In the HAC Gallery

In addition work from 65+ local artists, HAC's Gallery & Gift Shop exhibits art work from emerging and historically unrepresented local artists through its Gallery program. The Gallery & Gift Shop hosts pop-up events, demonstrations, receptions, and artist talks during Last Fridays & the Art Walk and beyond. Read on to learn about the exhibition currently in the HAC Gallery.

Glass, Glitz & Sparkle

By Dikki Putilin & Joni White

Where Pop explodes, Surreal dreams glitch, and graffiti goes glam.

Welcome to Glass, Glitz and Sparkle—a full-throttle riot of sparkle, chaos, and cultural remix. It’s neo-Pop. Neo-Surrealism. Graffiti gone couture. It’s just all NEO. Nothing’s sacred. Everything’s sequined. Logos clash, icons melt, and glitter falls like confetti.

It’s loud. It’s shiny.

Dikki Putilin

Born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Dikki Putilin is a former diplomat to the United Nations whose artistic journey bridges continents, cultures, and disciplines. Her work moves fluidly between vivid, expressive energy and moments of striking realism, embracing both the raw and the refined. Bold colors, gestural strokes, and fractured forms become a visual language for the shifting nature of memory—where the past is not merely lost, but constantly reimagined.

Through painting, she explores the tension between remembering and forgetting, between holding on and letting go. Each piece seeks to capture both the ephemeral and the eternal: the things we lose, the things we hold onto, and the new stories that emerge in between.

Dikki Putilin's pop art painting of two mugs decorated like tomato sauce jars on either side of a bottle of wine. The packground features bubbles and stripes of blue and pink.

Art Education
Technicon, Port Elizabeth, South Africa – Fine Art
Bridgeview School of Fine Arts, Long Island City, NY – Fine Art

Joni White

Joni White is a playful fused glass artist working near Hillsborough, North Carolina. She creates visually captivating works of fused glass art with colors, iridescence and texture. Joni’s work varies from familiar images to colorful abstractions that exemplify the joy and wonder of refracted color and light.

Joni’s passion for art began at an early age, inspired by the natural beauty of tidewater Virginia and the North Carolina Outer Banks where she grew up. By the age of 13 she was earning money by painting on canvas and by charring driftwood, selling her art in local restaurants. In 2018, Joni discovered a passion for fused glass and built Leaping Dog Studio to pursue art fulltime. She has since combined her glass fusion, wood-working, and resin skills to create both functional and abstract art.