Stir Fry: A Visual Arts Feast of Nature and Cultural Diversity will be displayed from Sept. 25 through Dec. 20, 2013 at the School of Social Work in the first floor Gallery. An artist’s reception will be held on Thursday, Oct. 3 from 4 to 6 p.m. in the Gallery and is open to the public. Troy Osaki will give a poetry reading at the reception.
The show will include a collection of Jean Chen’s mixed media collages, sumi-e paintings and photographs. These pieces reflect her fascination with differences between individuals and societies on all continents through many centuries. Says Jean Chen about the exhibit: “Each work of art is an attempt at a lyrical account providing the view with a means of making a leap of the imagination, from images of dirt, petals, light, shadow, color, nature’s assets, to our own more intense understanding of and regard to nature’s aliveness.”
Jean Chen taught art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, University of Denver, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Walker Art Center, and she has worked with arts funding at the National Endowment for the Arts. She has conducted arts evaluation, education and museum research at The Smithsonian Institute, Getty Institute and the John D. Rockefeller Third Fund. She graduated from Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art and City Planning, New York University with a MA, and the UW School of Social Work with a MSW.