September 29 - October 29, 2004
- Reception: Thursday, September 30, 5-8 p.m. Gallery Lounge
Jodi Bowen received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and is a professor of Art at Lake Land Community College in Mattoon, Illinois. Ms. Bowen currently lives and practices art in Champaign, Illinois.
“Pathways throughout life take on a variety of journeys that often converge towards a reason or meaning. Yet it’s this unknown path that I find compelling. These path drawing installations represent memories and visions of life through my past and present. I think of the school blackboards and their layers of white transparent chalk. I think of the meandering of rivers and the deeper movements of lakes, marshes and oceans as well as the cracks in the earth during drought. I think of the wavering of clothes hanging on my Grandmother’s clothesline and the subtle and sensuous undulating horizon of the Midwest flatlands. All these strong sensory experiences ignite abstract thoughts for interpretation through line, form and installation.”
—Jodi Bowen
James Ibur received his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and is a associate professor of art at Saint Louis Community College/Meramel. Mr. Ibur currently lives and practices art in Saint Louis, Missouri.
“My concerns over the past 10 years have embraced a wide range of ceramic expressions for approaching ideas about containment…most recently, bio/anthropomorphically inspired urns, vases, tureens, bowls and huge cups have been made to look encrusted and ancient, even broken, to imply use and age and ultimately, perhaps suggesting time passing. Pots grow out of sensual sea forms; sea forms surround and overwhelm vessels as a way to acknowledge nature’s unyielding and persistent power. I want to suggest our own fragile existence and that it is ultimately given over to memory in the form of fossils.”
—James Ibur