Sharp-Sighted 2023

SHERRY LEEDY CONTEMPORARY ART PRESENTS:

Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art

2004 Baltimore Ave. Kansas City, MO 64108

Gallery Director: Sherry Leedy

Catalog Design: Elise Gagliardi

Find us at: Sherryleedy.com

IG: @sherryleedycontemporaryart

FB: @sherryleedycontemporaryart

SHARP-SIGHTED

APRIL-JUNE 2023

Featuring artworks by:

Jeff Aeling

Laura Berman

Jane Booth

Marcus Cain

Angie Jennings

Kathy Liao

Annie Helmericks-Louder

John Louder

Art Miller

Nancy Newman Rice

Nora Othic

Barbara Rogers

Andy Ryan

Sun Smith-Foret

Harold Smith

Shiyuan Xu

Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art is pleased to present an ensemble of gallery artists and artists new to the gallery in SHARP-SIGHTED. The sixteen artists, that are featured, work in a variety of media, and with a range of concepts, but all share a keen sense of vision, creativity and purpose. They reveal art as an exploration of ideas and as a way to experience the world. For some, observation of the environment and nature is a source of inspiration. For others, the art process and the materials themselves, spark their creativity. Other influences are numerous, such as memory, emotion, geometry, pattern, spirituality, ornament, color and gesture. An indefinable mix of possibilities and passion propels these artists forward in their art practice day-by-day resulting in exceptional work in painting, collage, photography, ceramic and fiber. Each artwork is as unique as its’ maker.

Jeff Aeling

I love the spare, the austere, those places where you have a strong sense of the hugeness of nature and a feeling for what is beyond what is immediately visible.

-Jeff Aeling

The paintings of Jeff Aeling tell the experience of being on the land, the power of nature and the beauty of light. They reveal to us a deep connection to the vastness of the landscape of our country. Informed by the history of art and science, Aeling looks at the mutual embrace of land and sky as a twenty-first century observer. He shows us the specific qualities of a particular day and season, the temperature cool and the atmosphere clear, or, warm and humid, winds blustery or still, as he searches for the essence of what is universal.

Wide-open spaces have always been an essential part of our national identity and Jeff Aeling’s landscape paintings serve as a contemporary metaphor for the expansiveness and openness of America itself. Aeling’s paintings anticipate memory and capture the transitory and eternal as one.

The paintings of Jeff Aeling are held in numerous museum and corporate collections including The Beach Museum, Manhattan, Kansas; The Denver Art Museum, Colorado; The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, Missouri; The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art and Sprint World Headquarters, Overland Park, Kansas; The Museum of the West, Tucson, AZ; Tucson Museum of Art, AZ; Exeter Oil Corporation, Denver, Colorado; and DST Systems, Kansas City. Missouri.

Island on the Mississippi(Left) Sunset on the Mississippi(Right)

Laura Crehuet Berman is a Spanish-American artist who creates images that layer time, space, form, and color together. The natural world inspires her, and there is a focus on play, improvisation, and relational dynamics in her work.

Berman has created site-specific exhibitions and exhibited her print work in over 150 exhibitions at galleries and museums around the country and internationally. Her prints are widely collected and she has made commissioned work for a number of institutions and public collections. Berman has worked as an artist-in-residence at Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Colorado), Frans Masereel Centrum (Belgium), Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida) and Can Serrat Artist Center (Spain), among others, and she has been a visiting artist and lecturer at over 45 institutions around the world.

Her work has been featured in the books Contemporary American Print makers by Rooney/Stanish, Printmaking at the Edge by Richard Noyce, A Survey of Contemporary Printmaking by Ehlers/Ehlbeck/Muise, An Artist and A Mother by Carpenter-Estrada/Somsen/Buteyn, and Color Theory: A Critical Introduction by Aaron Fine (which features her work on the book cover). Berman has worked with a number of fine print and commercial publishers around the world, including Flatbed Center for Contemporary Printmaking (Austin), Círculo del Arte (Barcelona), Flash Flood Prints (Tulsa), and Pele Prints (St. Louis), where she has a long-standing relationship in collaborative publishing. Laura Berman is a Professor at the Kansas City Art Institute, where she has taught in the Printmaking Department since 2002. She is a Founding Member of the Art Brand Alliance, author of the ongoing online series of artist interviews, Reflections on Color and Printmaking, and together with her husband, she runs Prairieside Cottage and Outpost, a family-friendly artist’s retreat in the Flint Hills region of Matfield Green, Kansas, USA.

