Jane Gilmor's "The Potato Theater Presents"
Thursday, January 20, 6 p.m.
Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second Street, Davenport IA
An opportunity to explore the personal and collective experience of living through a global pandemic, the Figge Art Museum's January 20 maker session will find artist Anna Richards guiding participants through an exciting, hands-on program that explores the Feminist Art Movement in relation to the Davenport venue's current installation Jane Gilmor: Breakfast on Pluto.
Through the creation of miniature rooms in this special January 20 event, participants will have an opportunity to "decorate" those rooms with a variety of found materials such as text and images. An opportunity to reflect on our unique personal experiences (grief, loss, stress, labor, childcare) while also reflecting on the collective experience (the media, misinformation, politics, and the absurd), Richards' maker session will demonstrate how everyone has their own stories of survival and adaptation during this pandemic. Sharing stories and perspectives through art making, as Richards will attest, can provide opportunities for connection in ways that verbal expression cannot always capture.
A sculpture showcase employing repurposed past work and found materials from the recesses of her studio, the installation Jane Gilmor: Breakfast on Pluto is a fascinating work – one activated via motion and light – that encourages Figge visitors to contemplate the interplay between light and darkness, the familiar and the strange, and the past and the present. In her Artist Statement at JaneGilmor.com, the installation's creator says, “My latest work presents, walk-in books covered with etched metal notes, room-sized installations of wearable structures activated with robotics and embedded with writings on metal and video. Extending from previous work in my Containers for the Self series, these situations further explore those psychologically and culturally based entanglements of image, language and space through which we try to locate our own identity. For the past 30 years, then, my practice has been concerned with social issues, found situations, and psychological narrative. From The 1976 All-American Glamour Kitty Pageant to my '70s and '80s photo tableaux of cat-masked Isadora Duncans in the ruins of Greece and the bowling alleys and laundromats of Iowa, to my 20 years of community-based public work in shelters and hospitals, my search is for some unspoken connection in these random collisions of objects, images, and voices.”
Anna Richards' maker session on the Feminist Art Movement takes place from 6 to 7 p.m. on January 20, and the corresponding installation Jane Gilmor: Breakfast on Pluto will be on display through February 6. Participation in the maker session is free, though reservations are required, and more information is available by calling (563)326-7832 and visiting FiggeArtMuseum.org.
