Artist Statement - Jennifer Bock-Nelson
I am interested in particularity. My work records a singular moment paused in time. Using reference photos captured by technology (camera, satellite, microscope), I explore imagery that is inaccessible to our unaided eye. Visually deconstructing and physically reconstructing magnified details into stylized marks is immensely satisfying. The work becomes the prolonged examination of edge, shape, light, and color. The finished piece is the sum of each labored part. How we see and what we see is the compelling force for my practice.
My references are nature and landscape in the broadest sense. This body of work started with water as the subject but progressed to polarized thin sections of rock and images from space. Although rendered realistically, the compositions lack context and spatial landmarks resulting in abstraction. The ambiguity of the setting contrasts with the exactness of the studio process. Individually, each painting speaks to a specific place. Collectively, they allude to the hidden patterns that bind the physical universe.
Within the cosmos, my presence is negligible. Yet, there is something human about the need to reiterate one’s existence. Documents of who we are and where we are abound. Information and visual stimuli flood our days and overwhelm our senses. Technology provides a platform for storing images we feel compelled to capture but rarely revisit. The world spins and is subject to time and its inhabitants. In the narrow realm that is now, my work both utilizes and reacts to the inundation of technology as I gaze upon, record, and preserve invisible fragments of the changing world.
Artist Bio- Jennifer Bock-Nelson
Jennifer Bock-Nelson resides in Quincy, Illinois with her husband and two sons. She graduated with a BA in Studio Art from Houghton College and an MFA in Painting from Northern Illinois University. Her public works, including a 5,000 sq. ft. mural, are featured at Quincy Public Library, Washington Park in Quincy, The Salvation Army Ray & Joan Kroc Corps Community Center, and Blessing Physician Services Pediatrics. Jennifer exhibits nationally and is the recipient of several awards including Best of Show at the 2018 Rockford Midwestern Biennial. She was also awarded an Individual Artist Grant from the Illinois Arts Council. Artist residencies include Vermont Studio Center, Ox-Bow, and Ragdale.
Artist Statement - Kelly A. Mueller
REVELATIONS 2020 is a retrospective of our current political, societal, and environmental status through a metaphorical lens of the biblical Book of Revelations, and envisions a new matriarchal society that rises from the end of days.
Revelation 6:1-8 New King James Version
“Now I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals; and I heard one of the four living creatures saying with a voice like thunder, “Come and see.” And I looked, and behold, a white horse. He who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.
When He opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come and see.” Another horse, fiery red, went out. And it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth, and that people should kill one another; and there was given to him a great sword.
When He opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come and see.” So I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine.”
When He opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, “Come and see.” So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth.”
Revelations 4:8 (Seraphim)
“And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within.”
Revelations 2020: And ye, the women did rise and create a society anew, and lo! Peace, love, and compassion did rule the earth.
Artist Bio - Kelly A. Mueller
Originally from Chicago, Kelly teaches art at Lusher Charter High School and lives in Mid-City, New Orleans. Her saturated drawings are layered with projected and painted imagery, text, and chatter from the internet, later excavated with pencil and ink. Her art centers on the tension between natural forces and systems, and the human tendency to subvert these systems. She received her MFA from Northern Illinois University and is a member of Baton Rouge Gallery, LA, and was a working member of the Front Gallery in New Orleans from 2016-2021. She attends artist residencies whenever possible outside of her teaching, including such places as Hambidge, GA; Stone House, CA; Philadelphia Art Hotel, Dorland Mountain Art Colony, and a research trip to the Amazon Rainforest as a Surdna Fellow.
Outside of her art and teaching practices, Kelly is an amateur homesteader, and loves to spend time fishing and canoeing in the swamps and wetlands of the Gulf Coast.
Artist Statement - Amy Sacksteder
My paintings, drawings, collages, cut paper work, and installations explore artifacts as vehicles of human
connectedness to specific places and occurrences. Compelled by interactions with the land and
landscape, I investigate the personal, environmental, and political significances of place. I’m interested in
idiosyncratic, ephemeral contrasts that draw my attention as I move through my daily life—on walks,
runs, while traveling or within and around my home--often capturing these moments on my phone for
later consideration. I’m drawn to human interventions in the natural world such as cairns, surveyor’s
markings, and graffitied tags, alongside fleeting moments such as melting ice, light on water, shimmering
shadows. A personal investment in essential materials--such as tarnishing silver leaf, volcanic ash, water
from a glacial lagoon, lily pollen, dirt gleaned from my shoes walking the Women’s March in 2017--
infuses and activates the work, such as may occur with the aura of a beloved souvenir.
