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November Issue 2005
Silver Fox Gallery in Hendersonville, NC, Features Works by William Martin Jean
An exhibit
of new work by William Martin Jean opens at on Nov. 4 at the Silver
Fox Gallery in Hendersonville, NC, and continues through Nov.
30, 2005.
Jean is an active painter, teacher and arts
administrator in Cleveland, OH. He is the founder and director
of City Artists at Work, a grass roots organization that helps
to promote the Superior/St. Clair area where many Cleveland artists
live and work. He served as the Director of Continuing Education
for the Cleveland Institute of Art from 1987 until 2004.
Architecture is one of the inspirations behind Jean's work. "The
nobility and grandeur of classical buildings continue to be a
source of inspiration to me, having experienced the space and
physicality of their presence in my travels," Jean said.
Many of Jean's works are abstract images of garments, strata or
textiles. "Abstraction has always been the only direction
with which I have been comfortable because it seems to let me
speak to subjects and ideas for which realism has no vocabulary,"
he said.
In recent years, Jean has experimented with textural surfaces. "The textures have an organic quality reminiscent of fossilized surfaces or weathered walls," Jean said. "In combination with flat passages, these create for me a kind of visual counterpoint as in music where rhythms play against one another".
Jean adds, "I like to feel that the controlled part of the work sometimes yields to the accidental, that the spontaneous finds harmony in order."
Jean was awarded Special Mention for Painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art's prestigious May Show in 1993, 1983, and 1979, and has exhibited in many group and solo exhibitions, including: the Butler Institute of American Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Cleveland Institute of Art, Lake Erie College, Ursuline College, Hiram College, Case Western Reserve University and the Dadian Gallery in Washington, DC. Jean exhibited his work in a four-person show in Oct. 2004, at the Artist Archives of the Western Reserve where he serves as board president.
Jean's works are in many private and corporate collections. He has held teaching grants from The Martha Holden Jennings Foundation, the PACE organization, The Cleveland Education Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is a graduate of Baldwin-Wallace College and completed his graduate work at Case Western Reserve University. He has traveled and studied extensively throughout Europe, North Africa and Mexico.
On Nov. 5, 2005, at 7pm, Jean will lecture about his work. Reservations are requested for the Saturday evening lecture, which will also be held at the Silver Fox Gallery.
For further infomation check our NC Commercial
Gallery listings, call the gallery at 828/698-0601 or at (www.silverfoxonline.com).
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