Celebrated sculptor and James Madison University art professor Greg Stewart will display a new exhibition titled “We Still Have the Sky” at Mary Baldwin’s Hunt Gallery from October 3–28.
The collection includes selected drawings, objects, and videos that Stewart says “embody notions of time and memory, and the gaps and absences found therein.”
Pieces were inspired by reading and reflection during the pandemic shutdown and subsequent quarantines.
Stuck at home for days, weeks, and months, the former Virginia Museum of Fine Arts sculpture fellow devoured books and essays about philosophy, physics, history, metaphysics, and more. He read authors like David Abram, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Donna Haraway, Stephen J. Gould, Kim Stanley Robinson, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Octavia Butler.
“I was able to dive into works I never would have had the time to read otherwise,” says Stewart, who has participated in more than 100 solo and group exhibitions since 2000. He gave free reign to intellectual, spiritual, and artistic curiosity, and let him take him where it would. The results were transformative.
“I’m interested in art that seeks to embody notions of time and memory, and the gaps and absences found therein.”
Sculptor and James Madison University Art Professor Greg Stewart
He recalls one moment of inspiration in particular.
Staring out his living room window during the long days of the early pandemic he noticed a telephone pole’s shadow inching between the driveways of neighboring houses. From afternoon to evening it crept like the slow hand of a clock, edging from porch to gravel, grass, and garden.
He began to think:
“During that time the houses, telephone pole, street — all of us — had traveled 1,340 miles around the earth,” Stewart writes in his artist statement. “We’d also traveled about 86,000 miles through space around the sun, and much, much farther as part of the wider spiraling of the galaxy.”
Yet, nobody seemed to notice a thing.
Thoughts like these fueled an exploration of concepts like time, evolution and progress; how creative works can be used to enliven the spiritual health of communities; the value of empathy amid the current global climate crisis; accessing the intelligence of the natural world — and much more.
Stewart used his art to express the sensation and emotional experience of these thoughts and questions. “We Still Have the Sky” represents their collective, transformative force.
An artist’s reception will be held in Hunt Gallery on Monday, October 3, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. The event is open to the public and will include a lecture and Q&A session with Stewart.
The Hunt Gallery is dedicated to the exhibition of contemporary work in all media by regionally and nationally recognized artists.
The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. throughout the academic year. CLICK HERE for our 2022–23 schedule of events.