SHADOWS AND DUST
Form+Content Gallery presents Shadows and Dust, a solo exhibition of recent work by gallery member Jody Williams. Featuring mixed media prints, drawings, artist's books, and not empty boxes, the show will focus on the ephemeral aspects of dust and shadows as material, cosmic and metaphorical presences. Poetic references to shadows and dust date back to Horace's "We are dust and shadow," from Ode IV.7, and continue through T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland to the present. Inspired by these, and informed by other reading and research, many of the pieces in Shadows and Dust will include Williams' own writing.
Most of the works address either dust or shadows, rather than a combination of the two themes. Drawings of intensely lit natural objects depict intriguing shadows. Two digitally-produced artists' books include Williams' photographs of shadows taken over the past 30 years. A series of etchings combine thousands of dusty specks printed over layers of digital dots, atmospheric photographs and written phrases. Mixed media boxes, resembling miniature cabinets of curiosity, include containers of dust samples from near and far.
"For the past twelve years, I have been including actual specimens and artifacts in my work as a means to document with physical evidence the process of collecting and ordering specific moments in specific places. Containers of dust and other small particles will be included in this exhibition. Shadows, lacking substance (but not essence) are more difficult to collect, and have been captured with photographs and drawings. The fugitive qualities of both shadows and dust evoke the present, past, and future, and offer me many directions to take this body of work in both form and content."
Jody Williams lives in Minneapolis, where she publishes artist’s books under the name Flying PaperPress and teaches at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. She received a BA from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and an MFA in printmaking from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. Her work is in the collections of the Walker Art Center, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota Historical Society, and many other museums and libraries in the United States, Canada, and Europe. She has exhibited widely in the US and abroad.
Honors include fellowships, grants and awards from the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota Craft Council, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She has held residencies at the Frans Masereel Printmaking Center (Kasterlee, Belgium), ArtPark (Lewiston, New York), Women’s Studio Workshop (Rosendale, New York), and the Carleton College Library (Northfield, Minnesota). In 2008 she was the inaugural recipient of the Minnesota Book Artist Award, and she received Artist's Initiative Grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board in 2013 and 2016.
Williams' website: www.flyingpaperpress.com
/shadows-and-dust
