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September Issue 2006
Converse College in Spartanburg, SC, Offers Works by the Late Judy Voss Jones
The Milliken Art Gallery
at Converse College in Spartanburg, SC, is hosting an exhibit
of the life and works of artist Judy Voss Jones, on view through
Sept. 28, 2006. The exhibit, titled Judy Voss Jones: A Glimpse
of Beauty, will feature drawings and prints from the 1970s
and 1980s. A catalog of Jones' work, which will be available for
purchase, features images that were completed during the last
five years of Jones' life while she underwent rounds of chemotherapy.
For 16 years, Jones taught art at Converse, received the college's first award for outstanding teaching and became the chair of the school's art department. She later taught at the University of Georgia's Lamar Dodd School of Art and the Cortona Studies Abroad Program for many years until her death from cancer in 2004.
"Judy never lost focus, but with great fortitude she painted more urgently than ever, even as she was considering her life's new agenda," according to her husband, Scott Belville, who curated the exhibition and wrote the forward to the catalog.
Belville writes in his essay that over the course of 15 years, Jones' paintings evolved as she used gathered images, fragments of her life and traces of her own experience. "Judy has left her visual poems for our pleasure. With a warm visual intelligence, she shares with us her glimpse of life's delicate beauty. There is no fluff in these paintings. They never pander to decoration, yet they are exceptionally beautiful and possess a certain lightness of being. Can art still do that, be as simple as that, and still be relevant? You will have to draw your own conclusions."
After Jones died, Belville established a scholarship fund in her memory, the Judy Voss Jones Cortona Art Scholarship. The scholarship supports graduate painting and drawing students who are accepted into the Cortona Studies Abroad Program at UGA.
Founded in 1889 and located in Spartanburg, Converse College is an independent, residential liberal arts college for women with a professional school of music and graduate programs in education, music, and the liberal arts. For more than 100 years, Converse has been guided by one vision - to prepare women to approach the world with intelligence and compassion. An emphasis on leadership development and service learning coupled with career preparation through a liberal arts foundation helps Converse students to find their place among the successful and influential people of tomorrow. Converse is consistently recognized by US News & World Report as a top college in the South, and is named to Colleges of Distinction and The Best 201 Colleges for the Real World.
For more info check
our SC Institutional Gallery listings, call the gallery at 864/596-9181
or e-mail at (artdesign@converse.edu).
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