April 9th - 13th
Solo Exhibition by Jessie Ring
Pebble reflects on cultural sites of accumulation as spaces where humans distribute emotion, memory, and ideas through material trace. Visitors are invited to leave a material trace formed in soft clay as a contribution to the strand.
“Pebble is an excerpt from a forthcoming installation titled Stone Fruit to be shown at the Pensacola Art Museum.
The tumbled mass holds fragments of discarded works, flowers and leaves of Oleander, molars, rib and thumb bones, ear shaped stones, hardware, USB drives, casings, and architectural pressings. The work reflects on cultural sites of accumulation as spaces where humans distribute emotion, memory, and ideas through material trace. The Caladesi Island shell tree, Seattle’s gum wall, clootie wells, penny trees, the basins of fountains, and community dumps are a few examples of such spaces. These sites are community sculpture and locations where visitors leave thoughts as material in symbolic gesture.
Sculpting from memory, visitors are invited to leave a trace in soft clay as part of the strand. All contributions will be fired and permanently added to the work.”
Jesse Ring received his MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Jesse was Assistant Professor of Art at Arkansas Tech University from 2017-2020. In the Fall of 2020 he joined UF as Assistant Professor of Art in Ceramics and Sculpture in the School of Art + Art History. He was a visiting artist at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center, Zentrum fur Keramik, and Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. His work has been shown nationally and internationally in China, Germany and Hungary.