Spring/Summer Season 2011

In Balance: May 1 - October 1
The Art of Invention: May 1 - September 18
Plugged In: May 1 - September 18

JAMES SURLS:

	Bridge and Needle, 2002 poplar, pine, oak, redwood, painted steel 204" x 252" x 96" Courtesy of the Artist

In Balance

James Surls' artworks are remarkably identfiable in the approach to materials and the language of symbolic forms.  Yet the sculptures he has created since 1997, featured in this exhibition, diverge in significant ways from his work of the previous two decades.

Born in 1943 and raised in East Texas, Surls was strongly influenced by his practical upbringing.  His father was a carpenter and he grew up in a family where hard work and craftsmanship were highly valued.  The turning point in Surls' personal and artistic life came in 1974 when he met his wife, Charmaine Locke.  He credits her with being his "muse... a source that fed something into my soul that was not there."  He began to look inward, seeking to understand the origins of his work and the souce of its meaning and value.  "My personal language came out of that."  From 1976 to 1996, Surls lived and worked with Locke and their seven children in a heavily wooded compound in Splendora, Texas.

The landscape in which Surls lives and works is the source of inspiration for his forms and materials.  In his words, "a person's art has to come from a place.  You get comfortable in your terrain, and you use that, you draw from it, conjure from it.  I conjure from the earth, the woods."  He is like a shaman who "conjures" up powerful images.  During his twenty years in Splendora, Surls found the materials for his sculptures all around him - branches, upturned roots, stumps, and vines - which he cut, chopped, polished, painted, and marked to reveal the life spirit he saw within.  His deeply felt, rough-hewn, and often massive figurative wood sculptures connected with a wide range of viewers and, beginning in the 1980s, made him a central figure in contemporary American art.

In 1997, Surls and his family relocated from the flat, green, and enclosed terrain of Splendora to the flowering meadows, mountainous vistas, and luminous blue sky of the Roaring Fork Valley in Colorado.  The new location brought a fundamental change in perspective for Surls.  His forms increasingly incorporate space, line and light.  Wood continues to be an important medium, but he increasingly uses steel as a linear form and to provide structure for his works.  Many of the sculptures are composed of metal or wood forms that repeat in patterns reminiscent of organic growth.

For more than thirty years, Surls has refined his language of symbolic forms.  His work has achieved an increasing purity of form and corresponding clarity and certainty of expression.  The exquisitely balanced tension of materials and forms in the artist's Colorado work, represented by the sculptures in this exhibition, reveal his deepening reflections on the ever changing dynamics of nature.

DANIEL HENDERSON:

	Sculptura, 2010 White Carrara marble, stainless steel, silkscreen 81" x 78" x 38" Courtesy of the Artist

The Art of Invention

Daniel A. Henderson did not set out to become an artist.  He began his work in sculpture in 2007, following an established and flourishing career as a technologist and inventor in the area of digital communications.  As Henderson states, "Invention, like sculpture, is an artistic endeavor.  Although the two disciplines utilize different mediums of expression, both share the ability to affect our perception and how we interact."

After earning two degrees from Southern Oregon University, Henderson worked for IBM and assisted several ground-breaking scientists, including Nobel Laureate Jack Kilby, inventor of the computer chip.  He went on to found several of his own technology companies.  He is perhaps best known for pioneering the system for receiving wireless and video pictures via mobile phone in 1993.  The prototype of his picture phone is now in the collection of the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian Institution.

Henderson's sculptures are based on classic designs of 20th century technologies.  They are made from traditional scultpure media of marble, stone, steel, and bronze - materials that have weight, beauty and permanence.  The quality of the materials reflect the quality of the design of this outmoded subjects - design that took into account both the product's usefulness and its role as an object in the natural, human world.  The large scale of his sculptures indicates the significance these items had in the home and the long-term relationships they had with their owners relative to today's technological products.

Although the sculpture of these icons of technology seem familiar, they are experienced in a distinctly different manner than the objects on which they are based.  The artworks are not "useful" in daily life but are platforms for observation and contemplation about life.  They are monuments to both the optimism associated with technological progress in the 20th century and to the unforeseen, and perhaps unwanted consequences it has had for a future we now inhabit.  They encourage us to go forward fully aware of our complex relationship with - to live more deliberately with - ever evolving technology.

Henderson's artwork has been shown recently in exhibitions in the United States and England.  In addition to his responsibilities as president of both Intellect Wireless and Pinpoint Incorporated, Henderson is also involved in numerous philanthropic efforts, including The Tech Museum of Innovation.  He currently resides in Forth Worth, Texas.

PLUGGED IN:
Interactive Art in Electronic Media

Plugged In features the work of several ground-breaking artists in interactive and electronic media.  Their diverse projects explore the potential for technology to open new channels for artistic expression and appreciation.  By weaving together the virtual and the physical, by combining video and audio with electronics and computers, Plugged In creates a multi-sensory experience in which the viewer is both an observer and a participant in the realization of the work.

- Christopher Ault, Guest Curator

Prior to his current position as Coordinator of the Interactive Multimedia Program at The College of New Jersey, Christopher Ault was a researcher and adjunct professor in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University (NYU), where he also earned his master's degree.  All but one of the artists included in this exhibition are connected by their master's level studies at the ITP, which has a mission to explore the imaginative use of communications technologies - how they might augment, improve, and bring delight and art into people's lives.  The ITP is a hub of creative experimentation using state-of-the-art interactive telecommunications technology, for which it has gained the nickname Center for the Recently Possible.  Philip Sanders earned his master's degree in Computer Art from NYU, prior to the founding of the ITC.  He is a pioneering figure in interactive digital art who exhibited his first interactive computer installation in 1979.

EXHIBITION ARTISTS

Heather Dewey-Hagborg examines culture through the lens of information.  Her work has been widely exhibited, and she has been awarded several artist residencies both in the United States and India.  She is also a member of Future Archaeology, a collaborative of artists exploring the cybernetic nature of ecosystems.

Scott Fitzgerald is a media artist who uses digital tools to mediate between people and the space they inhabit.  Recently, the University of Oslo sponsored a permanent installation of his work Trigger.  Since 2007, Fitzgerald has been a member of the French sound lab, Locus Sonus.

Ted Hayes specializes in interactivity, the graphic and poetic arts, and inspired inventions.  Previously, he was an interactive design specialist with Mutant Media in New York City.

John Kuiphoff is a designer who specializes in interactive art and physical computing.  His previous experience working in Instructional Technology has led to the development of the "Social Syllabus" project, a tool aimed to integrate social media into the classroom.

Philip Sanders creates digital images and video and interactive installations that explore the relationship between the virtual and physical realms, visual language, and interactive storytelling.  Sanders was co-founder and curator of RYO, an expermental art and technology artists' space in New York City from 1984-1992.  His work has been exhibited in many galleries and museums in America and throughout the world.

Daniel Shiffman is the author of Learning Processing: A Beginner's Guide to Programming Images, Animation, and Interaction.  He is a founder of Page Seventy-Three Productions, a non-profit theater company dedicated to producing the works of emerging playwrights.

Raphael Zollinger works in photography, drawing, sculpture, and multimedia installation.  His work connects history with the present and blurs the border between personal and collective memory.  His work has been exhibited widely and is in the permanent collection of Pratt Sculpture Garden.