Past Events:

Anacostia River Relief Project
Senor Project by Ardis Strong
South Gallery
Smith Hll of Art
Through May 22th

From Beneath the Surface
Pam Nabholz
Photographs
2nd year MFA
West Gallery
Smith Hll of Art
Through May 15th

Katherine Sherwood
Visiting Artist Lecture
31 March
3:45, Thursday
Smith Hall of Art, Room A-114

Katherine Sherwood envisions her large-scale paintings as if they were
medieval manuscript illuminations seen through a microscope. Her thickly
layered surfaces have the brittle, weathered appearance of parchment,
and the gestural painted marks suggest vastly enlarged arcane symbols or
fragments of ancient script. In fact, these elements do have roots in
ancient mysticism: the tracery emblems are based on those in the
/Lemegeton, or The Lesser Key of Solomon/, a seventeenth-century
handbook of sorcery that is itself a compilation of earlier material.
Sherwood juxtaposes they cryptic marks with collage photolithographs of
her own angiograms (X-ray views of blood vessels in the brain). The
skeins of blood vessels bear an uncanny resemblance to the fluid lines
of the magic emblems, thereby forging a provocative link between a
mystical past and the analytic present. (from the Whitney Biennial 2000
catalog)

While it seems safe to suggest that Sherwood's paintings are about her
body, I think that such a reading is reductive and overlooks the larger,
more pressing issues her work addresses. By juxtaposing abstract emblems
derived from a seventeenth century book on sorcery with photolithographs
of the blood vessels found in the brain, the artist brings us face to
face with an ongoing crisis in America and elsewhere: What is a body and
who presides over it? (from /The Body of Paint/ by John Yau)

Jill Downen

Jill Downen’s recent solo exhibitions include shows at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, Purdue University Beelke Gallery, Lafayette, IN, and Ninth Street Gallery, St. Louis, MO.  Recent group exhibitions include Wear Structure at Open-End Gallery, Chicago, IL, Bi-national Art Exhibit at the U.S.  Embassy, Paraguay, Corners at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Ft. Collins, CO, and Projects ’04 at Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY.  Downen received a B.F.A. from Kansas City Art Institute and an M.F.A. as a Danforth Scholar from Washington University School of Art in St. Louis.  Downen currently teaches sculpture at Washington University School of Art.