Art Gallery
Jodi Stuart: Future Fabulist
Exhibit Dates: Friday, May 31, 2024 – Sunday, August 18, 2024
In Future Fabulist, Jodi Stuart explores the aesthetic of the digital technologies that saturate our lives, in relation to tactile and sensory experience. Her woven sculptural forms are made using the plastic filaments intended for 3D-printers. Through her materials and processes, Stuart replaces the computer with the human hand subverting the materials of high-tech culture in a nostalgic gesture towards the hand made.
Stuart’s Future Fabulist exhibition consists of anamorphous, quirky and vaguely biological forms created by hand using a 3D-pen and plastic filaments. These are combined with colorful and pixelated background imagery, as well as super-synthetic materials such as acrylic rods and industrial foams. These works allude to craft traditions including weaving, knitting, and basket making; while hinting at virtual space, neural networks, cloud computing, and biomimicry. Her art practice explores ideas around the invasive materiality of consumer plastics, while playing on aspects of the virtual versus the physical, by integrating notes of contemporary culture’s aesthetic of hyper-stimulation and sensory overload.
This body of work was initially inspired by a depiction of the inner workings of a cell from the computer animation called ‘The Inner Life of the Cell’ by Harvard University Biology Department, produced in 2006. The hyperrealist, educational, computer-generated imagery demonstrates the mechanisms of cellular processes, and in Stuart’s view, inscribing machinic connotations onto the tiny organic forms. Biology and technology have become increasingly interwoven since then. For example, describing cellular processes as ‘tiny machines’, medical treatments as 'bio-hacks', or even the term ‘genetic engineering.’
In combination, Stuart’s bright synthetic colors, layered filaments, and textures combine to create optical and visceral sensations hinting at the insidious nature of technology and biomechanics. Her tone is kitsch, colorful, and playful in appearance, with forms that are ambiguous in meaning. Overall, she aims to create an immersive visceral experience where the viewer must constantly resist touching the deliberately inviting works.
About the Artist
Jodi Stuart was born in New Zealand, where she attained a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Manukau Institute of Technology, Auckland, and an MFA from Auckland University. Stuart currently lives, works, and teaches in Denver.
Now based at TANK Studios, Stuart has previously been an artist in residence at RINO Art Park, part of Redline Denver’s Satellite Program. As well as exhibiting in her home country of New Zealand, Stuart has exhibited in California, Colorado, Michigan, Maryland, Texas, and Washington.
Exhibit Events
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 30, 2024 at 5:30 p.m.
Light appetizers and beverages will be served. No RSVP necessary.
Artist Talk with Jodi Stuart: Thursday, June 20, 2024 (2 - 3 p.m.)
Jodi Stuart will speak about her ‘Future Fabulist’ exhibit, including a gallery tour.
No RSVP necessary.
A Place for All People: Introducing the National Museum of African American History and Culture
Exhibit Dates: Friday, September 20, 2024 – Sunday, December 29, 2024
The Smithsonian Institution opened its newest museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), on September 24, 2016. The celebration continues and reaches beyond Washington, D.C., to Littleton, Colorado as the Littleton Museum presents “A Place for All People: Introducing the National Museum of African American History and Culture.” This exhibit will be open from Friday, September 20, 2024 – Sunday, December 29, 2024.
Organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) in collaboration with the NMAAHC “A Place for All People” highlights key artifacts that tell the rich and diverse story of the African American experience. From the child-size shackles of an enslaved individual and the clothing worn by Carlotta Walls on her first day at Little Rock Central High School to Chuck Berry’s Gibson guitar, and the track shoes worn by Olympian Carl Lewis, the exhibition presents a living history that reflects challenge, triumph, faith, and hope.
The journey to establish the NMAAHC began a century ago with a call for a national memorial to honor African American Civil War veterans. After decades of efforts by private citizens, organizations, and members of Congress, federal legislation was passed in 2003 to create the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Since then, thousands of artifacts have been collected to fill the inspiring new building that has risen on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Through its exhibitions and programs, the Museum provides a shared lens to view the nation’s history and the possibility for hope and healing. It is a place where all can gather to remember, reflect, and embrace America’s story: a place for all people. For more information, visit nmaahc.si.edu.
The poster exhibition and related public programs are an opportunity for the Littleton Museum to share stories of African American and African diaspora people and their contributions to the American story.
About the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service
The Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) has been sharing the wealth of Smithsonian collections and research programs with millions of people outside Washington, D.C., for 65 years. SITES connects Americans to their shared cultural heritage through a wide range of exhibitions about art, science and history, which are shown wherever people live, work and play.
For exhibition description and tour schedules, visit sites.si.edu.