Hooks-Epstein Galleries will present "Connections," an exhibition of mixed media works by Houston-based artist, jeweler, and metalsmith, Edward Lane McCartney.

McCartney explores the layered meanings of the word "connections" - physical, emotional, political, and historical - through the lens of material, method, and metaphor. Drawing from his foundation in jewelry and metalwork, McCartney expands the language of adornment to address broader societal structures, using chainmail as both, medium and message.

Traditionally a symbol of power and protection, armor becomes a vehicle for vulnerability and irony. Exaggerated chainmail wall hangings and assemblages are forged from familiar, often discarded materials - colored pencils, outdated computer keyboards, and tarnished silverware. Once useful and now obsolete, these objects are bound together into bold, tactile expressions that question function, purpose, and value, speaking as much about disconnection as to connection.

A thread of dark humor runs throughout the exhibition, acknowledging absurdity and contradiction. Works such as Toothbrush, made from sterling, nickel, and the artist’s own pulled teeth, confront viewers with pun and a sense of intimate discomfort. Simultaneously, McCartney’s titles often invite a second look and a double meaning. Political undertones surface as the works grapple with the armored rhetoric of the current U.S. administration - its deflections and its dysfunctions - mirrored in the deliberately negated function of the objects.

Broken, bent, and defunct forms become quiet performances of power undone. Finally, the jewelry pieces in "Connections" return the conversation to the body - the original site of connection and adornment. Echoing the larger installations in miniature, these works carry forward questions of collection, identity, and the weight of what is carried, literally and figuratively. The exhibition is ultimately a reckoning of what connects, what protects, and what fails people.

It will remain on display through May 9.