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Justice Jones | Senior Show

OUT OF FORM | JUSTICE JONES

Out of Form is a collection of self-portraits, feelings, and thoughts. It is a direct reflection of Jones’s reality as a multi-racial, bi-sexual, bi-polar, schizophrenic woman.


Slideshow of Artwork

Give your feedback about the show, support an emerging artist.


Artist Statement

I’ve always used art to process my experiences and navigate my mental health. I thought my old sketchbooks would give me a definition of self, but I no longer knew the girl who made them. Out Of Form was created as an intentional act of self awareness. I focused on discovering my foundations from childhood through the use of primary colors and basic shapes and lines. I juxtaposed this exploration with figures that change in color, size and shape just as we shift to adapt to our experiences. As I continue moving through the various stages of life, I wonder how much choice we are truly afforded in who we become.

Bio

Justice Jones is an artist, educator and activist completing her final year at Augsburg University as a studio art major. Her passion for learning invites her to explore many different media. Justice practices community space-making, organizing, and activation as a Tactical Urbanism instructor’s assistant at Juxtaposition Arts. She uses foundational elements of fine art to explore and process her experiences and the idea of nature versus nurture as opposed to choice in who we become. Her work on Juxtaposition Arts’ mural team, her business, and Out Of Form, are all informed by these values and beliefs.


Virtual Mock-up

Due to COVID-19 the show in the physical gallery space has been delayed. Here is a virtual representation of what it will look like in the Gallery720 space.

NORTHERN BLENDS

Northern Blends: The Artfulness of Coffee and Tea in the Canadian Midwest

March 1-30, 2019, Christensen Gallery

NCECA: March 27–30

Reception: Thursday, March 28, 5–9p.m.


Participating Artists:
Grace Han
Terry Hildebrand
Sam Knopp
Sean Kunz
Noriko Masuda
Mynthia McDaniel
Juliana Rempel

NCECA 2019, Minneapolis, Minnesota: these neighbors to your north felt a certain kinship to this year’s setting. Minnesota is often affectionately referred to as “Canada’s 11th province” because of our shared love of hockey, reputation for unfailing politeness, and of course, bitterly cold winters. One of the great connectors in those freezing moments is a shared pot of coffee or tea. A warm cup can bring friends and strangers together, and create bonds across borders and cultures. It’s also part of many daily routines, active in both our social and individual lives. We form private and public rituals related to the preparation and serving of these beverages, whether we’re hoping for a moment of comfort, convenience, hospitality, decadence, or rest in the midst of busy modern lives. Now more than ever it seems like taking a moment for conversation over a shared cup could do our world some good.

With Northern Blends, a small group of Canadian ceramic artists would like to offer an invitation to consider the meaning present in the simple act of brewing, serving and enjoying a cup. Featured are pots that celebrate and examine our relationship to the common phrase, “Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?” Each artist offers their own particular response. As a collective, they showcase the diversity of the Canadian experience. Moving between practicality and pleasure, the single-cup and the generous pot, we offer seven approaches that highlight the unique role the hand-made pot has in bringing a sense of artfulness to our day-to-day lives.

While each artist takes their own approach to material and process, all maintain a shared dedication to craftsmanship, design and the pivotal role of the artist’s hand in creating meaningful objects. This exhibition also offers American and International NCECA audiences a window into contemporary functional ceramics from the Canadian “midwest”. The artists of “Northern Blends” are a diverse group. There are artists born and raised in Canada as well as recent immigrants, those who studied abroad and those whose education is based in Canada. The work in this exhibition gives audiences a sense of the rich range of experience and knowledge in the Canadian landscape. Northern Blends celebrates the traditions, relationships and moments generated from the simple pleasures of coffee and tea. It is an invitation for conversation across processes and styles, borders and barriers over a shared cup.

This exhibition is part of CLAYTOPIA, the 53rd annual conference for NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) happening March 27–30, 2019 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

BUILDING BLOCKS by GLEN GARDNER

JANUARY 22 – February 1, 2018

Christensen Center Student Art Gallery

Artist Talk: Thursday, Feb. 1, 5:30 – 7 p.m. Christensen Center Student Art Gallery

Using stacked stone structures, Gardner’s work strives to show a connection that exists between the human world and the natural world while incorporating his submersion into adulthood.

Bio

Glen Gardner is a multi-media artist who is currently finishing up his last year in Augsburg Studio Art Program. He has taken up a focus on how humans interact with the environment, while expressing this with 3D media. His art focuses on bringing the audience to have an emotional connection to the natural and human world.

Statement

Growing up, I did a lot of hiking. A common character on these hikes were cairns, human-made structures of short, deliberately stacked rocks, and I was fascinated with them. Since then, I have come to believe that they are much more than just piles of rocks. On a functional level, these cairns of my early life served the purpose of marking a pathway where a trail didn’t exist. The instructions were simple: play a game of connect-the-dots with the stone piles. But they did something more. They showed me that I could be an architect in a human world. The simplicity of the forms, along with the abundance of material, encouraged these natural sculptures. I also began to realize that, because these stones had been exposed to the natural world, the materials gained a very intricate but consistent aesthetic. The processes of erosion effectively put thousands of years of work into these rocks, and the fact that similar rocks will be in the same place creates the ingredients for an interesting sculpture. By combining these natural processes with a human architect, and then performing this in a location that has been developed by nature for years and years and years, a cairn becomes a piece of art. Upon moving to Minneapolis, I noticed that the cairns I was seeing were taking a much different form. Before, they were used to mark a path, but in the Twin Cities this was much less needed. Instead, cairns here seem to mark a space for people, showing that a destination had been reached. They also spoke to the human compulsion to create and build. There have been several times at Hidden Beach when people just stacked rocks for whatever reason.

For my art, I wanted to recreate a feeling of entering a natural space in an unnatural setting while evoking childlike wonder among the participants. As I began this journey, I started to realize that these forms need to allow the natural world in. Unfortunately, I was lacking the time to erode materials for years and years, so I decided to leave a lot of forms up to chance. This meant that I would try to manipulate the form’s aspects as minimally as possible and allow the material to speak for itself. I began to see each stone that I made as a building block used to create a larger form. The results were these large and heavy spinal forms that could not be self-supported. The results were not jovial; they speak to me as a visual representation of me drifting away from the child inside, but still keeping those experiences in my heart.


Images from Exhibit