Laura Berman

Synergy 20 2023

Synergy 28 2023

Synergy 5 2023

Synergy 42 2023

Collage on cotton paper

10” x 10”

Collage on cotton paper 10” x 10”

Collage on cotton paper 10” x 10”

Collage on cotton paper 10” x 10”

Jane Booth built her studio on the rural Kansas prairie sited to overlook the landscape and sky that inspire her. Booth paints from the inside out, from her meditation of life experiences then out, through the physical activity of pouring, pushing, and brushing paint. Her painting begins with raw canvas on the floor of her studio or outside on the concrete, where paint and water can be poured, pooled, and pushed with a broom. The atmosphere of the painting begins with color, vast and saturated or thinned and fog like. A calligraphy of gesture akin to dance informs the composition. Only later, once the canvas is up on the wall, do gestures and forms emerge evolving in conversation forming a visual language that is Booth’s alone. Large scale paintings are the norm for Booth often ranging upward of 15ft.

Jane Booth’s paintings are in public collections throughout the country including: Kansas University Hospital, Kansas City, MO; Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Cisco Systems, H& R Block World Headquarters and Hilton Hotels, as well as the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO.

Jane Booth

Festival, 2021, Mixed media on canvas, 88” x 66”

Rhythm and Form - Theory

2020

Mixed media on paper

18” x 23”

Rhythm and Form - Oehlen

2020

Mixed media on paper

18” x 23”

Rhythm and Form -Jun

2020

Mixed media on paper

18” x 20”

For me, painting is a slow and durational method of comprehending and interpreting the world. I build images interested in exploring the narrow delay between sight and perception, between looking and seeing. I use lines that organize and weave color, divide space, and suggest shifting densities of light and shadow, movement and other aspects of the elemental world. These painted strokes are made by dipping pieces of wood into paint and striking the painting’s surface with approximate repeated gestures. Through this application, pattern gives way to a tangle of layers, disruptions, lopsided symmetries, gaps and glitches that may not easily reconcile as form.

These paintings are a visual conversation between fragmentation, compression and alignment that work to un-focus the viewers eye and create a state of vibration. This vibration may lead the viewer to an experience akin to a semi-meditative state of contemplation and the synesthetic experience of a feeling gaze upon tactile paintings.

For me these alignments represent the radiance of biological perception and cognition, language, memory, presence and absence. Collectively, these paintings are meditations on personal and universal mythologies, acts of transformation, and discovery and loss in the natural world.

-Marcus Cain

Marcus Cain lives and works in Kansas City. He is a graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute. Cain is the recipient of the Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship and a KC Arts Council Inspiration Grant, among others. His work is in the collection of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO; Sioux City Art Center, Sioux City, IA; American Century Investments, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, H&R Block Headquarters, Kansas City, MO, the University of Kansas Hospital, Kansas City, KS and others.

Marcus Cain

Manual Knowledge

Ritual Stimuli

2023

Acrylic on canvas 24” x 20”

2023

Acrylic on canvas 24” x 20”

Sequin Variant Series, 2022, Cut paper, turquoise glass beads, thread & acrylic on paper, 15” x 12”.

Sleeves V 2022

Acrylic on men’s dress shirt sleeves 25”

Sleeves IV 2021

Acrylic on men’s dress shirt sleeves

x 19”

25” x 19”

Angie Jennings has been photographing for over 30 years. Most notable for her street photography in which she searches out and captures serendipitous humorous moments and portraiture. Currently, Jennings has shifted her focus to more abstract work. Her imagery can be seen as stories in either a single image or series.

In the two photographs, He Flips - His Skirt While Dancing, Jennings created an abstract study of an ordinary object widely used by everyone transformed to a dancer floating in the sky. Jennings said that as she created the photographs she began to “see” a Whirling Dervish and that unconsciously she was influenced by the costume from Turkey and the architecture and sky of Santorini. She said, “I kept seeing the scene of a white-hot sun and cerulean sky as the man dances in the joy of the air. These images float with calm energy, soft light and a cool breeze from the skirt’s breath.”

