Symposium presenters come from a wide variety of media and from all walks of creative life including those in academia, emerging artists, international icons and working makers at various points in their careers.
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Our 2023 Presenters
Jessica Calderwood
Jessica Calderwood is sculptor and jewelry artist working primarily with the mediums of metal, enamel, and marginalized crafts. She received her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and her MFA from Arizona State University, with an emphasis Metalworking. Her work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and internationally in curated and juried exhibitions. She has participated in artist residencies with the John Michael Kohler Arts/Industry Program, Mesa Arts Center, and several self-designed residencies with local industry. Her work has also been published in Metalsmith Magazine, American Craft, NICHE, Ornament, the Lark 500 series, and the Art of Enameling. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Ball State University in Indiana.
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Christine Clark
I immerse myself in a spontaneous process as I work with a strong craft-based awareness. I use a wide variety of materials including wire, steel, bronze, plastic, fabric, and concrete, which assist in my desire to work with my hands and to find inherent meaning in the work. This combination of elements provides me with inspiration. The subject matter I generally choose is directly related to the populace – habits, idiosyncrasies, and practices in life and the features of being human that are not connected to race, gender, or class, but the irreducible fundamental part of humanity. Humans possess the inescapable sense of purpose. I want my work to relate to experiences and points of view people retain in their daily lives.
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Sandra Enterline
Having been inspired by abandoned factories since she was a child, her memories rise in mysterious forms, much like hulking cathedrals. However, these cathedrals of industry are immense and dark, yet strangely fragile. Enterline is perhaps best known for her perforated jewelry, which strikes a balance between elements of industry and fragility. The countless apertures that dot her pieces allow light to pass through, creating a vibrating surface of light and shadow. In her recent work, slices of irregular diamonds are suspended in dark, crude settings—evoking delicate windows that punctuate the abandoned factories of her childhood. As the wearer moves through space, the shifting dynamic between transparency and density evinces the complexity of Enterline’s contemporary work.
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Shelby Graham
During the pandemic I became hyper-aware of my neighborhood plants and trees, and photographed them daily. I started making cyanotype contact prints in my backyard from fallen palm fronds to specimens with found-text from newspaper headlines. Due to the anxiety of the pandemic, I used seaweed, grass, sand, and selected New York Times headlines, to make prints responding to our current political and environmental climate. This headline, “No One Knows What’s Going to Happen” helped me navigate my concerns and cope with uncertainty. The palm frond cyanotypes turned into a life-size palm tree composite installation that is still in progress. The abstract beauty of the palm’s elements, trunk, fronds, woody texture, and its primal composition are all amplified through direct printing on light sensitive material, allowing the ancient specimen to be viewed with fresh eyes as a light drawing.
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Bree Lamb
My recent projects, Volley, To Throw A Football Over a Mountain, and A House, A Home, each utilize very different photographic processes and workflows. My works range from photo documentary work, to commercial-esque still lifes, to experimental digital manipulation using traditional and unique approaches to lens-based media. I approach each series differently; allowing the ideas to dictate the means and methods in the visualization.
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George Metropoulos McCauley
I am drawn to work that shows struggle and presence of the hand. Asian pots particularly Korean Punchung and Japanese pots from the Momoyama period have been an influence on my work since I began in the late 60’s. My work is about the immediacy and act of making and has little to do with academia, correctness or technical aspects. I am more interested in the flaws than the flawless.
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Jeanie Pratt
As a fiber artist now working with metal; I find that after 30 plus years, I am still striving to turn straw into gold. Translating fiber techniques into silver, gold and other metals continues to fascinate me. With a weaver’s eye for color, I explore the processes of applying patinas and enamels in my work. The textile patterns and textures fixed into the metal evoke memories of the traditional textiles and basketry encountered while living abroad. My designs are informed by studies of entomology, and life sciences, as well as experiences while living in the tropics and the desert. With this comes the humble reminder that we are just one species in a multitude of interdependent creatures.
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Gabriel Poucher
Much of my sculpture has dealt with figurative abstraction, but during the pandemic my focus shifted toward approaching clay as a construction material. Over the last two years, I have been developing “All Structures Are Unstable,” a series that employs clay building blocks to assemble forms that seemingly exist in a perpetual state of both growth and collapse.
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Paul Schürch
I make design decisions based on gut feelings or sensations felt in my body by using a technique I call ‘Designing from the Heart’. This, coupled with 3-dimensional visualization technique, becomes important tools in the furniture I create. It involves prioritizing the focus from our logical left brain to the intuitive right brain to assist making good mechanical, structural and aesthetic design decisions, in order to create something of beauty and integrity. Beyond the challenges to become skilled dancing with materials, the real work lies in the storyline or pattern you are driven to create that makes it good art. This is a slide show about thinking outside the box, making art, and fairing the curve.
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Andy Villarreal
Themes of Warriors and Rituals of Meso America celebrate the indigenous cultural of the Yucatan. Ongoing sub-themes include social order, history, architecture, family, mythology, religion and rituals.
