Zoe Pettijohn Schade creates painstaking paintings on paper, often working for years on works that take a unique approach to pattern and repetition. The recent work Attempts at Self Organization: Prevailing Bonds, on view in the third floor lobby, is an exploration of fundamental states of being that evoke the cellular, the atomic, and the elemental.Its title refers to the writings of Plato, St. Augustine, and French biologist Stéphane Leduc, who each informed the artist’s sense of how there is meaning in how forms are organized. Here, marbled paint serves as the foundation for a dizzying array of formal explorations, including mirrored cubes, hexagons, diamonds, feathers, leaves, and Rorschach-like ink blots, which for the artist create self-contained worlds, each with their own atmosphere. The interplay of thin metallic lines forms an elaborative configuration of geometric shapes. While the distribution of matter may appear chaotic and overwhelming, tiny details repeat and recur throughout. Through long periods of close looking, the layers of Pettijohn Schade’s organizing structure jostle for position, struggling to exert the bond between themselves and others in a process that evokes life at every scale.