The exhibition Imago Corporis Impressa: New Work by Jim Sconyers Jr. will be on view February 9–27, 2015, at Mary Baldwin University’s Hunt Gallery. Sconyers is associate professor of art in the Department of Art and Art History at Mary Baldwin, where he teaches design and all levels of photography and printmaking. Currently in his twelfth year at the college, he is an artist working in a variety of media, including printmaking, photography, digital media, and sculpture.
In 2002, Sconyers received the MFA in printmaking with distinction from Indiana University’s Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts. Since that time, his work has been selected for both national and international exhibition. His recent bodies of work include transition (memory) and contingency. Contingency made its debut at Hunt Gallery in January 2009, and it was also shown in a solo exhibition at Main Art Gallery, Richmond, Virginia, in May 2010. In October 2012, he exhibited a site-specific installation of his sculpture The Shadow of a Greater Structure That Cannot Be Experienced at Blue Ridge Community College as a part of the show From the Hill: The Studio Art Faculty of Mary Baldwin University. In November 2012, Sconyers exhibited his intaglio print titled “32-bit string” in a group exhibition at the Mid-America Print Council Biennial Conference at Southeast Missouri State University. A large-scale work titled Aposematic was shown the summer of 2013 at the Beverly Street Studio School. In the fall of 2013 he received a commission from the Virginia Chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers for Aposematic 2, a scaled down tabletop version of Aposematic.
Sconyers’s latest body of work — photography and photography-based sculpture — will be on view at Hunt Gallery. Incorporating the scaled-down design of Aposematic 2, the sculptures are a series of highly-crafted structures that fuse the artist’s digitally photographed subjects with inventive uses of other media. Inspired by the forms and textures of roses, these structures explore curious intersections of organic and geometric form, affording experiences of perceptual and conceptual transformation.
Sconyers says the following about this work: “The images were collected in rose gardens during visits to the south. The sculptural pieces were created through a process of cutting up the photographs and reassembling them as randomly-placed, tessellated pyramids mounted on wooden circles. Like vanity mirrors, the circles capture reflected portraits of beauty and decay in fleeting moments. The patterns that emerge through the random method of their composition create a space for reflection.”
An opening reception will be held for the artist from 4:30 to 6 p.m. on February 9 in Hunt Gallery. The public is invited to attend. Hunt Gallery is dedicated to the exhibition of contemporary work in all media by regionally and nationally recognized artists. The Gallery is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday during the College’s academic year. Hunt Gallery’s schedule for the 2014–15 academic year can be found online at: go.marybaldwin.edu/arts/huntgallery.