GAMBIER — The miniature, wax-carved sculptures of Kate Budd bring an air of beauty, desire and fecundity to the Olin Art Gallery at Kenyon College, opening on Jan. 27 and continuing through Feb. 26.
The Akron-based artist will discuss the exhibition, titled “Talisman,” and her work on Thursday, Feb. 17, at 7 p.m. in the Olin Auditorium, 103 College Drive, followed by a reception in the gallery. The exhibition and the artist’s talk are free and open to the public.
The exhibition includes more than 30 of Budd’s delicate and translucent pieces, which are intimate in scale. Her use of wax is sometimes enhanced with beads, pins and thread. The objects of Budd’s desire include “egg,” “conch” and “golden peach.”
“Through artfulness, a humble material and dark subject matter can be transformed into an object that seduces,” Budd said in a statement. “I seek archetypal forms, creating hybrids that take emotional cues from the human body but that have the singularity of fruit, shells, roots or eggs.”
Carving blocks of wax, her ideas change as she works intuitively to “learn what the piece is by making it.”
An Ohio museum director said Budd’s carvings “tenderly whisper volumes about inferiority, desire and existence.”
Budd has exhibited her work at William Busta Gallery, Cleveland; Carnegie Galleries, Covington, Ky. Akron Art Museum; Sculpture Center, Cleveland; Rudolph Poissant Gallery, Houston; Mitchell Gallery, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale; Riffe Gallery, Columbus; Cleveland Museum of Art; and Weston Art Gallery, Cincinnati.
Budd is an associate professor of art at the University of Akron. She won an Ohio Arts Council individual excellence award in 2006 and an Individual Artist Fellowship in 2003. She earned a bachelor’s in fine art at the Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen, Scotland, and a master’s at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
For more information about the exhibit and the gallery, visit www2.kenyon.edu or contact director Dan Younger at 427-5346 and at younger@kenyon.edu. The gallery is free and open to the public on Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and on Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Published on January 24, 2011
