A new art gallery called The Creative House has opened in downtown Marquette. The gallery is open 9 a.m.-noon Tuesdays and Thursdays, 5-7 p.m. Fridays, and other times by appointment. (Journal photo by Mary Wardell)

MARQUETTE — As change happens in a person’s life, it leaves behind remnants, artifacts and afterimages that can haunt us.

That is the theme of a new art exhibit by James Veil, a graphic designer, illustration artist and musician, whose collection “Obscured Light” can be experienced at a new art gallery in downtown Marquette called The Creative House.

The contemporary art gallery opened in July to meet a local need, said co-founder Lali Khalid.

While they have sold some work, that’s not the main idea, she added.

“A lot of it is to do with getting people to think outside of the box, getting them to engage,” Khalid said. “(Contemporary art is) something that you’re not used to seeing in Marquette.”

Veil, the creative director of brand experience at Mayo Clinic, holds an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons The New School for Design and has taught design at Parsons and City University of New York. He works remotely and lives in Marquette with his wife, who teaches at Northern Michigan University.

He gave an art talk last week, which was arranged to serve the overflow from his well-attended artist reception on the opening night of his exhibit, which is on display through Nov. 30.

Veil uses shape, color, light and sound to convey his own experience of feeling haunted, which involves family, migration and the idea of home, he said at the talk Wednesday evening.

Born in Yorkshire, England, Veil moved to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, as a child and has lived in the U.S. for the last 10 years.

“So I have many homes, and many cultures and languages going on and it’s all kind of conflated together around different artifacts in my mind,” he said.

Veil’s artistic practice is rooted in modern conceptual art and Eastern-European graphic design, according to his artist statement. The work blends both rational order and embodied experience.

Veil is interested in the mind, consciousness, perception and “where art happens” between the medium and the brain, he said.

Ladders, sheep, Cold War radio signal stations, childhood rooms and cosmic events are some of the haunting “afterimages” he described.

“The light picture is imbued with all kinds of emotional valence, but nonetheless an essential form of the remaining image is there,” Veil said. “There have been many changes in my life and my mind, but some of these images, they’ve just been seared in there for a really long time.”

The four-part, 12-minute musical composition that accompanies the prints contains audio samples of the Soviet spy stations he listened to on the radio as a kid and a Yorkshire author reading a book about his family’s hometown.

Veil’s work is The Creative House’s third exhibit so far.

The next will feature the gallery’s founders Khalid, a photographer, and Alexandra Kralova, a seamstress and fashion designer, with an artist reception Dec. 1.

Artist receptions, which include hors d’oeuvres and a talk by the artists, are scheduled from 5-8 p.m. on the first Friday of each month.

Khalid said she wants this gallery to be a place where there are no restrictions on the art.

“I feel like it is our job as artists to create empathy in people, to educate them, to expose them to different cultures and things that are happening outside of Marquette, (and) … outside of what they’re comfortable with,” she said. “That’s what I plan on doing with this space.”

Khalid, originally from Rawalpindi, Pakistan, said the February exhibit will be about hate, and there will be an open call for submissions. The idea came from Megan Collier of Marquette.

“I really want to show that in Marquette, because I have myself been treated racially,” Khalid said.

She recalled sitting in a medical office after the 2016 election when a man said, “These brown people should go back to where they came from.”

“He’s saying this to me and I’m brown,” Khalid said. “I feel like there’s so much hatred spewing right now that it would be a very valid show to put up.”

Artists slated for coming months include April South, Bernard Park, Russ Prather and Carol Phillips.

The gallery, located at 102 Harlow Block on Washington Street between Boomerang and Reblossom, is open 9 a.m.-noon Tuesdays and Thursdays, 5-7 p.m. Fridays, and other times by appointment, Khalid said.

As she has through the Marquette Arts and Culture Center, Khalid will offer photography workshops through The Creative House next year.

Mary Wardell can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 248. Her email address is mwardell@miningjournal.net.