Angie Jennings has worked in a range of photographic mediums, such as: Film, photogravure, digital, VanDyke, and cyanotype and has exhibited extensively in Kansas City, Nebraska, Oregon, Oklahoma, Vermont, Colorado, Wyoming and Beijing, China. She was awarded two Artist Inc. fellowships, a Charlotte Street Start Up Residency, honorable mention in 13th Annual Pollux Award and 16th annual Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers, as well as 2 public art grants through Kansas City Art in the Loop and the KC Streetcar. She won Best of show in the Sage Community Arts 7th Annual Photography Exhibit. Angie Jennings is President and a Founding Board Member of the Kansas City Society for Contemporary Photography and has served a 7-year term on the board for the Kansas City Artists Coalition.

Angie Jennings

He Flips - His Hem in the Air Ink jet Photography

18” x 37”

He Flips - His Skirt While Dancing Photography

18” x 37”

I engage in rituals to keep memories alive. As an artist of Taiwanese descent, I look for patterns and repetitions in behaviors of the immigrant family. As families separate and migrate, I recognize the invariable loss and the struggle to justify and reconcile the distance in between. As we rely more on virtual means to stay in touch with distant loved ones, the wall of the digital screen blinds us to those close by and makes us lose touch with reality. This translates into my work as I touch, wipe, rub, peel, and caress my surfaces, giving the figures skin and weight.

With each piece, I am constantly re-establishing my relationship to family, being conscientious of my distance to them physically and emotionally. My recent paintings, sculptural pieces, and wall drawing installations document the fluid state between experience, memory, and place. Like well-worn film negatives, I revisit images, snapshots, and memories through iterations, until they begin to morph, overlap, and degrade. The result may be an invitation to enter into an overwhelming yet familiar space, or only a flat wall with traces of history left visible.

-Kathy Liao

Kathy Liao is a recipient of the prestigious 2022 21c Kansas City Artadia Award, 2020 Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Artist Award, the Elizabeth Greenshield Foundation Award, and was awarded a public art commission for the new Kansas City International Airport. Liao is one of 8 artists featured in Found in Translation: Explorations by 8 Contemporary Artists at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, 2023. Formerly, Liao was Director of the Painting and Printmaking at Missouri Western State University. She was nominated “Most Influential Professor” in 2019.

Kathy Liao

Balcony

2023

Oil on canvas

48” x 38”

Kathy Liao, at the Sharp - Sighted exhibition opening.

Underlying Hum 2021

Oil on canvas

40” x 40”

I was born into a different time than most of my audience. In addition, my childhood was very different than many. While most Americans were vaulting into the new consumerism, my Mother, naturalist Constance Helmericks, took me and my sister backpacking into remote mountain canyons and canoing down rivers. I spent my childhood running feral. There were very long periods of time we lived, sat, slept and played completely outdoors. Understandably I never questioned that these places were my Living Rooms. From my earliest experience I instinctively knew the giving, alive and conscious Land was Home.

But times change. My childhood would not be possible today. Human population has reached 8 billion. The culture of a childhood played outside is gone; young people are mostly estranged from nature. Although we have existed for only 200,000 years our impact has been so great that we have entered the 6th mass extinction age. We must renegotiate our relationship with this planet.

But how to speak about this. How can we make entry back into sacred relationship with our Land more porous. How can we pass the threshold of separation back into awareness with kindness and caring. The biggest task for new generations is to realize that humankind is not separate from Nature. What effect one of us effects us all. Perhaps, maybe, in a small way these sitting places can establish a starting point.

-Annie Helmericks-Louder

Annie Helmericks-Louder taught as an Adjunct Professor in painting, drawing and design for over twenty years at the University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg, retiring in 2021. Helmericks-Louder’s work, in painting and textile, is in numerous public collections including the University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, KS; City of Gladstone, Community Center, Gladstone, MO; Chrondelet Hospice, Tucson, AZ; U.S. Department of the Interior, Buffalo River National Park, Arkansas; Everglades National Park, Florida; Warner Brother’s Studios, LA, CA; University of Arizona, College of Agriculture, Tucson; Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ; Windgate Museum of Art, Conroy, AR; and others. Book publications include: Art Quilts Unfolding-50 Years of Innovation; Art Quilt Portfolio: The Natural World; and Stitched Journeys with Birds.

