Kenyon Artists
The biannual faculty exhibition opens at 7:00 p.m. on April 29 with a public reception that takes place in the gallery, 103 College Dr. The free exhibition continues through May 29. The artists express themselves variously in digital drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, video and installation.
The artists represented in this exhibition include Read Baldwin, assistant professor of studio art; Claudia Esslinger, professor of studio art; Barry Gunderson, professor of studio art; Marcella Hackbardt, associate professor of studio art; visiting artist Adam Hinterlang; Ellen Sheffield, visiting instructor of art; and Karen Snouffer, associate professor of studio art.
Baldwin brings environmental sensitivity and spiritual intensity to landscapes that capture preserved lands in England and the United States. His work integrates "a subtle, purposefully eclectic borrowing of methods from the history of landscape painting," he said. "The history of the land is a disrupted narrative."
Esslinger presents a video sculpture linking the viewer to family slide-and-video "travel histories" with disappearing horizons. "The vistas remain as elusive as they are in familiar commercial postcards," she said. Another piece, a single-channel video, is an example of creative collaboration within the liberal arts and includes contributions from a dancer, a musician and a Kenyon student.
Gunderson delivers wall-mounted sculptures that explore the small, family farm, with abstract patterns of plowing, tilling, seeding and growing and expressions of farm architecture. "All of these workings of the land have provided me with vast sculptural opportunities," he said. Gunderson cites the influence of the artist Grant Wood and "his depictions of rolling lands, lollipop trees and evidence of hard work."
Hackbardt's "photographic constructions" are born of her attention to sustainable agriculture and local-foods initiatives. Imagery from the changing seasons is used to stir ecological debate. "At the heart of my work is an urgency to make scenarios of discovery visible, to stress the imminence of loss, and to find ways to make a difference," she said.
Digital technology moves Hinterlang's "kinetic drawings." His use of digital marks helps him discover what a drawing can become and how far it can be pushed on the computer. "Despite the fact that we live in a time of radical shifts in ontological and epistemological frameworks, I ponder the simple mark and wonder how its physical, empirical manifestation can become something other as well," he said.
Sheffield integrates text, image and the book form in her work. To this exhibition she brings four artist books as part of her The Kenyon Review Poets series. "In designing an integrated reading and viewing experience, I consider the elements of time, space and visual language in an unfolding, shifting panorama," Sheffield said.
Installation artist Karen Snouffer reprises L.A.-KNOX, which was created for a show in Los Angeles and examines the contrasts between urban and rural environments and the artist's journey of self awareness. "The process of exploring the intersection of images from disparate settings generates broad cultural questions about how our worlds are at times jarringly different, and at others, strikingly similar," she said. "L.A.-KNOX is created out of a personal search for synergy between the familiar and the unknown."
The exhibition is accompanied by a color, illustrated brochure.
The Olin Art Gallery is open Monday through Friday, from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., and on Saturday and Sunday, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. To learn more, contact gallery director Dan Younger at younger@kenyon.ed and by calling 740-427-5346.