October 8, 2025

Collaborative art exhibition at Ferris State University’s Kendall College of Art and Design explores the weight and wonder of ordinary things

A new exhibition at Ferris State University’s Kendall College of Art and Design is inviting viewers to find deeper meaning in the commonplace.

Tension & Tenderness: The Domestic Surreal unites artists Michael Pfleghaar and Lisa Walcott in a collaborative exploration of the invisible forces at play beneath the often-mundane surface of everyday life. The exhibition is on view now through Nov. 15 in the KCAD FLEXgallery, located inside the college’s Woodbridge N. Ferris Building at 17 Pearl St. NW.

Pfleghaar’s featured paintings blend a flattened perspective, clean, balanced forms, and queer-coded interiors to reflect a deeply personal relationship to space, color, and objecthood. He infuses his compositions—often portraying botanicals and still-life scenes— with abstract elements and a sense of space that position domestic spaces as places of contemplation, assertion, and delight.

Walcott’s featured installations use subtle movement to transform common—and commonly overlooked—objects into visual representations of how the subliminal forces of gravity, breathing, and repetition influence our lived experience in small but powerful ways.

 By repurposing domestic tools and materials like brooms, drying racks, floor lamps, and closet shelving into kinetic sculptures that teeter, sway, or sag, her work suggests a pervasive tension in our modern world between growth and collapse.

KCAD Exhibitions Director Michele Bosak has emphasized the interplay and overlap between the artists’ work by weaving curated pairings of their pieces throughout the exhibition space.

“At its heart, Tension & Tenderness is a study of how things are held together: the self, the home, the art object,” Bosak said. “Together, these artists’ works do not simply depict the domestic—they prod, question, and reinvent it. Both ask, “How do the objects we live with shape how we feel? How do care, maintenance, and identity intersect in physical space?’”

Pfleghaar is an award-winning artist based in Grand Rapids whose work has been broadly exhibited in solo exhibitions throughout the Midwest and group exhibitions around the country.

His work has been featured in publications such as Architectural Digest and Arcadia Magazine, used as illustrations by organizations including Apple, HBO, and CBS, and in included in the permanent collections of the Grand Rapids Art Museum, Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, and Herman Miller, among others.

Most recently, Pfleghaar was one of 40 artists chosen for the Midwest Review 2024 in New American Paintings, and in 2023 he was one of four artists selected to create permanent terrazzo floor designs at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport.

Walcott also is a Midwest artist whose work and reputation extend far beyond the region. Her work has been exhibited nationally at venues including Land of Tomorrow in Louisville, Kentucky; Sadie Halie Projects in Minneapolis, Minnesota; and ARC Gallery in Chicago.

She’s also an educator who lectures and conducts workshops around the country, and currently teaches at Hope College in Holland where she is a three-time recipient of the Billy Mayer Endowed Professorship in Sculpture or Ceramics.

Viewing hours for Tension & Tenderness: The Domestic Surreal are Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.