Annie Helmericks-Louder

Dancers (Living Room Series #9)

2023 Oil on paper

48” x 36”

Ground Truthing (Living Room Series #15) 2023

Oil on paper 48” x 36”

Offerings

(Living Room Series #16)

2023

Oil on paper

48” x 36”

John Louder

Missouri painter, John Louder’s expressive landscapes are inspired by a lifelong love of the outdoors. Louder spends countless hours sketching, painting, and observing on location to distill the visual vocabulary that is inherent in each sense of place. Returning to the same area, time and again, Louder often creates paintings in sequence to record changes of season, light and weather. These diaries of nature capture more than just a visual record but also convey the overall experience of place – thick forests, valleys, skies, streams, and rocks. It is the artist’s intention that these timeless portraits of nature inform and enhance the viewer’s experience of the world, perhaps allowing them to see it in a new and profound way.

John Louder retired as full professor of art at the University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg in 2021. His paintings are in numerous public collections including First National Bank, Columbia, MO; Tucson International Airport, AZ; Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO, United States Department of the Interior, Everglades National Park, FL; Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS; Sprint Corporation, Leawood, KS, and Kansas City International Airport, KC, MO

Black Mesa Cottonwoods

2023

Oil on panel

36” x 36”

Art Miller has been creating intelligent and insightful photographs for over thirty years. He is a keen observer of contemporary life. For the exhibition “Sharp- Sighted”, Miller’s plaintive photograph “Boy Scout of America Statue of Liberty Replica (Strengthening the Arm of Liberty campaign) Kansas City, Missouri 2020” was chosen.

The statue in the photograph stands at the intersection of Meyer Boulevard and Prospect Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri and is one version of roughly 200 known as the “Little Sisters of Liberty”. These statues were commissioned from 1949-1952 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America and can be found in 39 states and territories in the US. There are now approximately 100 that remain Standing nationwide. The statue in Miller’s photograph was dedicated on November 20, 1949, and is one of two located in Kansas City.

When considering the conceptual implications of Millers photograph, Art Director, Rachelle Smith observes, “Millers’ image becomes a portrait of a monument conditioned by its own environment and a metaphor for these under-realized ideals, held back by centuries of racism and inequity…Often, his photographs manage to mine seemingly mundane and overlooked aspects of our built environment in order to reveal what may otherwise remain unnoticed.”

Miller is a Kansas-based artist who holds a BFA in Design and Visual Communications of the University of Kansas. He has exhibited regionally and nationally at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, Mulvane Art Museum, Topeka, KS, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS, and Salina Art Center, Salina, KS. His photographs are in the permanent collections of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Sprint Nextel Corporation World Headquarters, Overland Park, KS; American Century Investors Corporation, Kansas City, MO; The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; DST Corporation, Kansas City, MO, among others.

Art Miller

Nancy Newman Rice was born in New York City and was educated at Cornell University and at Washington University, where she earned a BFA with honors and an MFA. She has received awards that include a National Endowment for the Arts/MMA Fellowship for painting, and nominations for a Tiffany Award and an AVA Award in the Visual Arts. Rice has exhibited her work internationally and her work is included in private collections in the U.S. and abroad.

Using Euclidean geometry as the skeleton of the experience is an approach rooted in Art History; Poussin and Cezanne both seized upon this method of pictorial organization through subtle designs and simplified spatial effects. The Sacred Space oil paintings began as an attempt to define the interiors of identifiable architectural structures by inventing elaborate geometric scaffolding to map the space within the confines of each edifice. As the oil paintings evolved the walls disappeared, seemingly erased by time, and what remained was the skeleton of intangible space, in essence, geometry as a sacred artifact.

Nancy Newman Rice

Imaginary Room 2022

Oil on canvas panel 24” x 24”

Behind the Door 2022

Oil on canvas panel 20” x 20”

Slide 2022

Oil on canvas panel 20” x 20”

Revelation 2022

Oil on canvas panel 24” x 24”

Nora Othic is considered one of the top regionalist painters in the Midwest. She builds on a legacy from her artistic predecessors such as Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton and the WPA artists from the Depression era, all known for celebrating rural America.

