The Maude Kerns Art presents the 2017 season opener, “Shifts: The Built Environment,” featuring the work of James Bailey and Dave Rowe, opening with a public reception on Friday, January 20, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. “Shifts: The Built Environment” is on display through Friday, February 10.
Eugene photographer James Bailey holds a BFA and a MFA from the University of Ohio. He participated in a one-year residential workshop with well-known photographer Minor White and was a teaching assistant at Ansel Adams’ Yosemite workshops in 1976. Bailey is represented in the Pacific Northwest Photography Viewing Drawers at the Blue Sky Gallery in Portland. He exhibits archival pigment inkjet prints in a series that documents Eugene Water and Electric Board’s Steam Plant over a period of seven years (2009 – 2015). Bailey’s interpretation of the steam plant recasts what he calls the “accidental visual aesthetics” of the space into an intentional aesthetic focusing on “shape, texture, light, and shadow.”
Las Vegas, Nevada artist Dave Rowe is an Assistant Professor of Sculptural Practices at the University of Nevada. He has shown his work widely, including solo exhibits at the Springer Cultural Center in Champaign, Illinois and at Minnesota State University in Mankato, Minnesota. Rowe’s sculptures evoke America’s industrial past. He says: “With my work I am particularly interested in how socio-political concerns define and re-contextualize the environment, both natural and human made. My sculptures bridge the spaces between landscape and architecture, history and present day, and in the context of art, sculpture and painting.” Rowe will be exhibiting large-scale wall sculptures and smaller free-standing pieces.
On Wednesday, February 1, from 6:00 – 7:30 pm, the public is invited to an Artist Talk by James Bailey at the Art Center. Bailey will begin by speaking about his year of study with Minor White and then transition to a discussion of his own work on the EWEB Steam Plant.
