WHO WILL HEAR MY PLEA?

The artist continues to explore the roles of women in her latest installation, “Hear My Plea,” as she works with images of saints, martyrs, and goddesses. Using the figure she delightfully calls BAH!, which first came to her in a dream, she explores the limitations, bravery, passion, zeal, and compassion of figures related to the Catholic church, paganism, and other cultures.

Using imagery from the Renaissance and Middle Ages as a reference, a time when the general population could not read nor write, and utilized this imagery as their “lesson,” the artist observed only small differences between a woman’s life then and now.

Whom might women call today?

What messages might these images from the past offer to women today?

Who might possibly hear today’s women in their plea for help?

Bio

Linda Jurkiewicz lives in Kansas City and began working with fiber in 2005. She credits her upbringing as a first-generation Ukrainian-Croatian for her “make-do” attitude and her delight in upcycling repurposed materials, especially “woman’s work” such as dish towels, household items, and clothing. Her consequential fiber work incorporates soft sculpture, wordplay, idiom, embroidery, wall hangings, plush form, sequential dioramas, and installations which delve into the cultural roles of women in America over the last century, roles that are changing and roles that she pushes viewers to reexamine, to trade nostalgia for empowerment.

Jurkiewicz’s work has been shown in two solo shows in Kansas City galleries in 2022. Her work has been juried into numerous exhibitions locally. Nationally, her work has been included in Woman Made Gallery 24th International Exhibit, Chicago, Illinois (2023), Intersect Art Center Blue Hour, St. Louis, MO (2023), Amarillo Museum of Art Biennial-600: Textile/Fiber, Amarillo, Texas (2019), Raw – The Exhibition at Indiana University (2018), Sacred Threads in Herndon, VA (2017 and 2019), The Blue Show at the Core New Art Space (2017) and The Engaged Object at the Foothills Art Center (2016), both in Denver, Colorado, and Welcome to My World: Mental Health Awareness through Art at the MIRI Gallery (2016). Salt Lake City, Utah. Jurkiewicz is a member of the Kansas City Artists Coalitio

The dyed fabric compositions are journal page expressions about time and place. The textile paintings that I produce are tributes, poems, love letters, prayers, and meditations. Creating this work provides peace, helps to heal hurts, and feeds my energy. The subject’s intention is always one of honor and gratitude. 

My plein air and oil painting practice was initially provoked by the desire to grow artistically. This activity was also inspired by the need to feel closer to family. Working in the elements seems to make time stand still. Although I find it terribly challenging, painting in the field heightens all senses and strengthens visceral memory. The imprint of experience is then used as an intuitive tool (in conjunction with formal photo documentation, color studies, and notes) to create textile paintings and installations. 

Studying the colors, textures and diversity of the Sonoran Desert has been my daily joy for the past eleven years. All of the work for Rediscovering the Desert was created within the past two years and celebrates the natural world where I resided in Southern Arizona. The Tucson Mountain/Saguaro National Park West area is especially dear to me and is often the subject of my landscapes. My work is also informed by multiple trips to San Carlos/Guaymas, Sonora and Cabo Pulmo National Park in Baja California Sur in Mexico. 

Although I anticipate creating art about my beloved desert for the rest of my life, I just relocated to the Southernmost part of Texas to research for a new body of work. During this self-imposed, temporary residency I will shift from “Where the Desert Meets the Sea”, to “Where River meets the Sea”. Living and learning in the sub-tropical climate and remaining natural habitat by the Rio Grande River by the Gulf of Mexico. I look forward to seeing how my work will be affected by this new adventure. 

Bio
Born in Wisconsin and then raised in Bettendorf, Iowa, Holly holds her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Kansas City Art Institute and is an Ewing Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurship graduate. Holly has exhibited her textile paintings in numerous group and solo exhibitions. Holly currently lives in the Rio Grande Valley with her husband.

Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art presents “Summer Invitational”. This 2023 summer, SLCA will be exhibiting new artworks by 10 different artists.

Calder Kamin, Nicole McLaughlin, Ky Anderson, Barry Anderson, Harold Smith, Jeff Robinson, Rain Harris, Tom Hück, Carol Stewart, and Andrew Watel.

Sharif Bey is a Syracuse-based artist and educator inspired by modernism, functional pottery, Oceanic Art and Art of the African diaspora. His works investigate the cultural and political significance of adornment and the symbolic and formal properties of archetypal motifs, while questioning how the meaning of icons and function transform across cultures and time.

“As a consequence of colonialism and conquest, African and Oceanic ceremonial objects made their way into Western consciousness as looted artifacts, stripped of their original frames of reference, inspiring European modernists both for their aesthetic interests and perceived otherness. Specifically, I am interested in investigating how fetish, racism, science fiction and popular culture impedes interpretations of ‘non-western’ cultural objects. I play on ‘westernized conjecture’ by producing works that suggest nonwestern utilitarian, ceremonial or ritualistic purpose but are ultimately designed for ‘display’ for the Western spectator/consumer. I ultimately seek to expose the interpretative deficiencies of the colonized mind and place them on display beside my work.

Although I trained as an apprentice, in a state-of-the art ceramics facility, my current work evolves outside of conventional Western facilities. I primarily work at home (oftentimes with my children), firing in my back yard or fireplace, and resist the narrative that ceramic artists require expensive facilities, costly materials or concentrated periods of time. I employ a combination of traditional and nontraditional ceramics materials and processes to suit my lifestyle. For me, working outside of institutional structures not only affords me more time with my family but invites other material and aesthetic influences into my trajectory. ” — Bey