FARMINGTON – Sculptor Samantha Jones’ compelling new exhibition, “Vital Traces,” opens the UMF Art Gallery’s fall 2021 season. The exhibit runs from now until – Oct. 28 on the University of Maine at Farmington campus.
Vital Traces examines the unique human moment as people anticipate loss of great magnitude, of environmental, social, cultural, and personal circumstances.
Jones, through her art, identifies the struggle of humans today and defines their relationship to the world as an experience of wavering grief, of a perpetual sense of indeterminacy, and of loss that is not yet lost. Her art sensationalizes that there is both tragedy and beauty in this moment, as well as a strong impulse for humans to create responses that go beyond rationality.
Jones has a sympathetic exploration of personal and universal materials like soap formed of breast milk, an extravagant collection of costume jewelry left behind after the death of a woman larger-than-life, and abstract compositions of delicately blown glass. There is gold leaf and encaustic (wax-based paint) suggesting the beginnings of life itself to invite the viewer to reflect on their own experience of the complexity of time of perpetual transition.
Jones completed her MFA in Fibers and Materials Studies at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, in Philadelphia. She is currently completing her dissertation, “Wild Care: Resonance, Emergence and Excess”, a study of autopoiesis and ekstasis in the human impulse to create, in the Ph.D. program at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. Jones is an assistant professor of art at the University of Maine.
The UMF Art Gallery is dedicated to bringing contemporary art to the campus and regional communities. The gallery is located at 246 Main Street, behind the Admissions Office. Gallery hours are Tuesdays-Sundays 12-4 p.m., and by appointment. Please contact Sarah at maline@maine.edu or 778-1062 for more information or to make an appointment.
