Lisa Marie Barber, Jayne King

media release: Upcoming solo exhibitions feature ceramics, textiles, and mixed-media work by Lisa Marie Barber (Kenosha) and Jayne King (Chicago).

On View: February 23 to May 5, 2024. Artists' Reception: Saturday, February 24, 5:30-7:30 pm.

"Brimming with bold color and sculptural energy, both Barber and King's work in clay and mixed media is closely connected to their personal experience and cultural heritage," says Watrous Gallery Director Jody Clowes. "Barber's ceramic tableau recall Latin-inflected Catholic shrines from the American Southwest, while King's vessels are layered with stories and histories drawn from their Midwestern Jewish family." 

Admission is free and the public is welcome. The James Watrous Gallery is located on the third floor of Overture Center for the Arts in downtown Madison. Gallery Hours: Thursday-Friday 12:00-6:00pm, Saturday 11:00-5:00pm, Sunday 12:00-5:00pm.

The James Watrous Gallery is dedicated to celebrating Wisconsin artists. A program of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters, the Watrous Gallery focuses on solo exhibits by contemporary Wisconsin artists and curated shows that reflect the Wisconsin Academy's interest in drawing connections between art and other disciplines.

These exhibitions are made possible in part by a grant from Dane Arts.

Lisa Marie Barber: Playground

Lisa Marie Barber's dense, large-scale ceramic assemblages command attention, spilling vivid imagery and bright colors across the gallery floor. Layering and accumulating enigmatic shapes, figures, and floral imagery, she creates environments bursting with playful, celebratory energy. Barber’s aesthetic sensibility is rooted in Mexican folk art and the Latin American Catholic shrines of her heritage and upbringing in Tucson, Arizona, and her fluid, deft touch highlights the soft plasticity of clay. The rich ornamentation, color, and abundance in her work expresses reverence, gratitude, and joy. Barber’s exhibition also includes a series of her vibrant quilts and fabric collages.

Jayne King: unearthed

Jayne King's porcelain vessels explore the nature of memory, nostalgia and personal narrative, and how Jewish tradition informs their relationship to their family’s past and present. Instead of food or water, these pots carry memory and history, embellished with lively images of family life, tools and keepsakes, slivers of landscape, skeletons and fossils. Stacked and interwoven layers of imagery suggest geological strata and the dream-like quality of memory. Instead of using the bright, clear glazes traditionally associated with porcelain, King favors darker, earthy tones that reflect the archeological nature of family history. In addition to their ceramic vessels, King's exhibition features a series of textiles and mixed-media works.