Lecture and Demo with sculpture artist Jonathan Kirk

In this special lecture and demonstration, artist Jonathan Kirk will discuss his fine art sculptures, especially the maquettes found in his Fenimore exhibition, Abstract Sculpture: Fables, Foibles, and other Machinations. Participants will be invited to handle certain maquettes that the artist brings to the lecture and ask questions about the construction of them.

Jonathan Kirk’s sculptures, while abstract, are evocative of a wide range of sources, from the natural and organic world, to forms of industrial and naval architecture. The work illuminates the ways in which the forms of the artist as well as the engineer still embody the mysterious intelligence of their natural models and points to the idea that making is, in a sense, the invention of what might be called ‘cultural machinery.’ His sculptures are rigorously committed to sculptural ‘object-hood,’ yet at the same time contain visual references that suggest a metaphorical context. The pieces relate partial narratives – stories without endings. The collective visual unconscious is plundered and sampled; we have all seen these shapes before but where exactly?

Jonathan Kirk was born in Saffron Walden, Great Britain, in 1955. He earned his BFA from St. Martins School of Art, London, in 1978 and his MFA from Syracuse University in 1980. From 1980 to 2000, Kirk was the studio manager at Sculpture Space Inc., an international residency program in Utica, New York, that hosts sculpture artists who are invited to create new work and engage with the community. Kirk continues to live and work in Utica.