore and feminism—and the ways superstition, cultural beliefs and deliberate misinterpretation can transform ordinary things into symbols of something sinister.
But Kindred Occult isn't intended to tell viewers what to think.
It's an invitation to look again.
Looking Through a Different Lens
The title Kindred Occult came from one of Alison's close friends. The two originally imagined a joint exhibition that would include a literary component, but when those plans changed, Alison, with her friend's permission, kept the name.
As she developed the work, the title became increasingly appropriate.
Alison had noticed what appeared to be a growing interest among women in witchcraft and the occult. But the more she read and explored, the more she saw something else happening.
“I realized it was really a leaning back to nature.”
For Alison, Kindred Occult draws a line between the everyday things and creatures surrounding us and the ways their symbolism can be altered to support a particular narrative. Her interest in nature and folklore has long appeared in her work, but recent reading and reflection led her to look more deeply at the historical treatment of women, traditional knowledge and the natural world.
The exhibition asks viewers to consider the lens through which they see those familiar things, and where that lens came from.
When Knowledge Becomes Dangerous
One of the threads running through the exhibition is the relationship between women, knowledge and power.
Alison points to traditional midwives as an example. Particularly in rural communities, these women often possessed extensive knowledge of childbirth, medicinal plants and remedies and served health needs extending well beyond pregnancy. Their importance within their communities also gave them a kind of authority that could make them targets of persecution.
Two paired works in Kindred Occult, Missed (left) and Served (right), explore that loss of knowledge.
Missed, acrylic on birch panel, by Alison Brynn Ross. 
Served, by Alison Brynn Ross.
In Missed, a stork—one of the most familiar symbols of childbirth—holds a red swaddling cloth.
Its companion, Served, is an empty pitcher marked with the handprints of the woman who might once have poured from it. Alison created the handprints with ceramic slip, leaving them deliberately sharp to the touch. Above the pitcher hangs dried tansy, an herb historically associated with both inducing birth and abortion.
Together, the works turn familiar objects and imagery into something more complicated: reminders not only of what was known, but of knowledge that can disappear when the people who hold it are silenced.
Creatures and the Stories We Give Them
Animals appear throughout Kindred Occult. Ravens and hares recur, along with other creatures carrying centuries of mythology and superstition.
That history fascinates Alison because the meaning assigned to an animal can change dramatically depending upon time, place and culture.
Black cats are a perfect example. At different periods, even within the United Kingdom, they have been considered signs of good luck and good health—and, conversely, associated with evil and demonic activity.
Alison has always found animals natural subjects to paint and sculpt, but she's also interested in pushing them beyond the poses in which we're accustomed to seeing them. She looks for movement, gesture and unexpected positions, citing sculptor Beth Cavener as an influence.
The result fits naturally into the larger conversation behind Kindred Occult: how much of what we think we know about something comes from the thing itself—and how much comes from the stories we've inherited about it?
Finding the Right Language
There is no single medium for Kindred Occult. Alison moves among ceramics, wire, painting and illustration, often without consciously deciding at the outset which form an idea should take.
“I usually just have a pile of ideas floating around and I can see how something would work best as they become fully formed.”
Each medium offers her a different language.
With wire, she loves the airiness of the material and has spent years learning how few lines she needs to suggest an animal and create movement. Ceramic is slower and more intuitive; she often begins without knowing exactly where the form will end. Painting is where she turns when what matters most is atmosphere.
“If I want a mood,” Alison says, “then I'll paint it.”
Seeing the Exhibition Through Someone Else’s Eyes
There is another layer of interpretation at work in Kindred Occult—one Alison hasn't entirely controlled herself.
The exhibition was installed by a museum studies class at the University of Maine at Machias. Alison made a few requests about works she wanted displayed together, but otherwise gave the students considerable freedom to decide how the exhibition would take shape.
“I left it open to the students,” Alison says. “Rather exciting to see how a group puts a show together.”
At the time she shared the story with MAC, Alison hadn't yet seen the completed installation herself. That makes the experience particularly fitting for an exhibition concerned with perception and interpretation: the artist created the works, but another group of eyes determined how visitors would first encounter them.
There Will Come Soft Rains
The first painting Alison created for Kindred Occult was also the only thing she painted last winter.
She called it There Will Come Soft Rains, after the poem by Sara Teasdale.
The idea at its heart is stark: the natural world will continue without humanity, oblivious to whether we're here to witness it.
For an artist who says she usually works quickly, this painting refused to come easily.
Alison spent months with it. She repainted it twice.
What she was searching for wasn't drama. It was something quieter.
“I finally got the sort of soft, eerie, quiet that I was going for.”
That quiet unease runs through much of Kindred Occult. Alison isn't interested in overwhelming viewers with the darker implications of the exhibition. She wants just enough tension to make someone stop, look and consider why certain ideas have survived, and why other kinds of knowledge haven't.
As Alison puts it, she wants people to consider “the lens through which they see the world.”
Look Again
For all the ideas contained in Kindred Occult, Alison's hope for what visitors take away from it is remarkably simple.
She hopes they'll notice more.
She'd like someone leaving the gallery to give a quiet field or a perched bird another look—to wonder about the mythologies and superstitions attached to the things around them, where those stories originated and why they formed.
Perhaps that's where Kindred Occult ultimately leads: not toward a single interpretation, but toward curiosity.
Look at the creature again.
Look at the landscape again.
Look at the story you've been told about it.
And ask where that story came from.
See Kindred Occult
Alison Brynn Ross
September 10–November 4, 2026
UMM Gallery
Powers Hall, Room 109
Gallery hours are Monday–Friday, 1–4:30 PM
University of Maine at Machias
Artist Reception: Thursday, September 10 • 4:00–7:00 PM
