Two Dallas Artists Build Their Own World with New Immersive Exhibit

Situated just 20 minutes east of downtown Dallas, Mesquite Arts Center is an expansive venue, decked with an arsenal of rooms and halls, featuring everything from a concert hall to a playhouse. For the opening of Luminous Frequencies, featured artists Shamsy Roomiani and Poppy Xander (who is an Observer contributor) snagged prime real estate in a hall just to the left of the venue’s breezy entrance. Although both artists are known in Dallas circles for their individual practices, this collaboration marks a new chapter in their creative relationship.

Originally meeting in 2017 through photographers Daniel Driensky and Sarah Reyes, Roomiani and Xander first hit it off when collaborating on music videos and aesthetics for Xander’s musical project, Helium Queens.

“Dan Driensky and Sarah Reyes did the first Helium Queens photo shoot and asked if I knew Shamsy,” Xander says. “After checking it out, I just became obsessed with her and her work.”

After deciding to work together, it was decided that Roomiani would provide her unique creativity as the focal point of the Helium Queens music video titled “Shamstoria, 2020,” an eight-minute-long playful comprehensive survey of Roomiani’s work with botanicals, minerals and crystals, also featuring a sci-fi aesthetic and set in the esoteric world of the Helium Queens. 

“We knew we needed to collaborate on something,” Xander says. “Shamsy makes these sham-stones, and we basically worked them into the Helium Queens’ lore revolving around fractals and interdimensional travel.”

After several more years of friendship and further work around Helium Queens, in 2025, the two artists decided it was the right time to push their creative boats out further, but this time more into the realms of physical space. 

“At the beginning of 2025, we started working again, and it was interesting to see how our ideas grew over time,” Roomiani says. “We absolutely knew it was something special, and wanted to expand it into an exhibition and make it have a life of its own to travel beyond.”

To help iron out their thought processes together, Roomiani and Xander rented a cabin in Broken Bow, Oklahoma, for a three-day think tank and brought along both physical objects and their ideas for a show.

“We didn’t know what it was going to look like,” Xander says. “By bringing our materials and getting together, we were able to get a visual of what our world was going to be. We basically made an installation in the cabin, so the trip was imperative to the whole thing.”

After much planning and with the help of the Mesquite Arts Center, the duo again created a marriage of music and art, but this time, to be experienced in real time. Luminous Frequencies features 29 offerings of Roomiani’s naturalist art, deeply rooted in ecological aesthetics, set to a musical score Xander created under the moniker “Piscea,” tailored to each piece and its individual placement within the gallery space. The pieces emphasize themes of light, reflection, transformation and immersion in various forms. Sculpture, ink prints, botanicals, minerals and crystals all work together in a medley of naturalism that’s aesthetically pleasing if not calming. Xander’s musical score is soothing, a far cry from her previous work in Helium Queens, which now leans more into the realms of Enya or Air. 

“I was raised as a classical pianist and then started playing in metal bands in high school,” Xander says. “In this project, I was able to incorporate all the synthesized and electronica categories and dive into it as my character from Helium Queens. This was something I now wanted to explore: what Piscea sounds like.” 

For Mesquite Arts Center assistant manager, Erica Guajardo, who is currently pursuing a master’s degree in arts management, Luminous Frequencies represents the center’s foray into multidisciplinary creative collaboration. 

“This is the first of its kind for the Mesquite Arts Center to bring musical performance and visual arts together,” Guajardo says. “In January of 2025, they wrote us a proposal, and it was the most colorful and thoughtful proposal we had ever seen. They were a bit out of our budget, but it was okay because we knew they were going to provide a wonderful, vibrant journey for our community through this exhibition.”

Knowing that the proposal was accepted helped Roomiani get a clearer idea of which physical objects would work in the space she and Xander shared, rather than creating a collection for an undetermined location.

“I felt it was really nice working here for a show that was coming together,” Roomiani says. “I knew it would fit together, but it was cool to work on a piece that I knew had a place to go, with a musical score to give my work its own language. I was just elated.”

Cohn Drennan, current manager of Mesquite Arts Center and longtime contemporary gallerist, sees Luminous Frequencies as another step in the right direction for institutions collaborating with local artists to help enrich the fabric of the communities of greater Dallas.

“We pull a lot of people in from East Dallas and Oak Cliff and involve a lot of our artists in arts education programs,” Drennan says. “This show is really a collaboration and partnership. We wanted to combine visual with performing arts, so we get a lot of people that walk into the show and say, ‘Wow, that’s trippy.’”

In relation to their community programming, the following weekend on Feb. 14, Mesquite Arts Center will also be hosting Winter Glow Fest, featuring Luminous Frequencies along with Xander’s band, Helium Queens, for a family-friendly Valentine’s Day event, including workshops, silk screening, card making and lots of neon. 

Reflecting on the nature of the work, through this collaboration, Roomiani sees Luminous Frequencies as another reification of her established artistic concepts revolving around naturalism and centered in her decade-long practice.

“I would say my work has stayed true to its original investigations on the quality of nature,” Roomiani says. “I think it’s progressed into what I’m doing here today.”

For Xander, seeing things through Roomiani’s lens inspired the musician and composer to jump into a world that is Helium Queens-adjacent but refined to her personal scope.

“I feel this is something I wanted to do for a long time,” Xander says. “This collaboration allowed me the opportunity to go in this direction, and I’m excited for people to experience it with us.”

Luminous Frequencies opens at Mesquite Arts Center on Saturday, Feb. 7, from 5:30 – 7 p.m., running through March 21.