These artifacts and images become a palette of elements from which to draw while working in the
studio. In my working with them, their context is altered. They’re transmuted. Solid objects give way
to plays of light and fractured foliage; high-chroma shapes interweave with vacancies and tactile or
visual textures; physical and pictorial layering explores and exploits real and false shadows; the removal
of solid shapes gives way to portals. The splicing of specific imagery and materials, and formal elements
such as shape, line, and color, result in work that pivots on the cusp between realism and abstraction.
On the whole, my work is an exploration of speculative fictions about my own and humanity’s
connection to place and mark upon the landscape; through it—in a time of so much global strife and
uncertainty—I strive to capture the balance between gravity and lightness.
Artist Bio - Amy Sacksteder
Amy Sacksteder is an artist and curator whose work explores personal and collective relationships to landscape
and artifact. She works across media, most commonly in painting, collage, drawing, cut paper, installation, and
also recently in ceramics. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Recent
solo and three person exhibitions include Soft Projects (Ypsilanti, MI); Divisible Projects (Dayton, OH), Western
Illinois University (Macomb, IL), The Detroit Center for Design and Technology (Detroit, MI) and Alma College
(Alma, MI). Recent group exhibitions include Dutoit Gallery (Dayton, OH), Buckham Gallery (Flint, MI), Lump
(Raleigh, NC), Art Metropole (Toronto, ON), and The Front (New Orleans, LA).
Sacksteder has completed artist residencies at SÍM (Reykjavík, Iceland), Takt (Berlin, Germany), The Hungarian
Multicultural Center (Budapest, Hungry) and the Ragdale Foundation (Lake Forest, IL), among others. In 2012
she was awarded a Gallery-as-Studio Residency and solo exhibition at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her work
has been featured and reviewed in journals such as The Offing, New American Paintings and the Chicago Tribune and
is included in the curated online registries of The Drawing Center and White Columns. Amy Sacksteder has
curated and co-curated the national and international exhibitions Island: 22 Artists on Iceland in 2011 (co- hosted
at 'CAVE Gallery, Detroit, MI); Atmosphere: Artists' Responses to Space(s) in 2015; and Vitrine in 2018, all at Eastern
Michigan University. In 2021, Sacksteder was invited to join the Long Island City Studio Collective in New York,
where she maintains a selected inventory of artwork.
Sacksteder and her family live in Ypsilanti, Michigan, outside of Detroit. Sacksteder works from her studios in
Ypsilanti and Long Island City, and is a professor in the School of Art + Design at Eastern Michigan University.
I am interested in particularity. My work records a singular moment paused in time. Using reference photos captured by technology (camera, satellite, microscope), I explore imagery that is inaccessible to our unaided eye. Visually deconstructing and physically reconstructing magnified details into stylized marks is immensely satisfying. The work becomes the prolonged examination of edge, shape, light, and color. The finished piece is the sum of each labored part. How we see and what we see is the compelling force for my practice.
My references are nature and landscape in the broadest sense. This body of work started with water as the subject but progressed to polarized thin sections of rock and images from space. Although rendered realistically, the compositions lack context and spatial landmarks resulting in abstraction. The ambiguity of the setting contrasts with the exactness of the studio process. Individually, each painting speaks to a specific place. Collectively, they allude to the hidden patterns that bind the physical universe.
Within the cosmos, my presence is negligible. Yet, there is something human about the need to reiterate one’s existence. Documents of who we are and where we are abound. Information and visual stimuli flood our days and overwhelm our senses. Technology provides a platform for storing images we feel compelled to capture but rarely revisit. The world spins and is subject to time and its inhabitants. In the narrow realm that is now, my work both utilizes and reacts to the inundation of technology as I gaze upon, record, and preserve invisible fragments of the changing world.
Artist Bio- Jennifer Bock-Nelson
Jennifer Bock-Nelson resides in Quincy, Illinois with her husband and two sons. She graduated with a BA in Studio Art from Houghton College and an MFA in Painting from Northern Illinois University. Her public works, including a 5,000 sq. ft. mural, are featured at Quincy Public Library, Washington Park in Quincy, The Salvation Army Ray & Joan Kroc Corps Community Center, and Blessing Physician Services Pediatrics. Jennifer exhibits nationally and is the recipient of several awards including Best of Show at the 2018 Rockford Midwestern Biennial. She was also awarded an Individual Artist Grant from the Illinois Arts Council. Artist residencies include Vermont Studio Center, Ox-Bow, and Ragdale.
Artist Statement - Kelly A. Mueller
REVELATIONS 2020 is a retrospective of our current political, societal, and environmental status through a metaphorical lens of the biblical Book of Revelations, and envisions a new matriarchal society that rises from the end of days.
Revelation 6:1-8 New King James Version
“Now I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals; and I heard one of the four living creatures saying with a voice like thunder, “Come and see.” And I looked, and behold, a white horse. He who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.
