James Kuiper + Sheri Simons Placing October 31 – November 23, 2013
James Kuiper and Sheri Simons are professors of sculpture at California State University, Chico. They are long-term friends of and exhibitors at the 1078 Gallery. Please visit their extensive websites for full background information: James Kuiper and Sheri Simons
Kuiper writes about the show Placing: “Two visions of the act of mapping coincide in Placing. These distinctively differing views are complimentary but unique in their respect for mark making and image making.
“Recording the fleeting nature of shadow, Simons’ delicately produced notations exude a sense of movement and surface vibration. The softly soothing marks are rooted in time-based experiences such as light and sound. The surfaces build into a narrative of occurrences that record the leftovers of an event, its aerial view, and the annotated terrain they join to create.
“Kuiper’s layered reactions to real but unnamed topographic photography are more instinctual and visceral. His placing starts with northern California geography—specifically the Sacramento watershed. Kuiper layers printed images with collaged elements, drawing, and cut-away areas of translucent polyester film.
“Placing regards the mutability of notation and navigational methods—navigations which trace a range of ideas and data. It attempts to record visual spatial relationships while positing the ever-present conundrums: Who is doing the placing? Who or what is placed? Why? How should the viewer be situated?”
Codex: Meander (detail) by James Kuiper
Mixed media on vellum and mylar Size variable
Response to the mutable meander of rivers. Sepia tone vellum prints of the Sacramento River in 1976 are the starting points of this codex.
James Kuiper is a professor of art in the Department of Art and Art History at California State University, Chico. He is primarily a painter focusing on aspects of landscapes as he experienced the landscape in various geographies. Kuiper grew up in the flat midwest and lived in the hot African savannah land, in interior and coastal Alaska, and in the prickly landscape of South Texas before arriving in Chico. Kuiper combines these sources in his ongoing work. He has had over fifty one-person exhibitions and has exhibited throughout the United State, Spain, and Brazil.
Walk of the Magpie by Sheri Simons 2013
Pencil and ink on paper 42"H x 65"W
Graphical documentation of a year's worth of walks in the Sycamore Diversion Channel (known to the Vanished group as The Ditch), looking for anything of interest, especially a mammoth's tooth.
Photo credit: Byron Wolfe
Sheri Simons is a professor of sculpture in the Department of Art and Art History at California State University, Chico. She works with wood, sound, and movement and is interested in sculpture as an instrument (broadly defined as something that aids in or causes an action or reaction). The drawings she makes are a means towards describing a situation, often told through the sound and movement of the marks on the paper. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Japan-US Friendship Commission, the California Arts Council and the Michigan Council for the Arts. She has been an artist-in-residence at Artpark (NY), Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and Haystack Mountain School of Arts and Crafts. Simons has been curated into solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries throughout the U.S., Canada, and South America. Her public arts commissions include the Los Gatos Library, the Carmichael Library, the Sacramento Central Library, and the Public Utilities and Administration Building in Sacramento (California), the Juvenile Court of the Kent County Justice Center (Washington, Seattle Arts Commission), and Miami University (Oxford, Ohio).
