Spellerberg Projects

Jim Shrosbree, Out West

Exhibition • February 10–March 2, 2024

Gallery hours
Saturday, February 10, 11am-3pm
Saturday, February 17, 11am-3pm
Saturday, February 24, 11am-3pm
Friday, March 1, 6–9pm – Artist’s Reception
Saturday, March 2, 11am-3pm – Last Look


Artist’s Statement

I work between sculpture and painting, using various materials to navigate the play of an interior landscape with a language of form.

Conditions of working – space, tools, materials, and a visual vocabulary – fluctuate to become an extension of who I am at the moment. Discovery comes at different rates and with uneven timing. Associations arise and squirm, hinting at meaning – contradictions wrestle with one another. These conditions dictate a cycle of expansion and contraction that is, in itself, an interactive relationship of knowing and not knowing.

I think of these events as driven by the process of drawing. I find myself pulled into a process of looking and not looking, which could be correlated with covering and revealing, destroying and creating – things come apart and cohere at the same time. Largeness is compressed into small spaces.

Out of that situation emerges new events and possible narratives that help me grow.  It’s a good reason to continue.

Jim Shrosbree, Jan 2024

About the Artist

Jim Shrosbree’s work has been exhibited widely in North America. Public collections with his work include the Detroit Institute of Art, Los Angeles County Museum, Edythe and Ely Broad Museum, Des Moines Art Center, University of Iowa Museum of Art, Mint Museum, and Daum Museum ofContemporary Art.

Shrosbree has been a visiting artist at numerous universities and art institutions including Cranbrook Academy of Art, NYU, UC-Davis, Bard College, University of Washington, University of Minnesota, Penn State University, Alberta University of the Arts, Drake University and the University of Iowa.

He has received residency fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell and Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts. Residencies also include time as a scholar at the American Academy in Rome. Awards include a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, the National Endowment for the Arts(Midwest Fellowship) among others.

Jim Shrosbree received an MFA in Ceramics from the University of Montana, Missoula. He is Professor of Art at Maharishi International University, Fairfield, Iowa where he lives and works.