Incremental curves

This piece is a new one, shown in the DC Gallery at CGU April 28th through May 4th 2013.  I made a sculpture a few months back with the same strapping, creating these incremental teardrops shapes.  While everything was piled on the floor I saw these great patterns and undulations of line.  This is the first of a few pieces that will play with the strapping as line.  I have the work leaning, which causes the strapping lines to sag out of the frame and create this space... almost like the impression of a body.

Ave Regina

This is a piece that was up at Claremont Graduate University for the week of May 5-11, 2013.  The space is referred to as The Nook, or alternatively The Niche.  The title is Ave Regina (Hail Queen).  The piece is made of wood, with steel brackets, bolts, nuts, screws, and house paint.  The long painted 2x3's are hinged by the brackets to the wooden arches making them movable, so they could adjust to the space.  (I built this in the sculpture yard for the most part, and then assembled it in the nook.)  The space is about 20 ft deep, and 12 ft wide.  I took most of the pictures at night so there is this dramatic lighting effect going on.  

I should mention this is a vagina dentata, and the second one I have made, at that.

Claremont Graduate University Open Studios!

CGU will be having there annual open studios event next Sunday, May 5th, from 12:00pm-5:00pm at 251 East Tenth Street, Claremont, CA 91711.  It's a free event and open to the public.  Not only will you get to see the studios of over 50 graduate art students, but also two MFA Thesis shows, performances throughout the day, collaborative installations and happenings, and more.  Every empty room in and around our building has been turned into an exhibition/installation space.  

I myself will be showing some work in my studio, #234, as well as part of a sculpture show, a collaborative installation with Patricia D. Burns and will have several large sculptural works outside on the lawn.  

If you haven't been to Claremont before and want to make a day of it, there is also the Pomona College Art Museum, the Ruth Chandler Gallery at Scripps College, and the Pitzer Art Galleries to see (all within a few blocks).  

Our Facebook Event Page:

https://www.facebook.com/events/478950702177631/

CGU's Art Department Website:

www.cgu.edu/art

So I have been out of the blog posting world for a little because I have eating, breathing, and sleeping THESIS.  But you guys didn't know that til now.  I would like to formally invite you to my MFA Thesis Show: There Be Dragons.

Jacqueline Bell Johnson, MFA Thesis Exhibition

Peggy Phelps Gallery @ Claremont Graduate University
251 East 10th Street
Calermont, CA 91711

Gallery hours m-f, 8am-5pm
Opening: Tuesday Night 6pm-9pm

I will be having a soft opening on Sunday afternoon from 12pm-5pm for those of you who can't make it Tuesday.
Like most gallery art events, this is a free event.  I will also be serving refreshments at both openings.
My show partner is Matthew Hillseth, also a metal sculptor.  He will be showing in the gallery across the hall, meaning you will get to see two shows for the efforts of one.

If you look carefully around Claremont and Los Angeles, you may find my show card.  Or just shoot me an email with your address, and I would be happy to mail you one.

Below are some sneak peaks of what is in my show.

And here is a photo of Geena Davis getting a personal invite from me.  (She loved the title!)  Everyone is welcome to come, and bring your friends.

I am participating in this show at Claremont Graduate University.  It is a collaborative installation created by the students of CGU Art, taking the Installation Seminar.

INDecent Proposition

Show is open from November 26th to December 14th Gallery Hours: M-F 8am-5pm Group show including Artists: Vera Bauluz Jacqueline Bell Johnson Janelle Borsberry Andrea Breiling Jeremiah Catling Adrian Culverson Clayton Ehman Suzanne Utaski Gibbs Katie Grip Scott Jamieson Takeshi Kanemura Abdul Mazid  Stephanie Meredith Julie Orr Augusto Sandroni Jette Via Patch Wright Jo Anna Zelano Show Statement (written by Jeremiah Catling) This exhibition is a collaborative effort, put together by a group of students involved in the installation art class here at CGU. This is a collection of moveable objects, initially gathered in between the two gallery spaces so that they can then be freely moved from one space to another. These works result from a single directive and a short timeline: within two weeks construct a piece that can travel between the galleries. The two galleries, one titled Decent, and the other Indecent, invite the viewer to interact in a visual organization of the works. Whether one person sees a piece as decent and moves it into the gallery, while another disagrees and puts it in indecent, or if the work appears too nebulous to the viewer and they want to leave it in the lobby space, this exhibit wants to explore how we create and dismantle consensus. The show is itself a question of taste: is it decent to touch works, to move them, and engage with them, or is there value in overcoming the indecency of interacting physically with art? How do we as a culture categorize and understand art, and how do we define what is decent and indecent in the objects that are present? Is art itself decent? How definite are our own views?  And what happens when we put a bunch of stuff on wheels and start moving it around?

http://www.facebook.com/events/485428221504089/

The Possibilities of Failure

This is a piece built for an outdoor space called the "Nook" over at the CGU art campus.  The space used to house the dumpsters for that building and when they were relocated it became a place for the installation class.  I have been scavenging from the woodshop scrap bin for a while and have been reusing it on different projects as needed.

This piece is a result of the idea of creating a line with many perpendicular lines coming off of it and then bending that line to see how it alters their curvalinear progression.  I started with creating a pair of strips of steel 24 feet long.  I took these wood scraps of mine and sandwiched them between the steel then wrapped them up nicely with some decorative threading in twine.  Added a little bit of color with some dry brush of lavender.  This line was then carried by a team of friends and myself out to the nook.  

I proceeded to bend the strip (this is no small chore, it took my entire body to get it to go) in the space.  The cotton snapped in the process of carrying out there, and while bending it into shape.  I figured it was a possibility, but did not expect it to break to the extent that it did.  Furthermore, the curves I had in mind were much bigger, so that you could walk through the piece.  It was way too heavy, and too rigid to create the image I had in my head.   

So I was forced to settle for what the piece would allow, and not what I wanted.  

While You Were Out

Kids behaving badly?  Maybe so... All of us MFA students at Claremont Graduate University who have now made it to our second year had the whole summer to work at the studios without interruption (or feedback) from our professors.  This show is a reflection of those new directions, risks, and ideas we all developed during the break.  Each "2nd Year" student has a piece in the show (there are 30 of us), held in the two main galleries of the CGU Art building at: 251 E. 10th St., Claremont, CA 91711.

The show will open Monday and stay up until mid October.  Our Opening Reception is Tuesday September 25th from 6-9pm.  When you stop by be sure to peak into our installation galleries and other spaces (littered all throughout the building).