Othic moved to Marceline, Missouri when she was 7 years old and still lives on a farm today. Her rural experiences form and sustain her work as an artist, with numerous museum and gallery exhibitions in the Midwest to her credit. Her paintings reflect her lifestyle and focus on the ordinary aspects of life, exploring relationships between people, animals, and the environment. Her straightforward depiction of the everyday approaches the heroic.

Othic has felt an important connection to farm animals since childhood, seeing them as a bridge between humanity and the natural world. Every year, she travels to the Missouri State Fair to take reference photos for her paintings. Not only are the animals (prime examples of their breeds) available for close-ups; they are shampooed, brushed, clipped, and polished to perfection, so that her paintings of them become iconic as well as descriptive.

Othic’s paintings and drawings of horses, roosters, pigs, and rabbits are in a class of their own. While Othic often shows humans in action, completing a task or caring for an animal, her animals are presented in stillness, tranquil and dignified, each a blue-ribbon winner. She is a sympathetic and keen observer and clearly sees each creature as a unique individual and nowhere is this more apparent than in her portraits of rabbits. Elizabeth Kirsch has said of Othic’s rabbits, “Not since Albrecht Durer has any artist seemed to care as much about these gentle creatures.”

Nora Othics artwork is held in the collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO; Marianna-Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; City of Overland Park, KS; Great Plains Art Museum, Lincoln, NE and others.

Nora Othic

Summer 2022

Oil on canvas

48” x 72”

Ode to Mullein 2022

Oil on canvas

48” x 36”

Blue Ribbon animals from the Missouri State Fair. Acrylic on canvas, varring in size.

Andy Ryan’s abstract watercolors contain both absurdist humor and references to mysticism and spirituality. In his paintings, surreal landscapes, ghostly figures, and botanical forms emerge from overlapping shapes and gradient color-fields. His work draws from a variety of influences, from modernism to folk art, comics, craft and design. Ryan’s undulating forms are built with colorful layers of paint, each varying in density, creating movement and visual symmetry within each piece.

Andy Ryan grew up in Phoenix, Arizona and received his BA in photography from Northern Arizona University in 1997. He moved to New York City in 1999 and spent over 20 years there working as a freelance editorial and commercial photographer, traveling extensively as part of the job. He married painter Ky Anderson in 2009. His increased exposure and awareness to the world of contemporary painting via Anderson began his interest in starting a painting practice of his own one day.

In 2020, as the covid pandemic continued throughout the country, Ryan and Anderson moved from NYC to Kansas City. With the move, Ryan made a career change and began to experiment with painting, developing a unique style and technique rooted in his experience growing up in the southwest and his uniquely wry sense of humor. Ryan is an active participant in the Kansas City arts scene and has participated in numerous group exhibitions. His first solo show was in early 2023 at the main Kansas City Public Library.

Andy Ryan

Tongue Tied 2021

Watercolor on paper 22” x 27”

Pollinator 2022

Watercolor on paper 22” x 27”

New Confection 2022

Watercolor on paper 22” x 27”

Blart 2022

Watercolor on paper 22” x 27”

I think the media sometimes creates polarizing imagery of Black men. Either you are an Obama, or you are a thug. In my opinion, regular, hard-working, simple, Black men are an ignored group. They are the new ‘invisible man.’

– Harold Smith

The paintings of Harold Smith have been characterized by the poet, Glenn North, “Harold Smith’s artwork captures the immeasurable pain and unfathomable joy of the Black experience. His exuberant use of color, his technical mastery of visual improvisation (can you say jazz?), and his profound contemplation of subject matter make his work stunningly unique and necessary. His current exploration of ‘Black on Black’ – a use of only black paint to create textured portraits of Black men – is at once an incredible demonstration of technique and a searing commentary on race relations in America. Harold Smith is a man for our times and an artist worthy of international recognition.”

