Kent State University at Stark proudly opens the Pleasures of Matter exhibit, showcasing professional art of various media. The exhibit, which is open to the public, will be displayed from October 3 through 28, 2011, in the Kent State Stark Main Hall Art Gallery, located in the lower level, 6000 Frank Avenue NW in Jackson Township. The gallery is free and open for public viewing Monday - Friday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon.
 
The Pleasures of Matter exhibit includes work by Clare Murray Adams, Kate Budd, Isabel Farnsworth, Susan McClelland and Kortny Niewierski. The community is invited to the Main Hall Art Gallery to meet the artists on Wednesday, Oct. 5 at 5:30 p.m. A reception will follow from 6-7:30 p.m.

Adams, a professor of art at Malone University, uses her background in quilting and surface design to create encaustic collages that explore memory, family history, spirituality and gender. She has had six, one-person exhibits in Ohio, Indiana, New York, South Carolina and California.
 
Budd, an associate professor of art at The University of Akron's Myers School of Art, uses wax to create pod-like forms that have sawed-off surfaces referencing human interventions, such as dissection. Tiny glass beads are sprinkled across an egg wall referencing our need to better the forms we live with and in. By wrapping and pinning, polishing and embellishing, Budd explores the human desire for artifice and decoration and our unwillingness to accept the world “as is.” She has received three Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council and her work has been exhibited in numerous group exhibits. She has had solo exhibitions at Cleveland’s William Busta Gallery; Rudolph Poissant Gallery in Houston, Texas; the Akron Art Museum and Kenyon College. Her work has been reviewed in Art in America, New Art Examiner and Sculpture magazines.

Through sculpting, Farnsworth, an associate professor of sculpture at Kent State University, (re)shapes a distillation of her subjective experiences. Representing the body is her starting point, either through modeling or life casting. Through repetition of semi-figurative and abstracted elements, Farnsworth engages in an intuitive process of making and unmaking, culminating in layered compositions. She has been an artist-in-residence at Skowhegan School of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Rijksacademie Von Beelden Kuntz in Amsterdam, and the Cite’ International des Arts in Paris. Farnsworth has received an individual artist fellowship grant from the Ohio Arts Council.
 
McClelland builds organic systems out of gut, sisal rope, latex and wood that represent mending, repair and renewal. Through sewing her elements together, her work accumulates and interlaces lives and events. In 2009, she had a solo exhibition at the Sculpture Center in Cleveland. She is currently a graduate student at Kent State University’s School of Art.
 
Niewierski makes three-dimensional objects that explore the push and pull of intrigue and peculiarity through the use of bodily imagery, toy-like forms and tactile fabrics. Anatomical imagery and slightly recognizable human or animal-like forms, combined with fantastical organic shapes, create creatures that are intended to intrigue our curious side, while at the same time, repel us by their oddity and sexual innuendo. Whether the fabric-skinned objects are toys or creatures, human or animal, they all suggest a malformation at the cellular level and a regression into childhood. Niewierski currently teaches drawing and sculpture as an adjunct professor at Kent State University and is actively showing her work throughout Ohio.
 
For more information on the Pleasures of Matter exhibit, contact Jack McWhorter at jmcwhort@kent.edu. Kent State Stark features additional art exhibits in the campus galleries located in The University Center and the Fine Arts Building.