When He opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come and see.” Another horse, fiery red, went out. And it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth, and that people should kill one another; and there was given to him a great sword.
When He opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come and see.” So I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine.”
When He opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, “Come and see.” So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth.”
Revelations 4:8 (Seraphim)
“And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within.”
Revelations 2020: And ye, the women did rise and create a society anew, and lo! Peace, love, and compassion did rule the earth.
Artist Bio - Kelly A. Mueller
Originally from Chicago, Kelly teaches art at Lusher Charter High School and lives in Mid-City, New Orleans. Her saturated drawings are layered with projected and painted imagery, text, and chatter from the internet, later excavated with pencil and ink. Her art centers on the tension between natural forces and systems, and the human tendency to subvert these systems. She received her MFA from Northern Illinois University and is a member of Baton Rouge Gallery, LA, and was a working member of the Front Gallery in New Orleans from 2016-2021. She attends artist residencies whenever possible outside of her teaching, including such places as Hambidge, GA; Stone House, CA; Philadelphia Art Hotel, Dorland Mountain Art Colony, and a research trip to the Amazon Rainforest as a Surdna Fellow.
Outside of her art and teaching practices, Kelly is an amateur homesteader, and loves to spend time fishing and canoeing in the swamps and wetlands of the Gulf Coast.
Artist Statement - Amy Sacksteder
My paintings, drawings, collages, cut paper work, and installations explore artifacts as vehicles of human
connectedness to specific places and occurrences. Compelled by interactions with the land and
landscape, I investigate the personal, environmental, and political significances of place. I’m interested in
idiosyncratic, ephemeral contrasts that draw my attention as I move through my daily life—on walks,
runs, while traveling or within and around my home--often capturing these moments on my phone for
later consideration. I’m drawn to human interventions in the natural world such as cairns, surveyor’s
markings, and graffitied tags, alongside fleeting moments such as melting ice, light on water, shimmering
shadows. A personal investment in essential materials--such as tarnishing silver leaf, volcanic ash, water
from a glacial lagoon, lily pollen, dirt gleaned from my shoes walking the Women’s March in 2017--
infuses and activates the work, such as may occur with the aura of a beloved souvenir.
These artifacts and images become a palette of elements from which to draw while working in the
studio. In my working with them, their context is altered. They’re transmuted. Solid objects give way
to plays of light and fractured foliage; high-chroma shapes interweave with vacancies and tactile or
visual textures; physical and pictorial layering explores and exploits real and false shadows; the removal
of solid shapes gives way to portals. The splicing of specific imagery and materials, and formal elements
such as shape, line, and color, result in work that pivots on the cusp between realism and abstraction.
On the whole, my work is an exploration of speculative fictions about my own and humanity’s
connection to place and mark upon the landscape; through it—in a time of so much global strife and
uncertainty—I strive to capture the balance between gravity and lightness.
Artist Bio - Amy Sacksteder
Amy Sacksteder is an artist and curator whose work explores personal and collective relationships to landscape
and artifact. She works across media, most commonly in painting, collage, drawing, cut paper, installation, and
also recently in ceramics. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Recent
solo and three person exhibitions include Soft Projects (Ypsilanti, MI); Divisible Projects (Dayton, OH), Western
Illinois University (Macomb, IL), The Detroit Center for Design and Technology (Detroit, MI) and Alma College
(Alma, MI). Recent group exhibitions include Dutoit Gallery (Dayton, OH), Buckham Gallery (Flint, MI), Lump
(Raleigh, NC), Art Metropole (Toronto, ON), and The Front (New Orleans, LA).
Sacksteder has completed artist residencies at SÍM (Reykjavík, Iceland), Takt (Berlin, Germany), The Hungarian
Multicultural Center (Budapest, Hungry) and the Ragdale Foundation (Lake Forest, IL), among others. In 2012
she was awarded a Gallery-as-Studio Residency and solo exhibition at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her work
has been featured and reviewed in journals such as The Offing, New American Paintings and the Chicago Tribune and
is included in the curated online registries of The Drawing Center and White Columns. Amy Sacksteder has
curated and co-curated the national and international exhibitions Island: 22 Artists on Iceland in 2011 (co- hosted
at 'CAVE Gallery, Detroit, MI); Atmosphere: Artists' Responses to Space(s) in 2015; and Vitrine in 2018, all at Eastern
Michigan University. In 2021, Sacksteder was invited to join the Long Island City Studio Collective in New York,
where she maintains a selected inventory of artwork.
Sacksteder and her family live in Ypsilanti, Michigan, outside of Detroit. Sacksteder works from her studios in
Ypsilanti and Long Island City, and is a professor in the School of Art + Design at Eastern Michigan University.
