The artists:
Jasper Goodrich is an artist and educator living in Chicago, Illinois. The artist Lee Bontecou wrote, “It is in the spirit of these feelings that my work was and is still being made.” The worlds and feelings that Jasper’s work exist in are: the expansive and iterative nature of the human imagination, the magic world of images, sequential ways of organizing information, spirituality, making collaboratively with other people, influences from music and music production, and the connection between iteration and the social. Goodrich works in mediums including painting, printmaking, sculpture, drawing, and photography. He has exhibited nationally in venues in Illinois, New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. He has received grants, awards, and/or residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Ox-Bow School of Art, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hyde Park Art Center, and the National Iron Casting Conference. Goodrich currently teaches in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Printmedia Department and at the Hyde Park Art Center where he leads a class titled “Sequences, Iterations, and Permutations.”
Justin Nalley is a Chicago based visual artist, poet, and healing arts facilitator. He is currently working on a book of poems, drawings, and ephemera titled, Yes, I Can Understand Your Feeling This Way. Nalley has exhibited widely throughout the US, including Perspectives Gallery (MIAD), The American Institute of Thoughts and Feelings (Tucson, AZ), Compound Yellow (Oak Park, IL), and Comfort Station (here, right now in Chicago, IL). He received a BA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago and teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Salim Moore is a visual artist who thinks about fantasy and its limitations and possibilities through drawing, painting, and printmaking. He casts himself, his friends, and others as characters in the stories found in ballads, folktales, and myths. For inspiration, he looks to works of epic fiction as well as the day dreams one might experience while window shopping, equally. He believes that collaborating with Jasper and Justin on Snake, the Hunter, and Bell will open up novel ways for audiences to consider the diverse perspectives of the fantastical.
He was born in Pasadena, CA, which is located in the unincorporated foothills of Los Angeles. He received his BA in Art History from Reed College in 2011 and his MFA from the Painting & Drawing Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is currently the Assistant Curator of Collections at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, in Claremont, California.
Snake, the Hunter, and Bell
Jasper Goodrich, Justin Nalley, and Salim Moore
September 4th 2021 - October 3rd 2021
Over the past year, Jasper Goodrich, Justin Nalley, and Salim Moore collaborated on a project that intersects intuitive modes of making with their differing interests in fantasy: the magical, the narrative, the artistic, and the personal, all acting as a tinted lens to process society. “Snake, the Hunter, and Bell” is the result of this collaboration. The exhibition features both individual and collaborative work including drawings, site-specific installations, sculptures, paintings, prints, and poetry that serve as suggestions for the various ways people engage with their heart’s desire.
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This is a story about a station in the woods, an old inn for travelers to rest their hat. Although it was deserted, three travelers, a Snake, a Hunter, and a bellmaker named Bell met at the inn on a misty night. For months they lived there, trading stories around the fire, planting flowers, fixing the well, building archways, and patching the roof. Everything was fine until one night their light was stolen.
Embarking on a journey that would take near their entire lifetime to complete, the three travelers set out to regain their light.
What you are seeing here is the old inn after they all passed away. Upon regaining their light, they lived relatively happily in the station painting pictures from their memories. It wasn’t until you entered that the light flickered and turned into something new.