Kerianne Quick and Jess Tolbert first met as Graduate students in Metal at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in 2010, where they discovered their shared interests in elaborate halloween costume making, high intensity group fitness boot camp classes, and the compelling, multi-faceted, layered, and meaningful world of contemporary jewelry. Jess and Kerianne now teach Jewelry and Metals at the University of Texas El Paso and San Diego State University, respectively, and continue to share ideas, beers, and collaborate. 

While in Omaha for the Present Tense ACC conference, Keri & Jess worked on curating the exhibition from over 100 works!

*airbnb with gallery walls & lighting a plus!

The exhibition titled Duality of Presence explores a movement in American contemporary jewelry and object making where artists aim to reveal hidden narratives through material, format, presentation, and interaction. The works reveal and question histories, lineage, conveyance, and supply chain to expand and contract possible contexts of meaning. In virtual reality a ‘duality of presence’ refers to the user’s ability to be present in both their own reality and another, via technology. This duality of presence highlights a specific approach in American making where artists explore both visible and veiled contexts through material, connecting the objects we make to a multiplicity of perspectives generated by these connections.

Lynn Batchelder, How to Build a House (detail), 2012, one quart reconstructed house paint, copper

Demitra Thomloudis, Over The Fence (detail), 2016, cement, brass, steel paint, graphite pencil

This exhibition suggests and demonstrates that material specificity conjures both the reality in front of us, and others – at a distance. To be simultaneously viewing the artwork in the gallery, but also be transported by the materials story provides insight to our relationships with objects, materials, and histories through materiality, research, and making.

@dualityofpresence