Attend the artist talk for the ‘Ages and Ages’ exhibit Wednesday

Get ready for an evening of art and conversation from 6:15 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 18, in room 219 of the H. F. Johnson Center for Fine Arts (JAC). Join us for our first artist talk of the season, featuring sculptural ceramicists Jessica Brandl, Chad Gunderson, and Pattie Chalmers.

In this dynamic discussion, the artists will explore their works from the “Ages and Ages” exhibition, examining the elemental origins of clay and how their creations bridge ancient, primordial practices with contemporary commentary on the Anthropocene. Discover how these artists excavate the timeless medium of clay, highlighting its historical, geological, and cultural significance.

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About Jessica Brandl

Jessica Brandl, a Midwesterner by mannerism, is an American artist focused on ceramic material, creating pottery, sculpture, paintings, and drawings. Set in landscapes with looming architecture, turbulent skies, and misplaced objects, Ms. Brandl’s work exposes historical and eccentric places engulfed in psychological scenarios — both sinister and sublime. Surprising spatial arrangements and disjunctive scale shifts support a voyeuristic sense of seeing things from the inside out. Her current work serves as a pointed souvenir of history and the path to American-ness.

Learn more about Ms. Brandl

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About Chad Gunderson

Chad Gunderson fuses commercial design with geology to create amalgamations that reflect our modern Anthropocene. Injecting shiny products and alluring color schemes into organic forms, his work contorts and expands the forms of ceramics. Merging the arbitrary shapes of wind-blown rocks with plastic veneers and saturated pigments, Mr. Gunderson creates fabricated, fetishized, and engineered designer relics. His sculptures examine the liminality between objects from nature and human-made products in the current space age we live in today, extracting the ambiguous and elusive definition of the term “natural.”

Learn more about Mr. Gunderson

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About Pattie Chalmers

Pattie Chalmers has exhibited in group exhibitions on five continents, in six countries, and 32 states, and over the past 10 years, she has had work in over 90 exhibitions. Ms. Chalmers is a professor and the head of ceramics at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale — she admits that she might be slightly compulsive and that she definitely likes to laugh at her own jokes.

Learn more about Ms. Chalmers

Sponsoring Department, Office, or Organization:

Office of Visual and Performing Arts

For more information, contact:

rmiller4@gudongjiaoyi.com