Secrets: A Panel with Artists Courtney Kessel, Michelle Murphy, and Jacquelynn Sullivan and Juror Astria Suparak

SATURDAY, JULY 31, 3-5 PM
Join Secrets: A Panel with Artists Courtney Kessel, Michelle Murphy, and Jacquelynn Sullivan and Juror Astria Suparak and a closing reception to meet the artists

Read Dan Tranberg’s review in The Plain Dealer

The Sculpture Center closes After the Pedestal, the 6th Annual of Smaller Sculpture from the Region with an artists’ panel and reception to meet the artists on Saturday, July 31, the last day of the exhibition. The public is invited to Secrets: A Panel with Artists Courtney Kessel, Michelle Murphy, and Jacquelynn Sullivan and Juror Astria Suparak from 3-4 PM, followed by a closing reception in the Sculpture Courtyard to meet the artists until 5 PM. Parking is available in The Sculpture Center parking lot, on the street, and in the lot of the Free Clinic. Call 216.229.6527 if you have any questions.

Courtney Kessel, Susan Kennedy: Pieces (detail), 2010, wood, low voltage lighting system, peephole, porcelain, paper, graphite, 42 x 16 x 16 in. Image courtesy of The Sculpture Center.	Michelle Murphy, Untitled (participatory objects) (detail), 2010, mixed media installation. Image courtesy of The Sculpture Center.	Jacquelynn Sullivan, Vacant Spaces (detail), 2009, bronze, repurposed steel case chair, 3 x 2 x 2 ft. Image courtesy of The Sculpture Center.

At first glance Courtney Kessel’s Susan Kennedy: Pieces appears to be an empty pedestal with its sculpture forgotten or perhaps stolen; however, a look into a discrete peephole reveals a hidden world. The viewer must become a participant to discover the secret within. Kessel, who received her BFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, PA, is a second year MFA student at Ohio University in Athens, OH. Her artwork has been exhibited in New York City, Morehead, KY, Athens, OH, and Pittsburgh, PA.

Michelle Murphy‘s installation Untitled (participatory objects) also requires full viewer participation to reveal its secrets, handwritten messages in balloons that must be popped. Murphy, a 2004 BFA graduate from the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA), creates multi-disciplinary visual art that explores differences between reality and constructed ideals. Her artwork has been published internationally and exhibited in Geneva, Switzerland, San Francisco, CA, Chicago, IL, Cleveland, OH, and across the Midwest. Murphy works by day as a NASA Glenn Research Center photographer and CIA adjunct faculty member.

Jacquelynn Sullivan’s two sculptures Benign and Vacant Spaces bring into the open pathologies and the fears surrounding them that the sufferers often keep secreted away. Sullivan, who received her BA from the University of Minnesota (2008), is completing her MFA at Michigan State University in East Lansing MI, where she has a graduate assistantship. Her artwork has been exhibited in Michigan, Kansas, and Minnesota.

About the juror
Astria Suparak is the director of Carnegie Mellon University's Miller Gallery, where she curated the touring survey exhibition Keep It Slick: Infiltrating Capitalism with the Yes Men and Your Town, Inc.: Big Box Reuse with Julia Christensen and co-organized the Contestational Cartographies Symposium. She has curated exhibitions, screenings, and events at The Kitchen in New York, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Eyebeam, Anthology Film Archives, P.S.1, FotoFest Biennial in Houston, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City, Participant Inc., Yale University, and The Liverpool Biennial, in addition to numerous alternative spaces. Over the last ten years she has presented 300 shows in ten countries. Suparak was the director of the media series at Pratt Institute from 1997 to 2000 and of Syracuse University's Warehouse Gallery from 2006-2007. Suparak’s drawings have been published in feminist journal LTTR, photo essay book I NY, British art magazine Black Diamond, and Graffiti Women: Street Art from Five Continents. Her writing has appeared in NY Arts, The
Independent, and Heeb, and in the upcoming anthologies Live Cinema: A Contemporary Reader and A Microcinema Primer: A Brief History of Small Cinemas.

For more information call 216.229.6527 or go to info@sculpturecenter.org.

The Sculpture Center is a not-for-profit arts institution dedicated to the advancement of the careers of emerging Ohio sculptors and the preservation of Ohio outdoor sculpture as a means to provide support for artists and to effect the enrichment, education, enjoyment, and visual enhancement of the Cleveland community and greater region.

The Sculpture Center receives generous support from Toby Devan Lewis, the Kulas Foundation, the John P. Murphy Foundation, the Bernice and David E. Davis Art Foundation, the George Gund Foundation, studioTECHNE|architects, The Nathan and Fannye Shafran Foundation, a supporting foundation of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, and individual donors to Friends of The Sculpture Center. It receives additional generous public funding from Cuyahoga Arts and Culture and the Ohio Arts Council. 

Gallery hours: Wednesday through Friday, 10 AM to 4 pm, Friday until 7:30, Saturday 12 noon to 4 pm or by prior appointment (Free Parking, Handicapped accessible)