Illumination Series
The Illumination Series is a collaboration between the Walton Arts Center and Creative Community Center. The partnership's mission is to highlight practicing Arkansas affiliated artists and the Creative Community Center's engagement in visual arts while spotlighting large scale visual art that responds to the site and speaks to an architectural scale.
Exhibition
Full Volume
By John Shea
EXHIBITION DATES: Through April 13, 2025
LOCATION: Walker Atrium at Walton Arts Center
ARTIST STATEMENT:
My work is a reflection of a personal interest in the way that abstraction acts as both an indicator of individual and collective meaning that coalesces around random matter. I use abstraction as a metaphor that combines geometric and organic elements and looks to build tension between those forms. Each piece looks to highlight the way it both is and isn’t something recognizable at the same time. I believe we pay the most attention to something when it doesn’t fit right, that when confronted with something that disrupts our normal routines and reminds us of something it is not, we can see an object for what it really is. The work questions the way we perceive space in different contexts, it requires a reconciliation between our perception of an object and what we know to be true about an object. Seeing and being aware of this difference is what interests me in our relationship to objects that surround us.
ARTIST BIO:
John Shea is an abstract sculptor working with clay to examine the way in which objects form relationships and exist in the world. Incorporating geometric and organic forms John’s work looks to highlight where we construct boundaries between individual objects in groups and the way we differentiate between objects and ourselves. He has shown nationally and internationally including in Los Angeles and New York City through HostlerBurrows, as well as in Milan and London through Officine Saffi. John’s most recent solo show “standard, abstract” opened in January 2023 at HB381 in New York City. He currently teaches at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock as a Visiting Assistant Professor.