CINCINNATI, Ohio–On Friday, June 20, from 6 to 9 p.m., the Cincinnati Arts Association's Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts will premiere three new summer exhibitions: Exodus/Elegy, an elegant installation by Anthony Becker inspired by the graceful flight of birds; piece•work, a series of meticulously crafted wood sculptures by Walter Zurko informed by the simple beauty and function of tools; and Fundamentalism, a new series of abstract paintings by Jeffrey Cortland Jones with enigmatic surfaces revealed through a succession of scraped layers.


For the past few years Anthony Becker has been making sculptures from an inexpensive brown paper commonly used by house painters as a drop cloth. Its lightweight nature allows for large, dramatic and airy creations that beautifully transmit light through their translucent skin. In Exodus/Elegy, Becker takes full advantage of the vertical expanse of the Weston Art Gallery's street-level exhibition space, creating two suspended veil-like forms that evoke the graceful flight of birds. The exhibition will also feature a pictorial diary of grounded birds arranged in a large grid of color drawings documenting the many deceased species the artist has observed in his daily travels to his studio.

Anthony Becker is a sculptor living in Cincinnati, OH, who has worked with a variety of materials to explore migration and flight. He earned a bachelor of arts from Yale University in New Haven, CT, in 1981. His sculpture has been featured at Owensboro Museum of Fine Art in Owensboro, KY; the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden in Cincinnati, OH; the Dayton Art Institute in Dayton, OH; and the Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center in Covington, KY.



 




Anthony Becker, installation view of Exodus/Elegy, 2008






 

  Sat., June 28 at 2 p.m.

  Education Workshop: Sat., June 28 at 10 a.m.

  Exodus/Elegy is generously co-sponsored by Sue & Bill Friedlander, Robin & Murray Sinclaire, Jr., and Vanessa & Rick Wayne.


 



Anthony Becker, installation view of Exodus/Elegy, 2008








Anthony Becker, installation view of Exodus/Elegy, 2008









Anthony Becker, installation view of Exodus/Elegy, 2008





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Consistent throughout Walter Zurko's elegant and superbly executed wood sculptures is his interest in the vernacular of tools and implications of utility and making. Primarily referencing utilitarian farm implements, Zurko (Wooster, OH) enlarges their original scale and subtly transforms them, manipulating their context to address the act, craft and process of handiwork. Piece•work continues this ongoing exploration with a series of sculptures completed by Zurko during the past few years.

Walter Zurko is a professor of art at the College of Wooster (Wooster, OH). He earned a bachelor of arts from the University of Wisconsin in 1977 and a master of fine arts from Southern Illinois University in 1980. He has received Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and has completed a residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. He was an artist-in-residence at the Foundation Svoboda in Prague, Czech Republic, in 1996 and at the Artist Residence in Herzliya, Israel in 1998. Recent exhibitions include Miami University (Oxford, OH) and the Southern Ohio Museum (Portsmouth, OH).







Walter Zurko, "Collar," 2008, wood, 30" x 11" x 5"






  Wed., June 25 at 7 p.m.

  Piece•work is generously co-sponsored by Mrs. Joyce Howe and Barbara & Gates Moss.


 



Walter Zurko, installation view of Piece•work, 2008










Walter Zurko, "Colony," 2008











Walter Zurko, installation view of Piece•work, 2008






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Approaching painting as a physical and material activity as opposed to a language to convey meaning informs the recent paintings of Jeffrey Cortland Jones (Mason, OH). Beautifully entombed beneath a polished surface that has been repeatedly subjected to the process of decay and then lovingly reconstituted, Jones's enigmatic paintings become archives of an optical history that signal the recent past. Fundamentalism will feature a new series of abstract paintings by Jones completed during the past year.

Jeffrey Cortland Jones is an assistant professor of art at the University of Dayton in Dayton, OH. He is a graduate of the University of Tennessee (Chattanooga, TN) where he earned a bachelor of fine arts in 1998, and the University of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, OH) where he earned a master of fine arts in 2000. His paintings have been featured at the Dayton Art Institute (Dayton, OH); Morlan Gallery at Transylvania University (Lexington, KY); Semantics Gallery; Meyers Gallery at the University of Cincinnati, and Kraft Haus (Cincinnati, OH).








Jeffrey Cortland Jones, "Novelty," 2008






  Wed., June 25 at 7 p.m.

  Education Workshop: Sat., July 19 at 10 a.m.

  Fundamentalism is generously sponsored by Vorys, Sater, Seymour & Pease, LLP.

 



Jeffrey Cortland Jones, installation view of Fundamentalism, 2008











Jeffrey Cortland Jones, installation view of Fundamentalism, 2008










Jeffrey Cortland Jones, "586", 2008




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