Shape Shifting Verse

Collage is an art form that challenges its maker to bring a variety of materials and sources of imagery together, taking what is broken to create a new whole. The twenty collages in Shape Shifting Verse contain complex visual events that explore ideas about scale, speed, atmosphere, and subtle humor in constructed moments of animation. Using color, light, gravity and weightlessness, the compositions unlock associations that return a sense of wholeness to the lived events of our own lives. Working with torn and cut fragments from a wide range of sources, the goal of this collaboration in collage is to lead and be led by another mind through surprise and revelation until the events of the collage have a life of their own. In Shape Shifting Verse #1, a large yellow shape billows out from the center, as if from a strong gust of wind, revealing watery spaces with ghost-like waterlilies. The whole composition is tilting back and forth looking for balance. In contrast, Shape Shifting #2 has fragile looking petal shapes delicately layered that float together in the lightest of air, suggesting how the slightest breath can bring real change to what exists around you. All these psychosomatic responses remind us of our wholeness and the richly layered and even immeasurable complexity of our lives. This experience of wholeness is often compromised by trauma, illness, and routine. The twenty collages in Shape Shifting Verse are invitations to explore what forces, big and small, create our experiences of wholeness over time.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Jil Evans is a painter and writer who has exhibited nationally and internationally, and her work is in many private and public collections including Minneapolis Institute of Art, Walker Art Center, and Harry and Margaret W. Anderson Collection. She has received grants from the MCAD/ Jerome Foundation Grant, Arts Midwest/ National Endowment for the Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board, a Pew Grant to study and paint in Italy, and residencies at the American Academy in Rome and Atlantic Center for the Arts. She earned her MA in painting from the University of Iowa, and her MFA in painting from Stanford University.  She is based in Minneapolis where she maintains a painting studio at Traffic Zone Center for Visual Arts, and exhibits at Kolman & Pryor Gallery.

Lynn Wadsworth is a visual artist who has worked in several mediums: film, photography, collage, assemblage, ceramics, and sculpture. Her work seeks to reveal hidden meanings, expose contradictions, and examine the underpinnings of cultural construction through juxtaposition, humor, and invention. Her work has been exhibited at museums and galleries, including the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Northern Clay Center, Rutgers University, Hyde Park Art Center, Art in General, and A.I.R. Gallery. She has received several grants and awards for her work, including a McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowship, Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists, Jerome Foundation Project Grant, and three Minnesota State Arts Board individual artist grants. She earned her MFA in sculpture from Hunter College in New York City. Lynn currently lives and works in St. Paul, Minnesota.

GALLERY HOURS
Gallery Hours: Monday - Friday, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm, and by appointment.
Free and open to the public.

Image: Jil Evans and Lynn Wadsworth, Shape Shifting Verse #1, 2021, mixed media collage, 10 x 8 in.