In 2022, Harold Smith was awarded a three-year Studios Inc Residency in Kansas City and is one of three artists that received the Charlotte Street Visual Artists Award. In addition, he received a prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and an artist’s residency at MacDowell in New Hampshire. In 2021, Smith was included in the important exhibition, Testament, at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO. In 2019, Smith’s solo exhibition, Can You See Me? Was presented at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS. Smith is also a film-maker and respected writer with numerous articles published in KC Studio Magazine. His work is in the permanent collection of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art and numerous private collections.

Harold Smith

Man of Color #18, Acrylic on canvas, 60” x 48”

Visible Man #18, Acrylic on canvas, 60” x 48”

Gallery View

Sun Smith-Foret

Knotted, crocheted and beaded 3D amuletic sculptural work is a recent acquisition in my skill set and came from direct observation of contemporary basketry and lifelong appreciation of functional and non- functional basketry of non-Western makers. The circular nature of the construction mirrors spiritual concerns leaning toward the transcendental.

The work reflects trans-tribal influences from contemporary and traditional global sources and is informed by ancient practices of construction and embellishments. I have studied non-Western art forms, basketry of American and Canadian native tribes, and the earth-focused spiritual aesthetic of Australian aboriginal artists. Vernacular African architecture also influences the work, as do repetitive practices of rhythmic drumming and dance.

-Sun Smith-Foret

The knotted waxed linen circular sculptures of Sun Smith-Foret seem to speak with one voice, one to another, of a shared experience. Their forms accumulate slowly one small knot at a time, one semi-precious stone at a time, spiraling outward from the center into concentric rings. On the reverse of many of these works are intimate treasures, revealed only when the work is held in one’s hands, collections of shell from the Red Sea caught in a stitched net of thread. The making of these works is thoughtful, meditative, repetitive and focused.

The form of the sculpture itself, the spiral, is a universal symbol that in many ancient cultures depicts the path of the soul to enlightenment. The spiral also indicates the feminine and is linked to the generative force of the universe. The concentric rings, that expand from the center, are also attributes of growth and rebirth and represent a link between the human and the divine. The semi-precious stones also have attributed meanings and powers, such as energy or healing.

Smith-Foret is acutely aware of the power of the forms she creates and their tactile pull on the viewer. Her lifetime of technical expertise and pursuit of knowledge of other cultures and religions comes through in these individual works through their form, color, and texture that hum in rhythm with the universe.

Wax linen, semi precious stones, beads

Soma Bay #10

15” x 8”

Soma Bay #11 (front) Wax linen, shells, coral, semi precious stones, beads. 17” x 6”

Soma Bay #11 (back)

Infinity Spiral #1 Waxed linen and beads 7” x 7”

Soma Bay #8 Waxed linen, semi precious stones, beads 14” x 5”

Infinity Spiral #6 Waxed linen, semi precious stones, beads 10” x 9”

Infinity Spiral #4 Waxed linen, semi precious stones, and beads 6” x 5”

Shiyuan Xu’s fantastic sculptures, hand-built with porcelain paperclay, are inspired by scientific research into microscopic phenomena. These phenomena range from single-celled organisms in the ocean to diverse plant seeds on land, to cells that are the building blocks of all life. She sees the structure of these micro life forms as having been determined by growth and response to internal and external forces, leaving a record of movement in time and space.

Shiyuan’s forms are built by hand and glazed in an unconventional way. The materials she uses allow her to push the boundaries of fragility and strength, simplicity and complexity, order and chaos. She meticulously weaves thin skeletal lines into a harmonious volume. Shiyuan says of this process, “The regular and irregular structures and layers also contain the memory of my sensations. They are in many ways like living organisms, reflections of my own life path, and an abstraction of the complexity and delicacy of life itself.”

Shiyuan Xu is currently living in China. She recently finished an artist in Residence at the Lilstreet Art Center, Chicago, IL. She holds an MFA from Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ and a BA from the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, P.R. China. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Archie Bray Foundation, Helena, MT; Korea Ceramic Foundation, Incheon, South Korea; San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, San Angelo, TX and The National Museum of Slovenia, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Shiyuan Xu

Porcelain paperclay, glaze 19” x 18” x 9”

2023

Porcelain paperclay, glaze

19” x 18” x 7”

Vena #1 - Wall 2023

Vena #2 - Wall