Stil/Leven, Still/Even (Still Life Exhibition) to Open at Bradbury Art Museum
JONESBORO – The exhibition “Stil/Leven, Still/Even” will open to the public with a 5–7 p.m. opening reception Thursday, Aug. 21, at Bradbury Art Museum (BAM) at Arkansas State University alongside two companion exhibitions, “Taking Up Space,” and “Echoes of Silent Migration.”
Artist Kay S. Healy will present an artist talk at 3 p.m. that day. Admission to the reception and exhibitions is free. The shows will continue through Nov. 5.
Stil/Leven, Still/Even is a curated group exhibition exploring still life –– artwork representing inanimate objects –– as a genre which has both endured through the centuries and which has expanded beyond painting, the artistic discipline of its birth.
“The title of this exhibition is a play on the Dutch word for still life –– ‘stilleven.’ which is a compound of ‘stil,’ meaning still, and ‘leven,’ meaning life. Combined this way, they resemble the English words ‘still’ and ‘even,’ both of which can be used to communicate longevity or persistence over time,” said museum curator Madeline McMahan.
“Stil/Leven, Still/Even,” along with its companion shows, will be the inspiration for this year’s annual Inspired competition at BAM. Throughout September, students from regional high schools will receive a guided tour of the museum, select an artwork that inspires them, create their own artistic response to it, and submit their work for selection by a juror. The staff at Bradbury Art Museum have high hopes that this exhibition will excite these young artists, motivating them to try new processes and to think about objects in new ways.
The show brings together seven artists from across the United States: Mary Claire Becker, Nakeya Brown, Chenxi Gao, Kay S. Healy, Ryan Horvath, Audrey Rodriguez, and Shelby Shadwell. Their work explores various facets of objecthood and the still life through a variety of materials.
From artist Mary Claire Becker, “Stil/Leven, Still/Even” includes an installation of silkscreen printed vinyl wallpaper with three-dimensional cut paper elements, a digital video, framed silkscreen prints, and colored pencil drawings. Three other printmakers are included as well.
Work by Chenxi Gao combines digital printmaking with quilting and bookbinding. Across the gallery are handmade silkscreen printed, painted, and sewn plush sculptures of household items. Also included are five small, intricately detailed intaglio prints of objects from the natural world by Ryan Horvath.
Sculpture, drawing, and photography are represented with ultra-realistic sculpted Latin American pastries by Audrey Rodríguez, alluring charcoal drawings of coal and space blankets by Shelby Shadwell, and photographic still lifes exploring Black womanhood and beauty culture by Nakeya Brown.
Within this variety of materials, painting is conspicuously absent. McMahan explained, “’Still life’ was initially used as a term for a genre of painting specifically, but this show was intentionally curated to not include painting as a means of exploring the expansion of still life over time; its roots may be in painting, but its branches reach across disciplinary boundaries. This mirrors what has happened in the art world as a whole. At one time, Fine Art was thought of as limited to painting, sculpture and architecture. That viewpoint has expanded so much, and we want to honor that.”
Also on view will be “Taking Up Space,” a group exhibition by a Memphis-based artist collective called 6 Points, and “Echoes of Silent Migration,” a solo exhibition from interdisciplinary artist Somayeh Faal.
“We’re surrounded by objects all the time, so much so that we can forget to consider them, but objects can so much about our lifestyles, priorities, histories, and identities,” McMahan added, “and so, still life continues to fascinate us, even still.”
Bradbury Art Museum is in Fowler Center, 201 Olympic Drive. Hours of operation are noon to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. Viewers may also schedule a tour of the exhibitions by contacting McMahan, mmcmahan@AState.edu or (870) 972-3434.
For details about the upcoming “Inspired” program, one may contact education coordinator Paden DeVita at pdevita@AState.edu. More details about these shows are available online at BradburyArtMuseum.org.
