JUROR'S STATEMENT

For the Chico Art Center's National Juried Exhibition, I was asked to choose work that resonated with me in both form and content, to select work that forms a cohesive exhibit, and to find a common thread that runs through the work. Since the exhibit was open to all media and themes I was very curious to see what would be submitted and how I would respond to it.

As I reviewed the pieces submitted for the show, my thoughts kept circling around the different ways time is referenced, expressed or recorded in artworks, even when the artist is not specifically thinking about this theme, this turned out to be the thread that bound the chosen artworks together. As you view the show, I invite you to consider the way each piece addresses or expresses time – from how time passes in life to how it stays still in an image, from how art can tell stories from our past to how art preserves moments for the future. There’s the time spent making the piece, and how the artist’s gestures during the creation of the piece can be explicitly recorded with strong mark-making. There’s taking something that happens too fast to be seen with the naked eye, and making it last forever in an image. Capturing a gesture or expression, mid-movement, teases us with what happened before and what will happen after. Landscapes can reference the passing of days by marking the sun’s progress across the sky via light and shadow, and the passing of the years via the cycle of seasons and weather. The passing of seasons can also be referenced in "Nature Mortes" (still lives) which present flowers, fruits and vegetables at specific moments in their cycles from bud, to prime, then decay. Some pieces explicitly include clocks, use calendar imagery or reference the passing of time in their titles. Some whole art movements, such as cubism and futurism, engaged with time by showing multiple views in one picture that could only be seen sequentially in life. There are as many different ways to reference time in an artwork as there are artists, and often more than one way is present in a single piece. I hope taking this idea with you around the gallery enhances your enjoyment of the show. – Julia Kay