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Barbara Yontz
MFA
(Energy
Gallery's Membership Award)
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Biography:
MFA,
Vermont College, Visual Art
M.A.,
Vanderbilt University, Art History
M.A.,
The University of South Florida, Art Education
B.A.,
The University of South Florida, PaintingBarbara
Yontz, currently an Assistant professor of art at St. Thomas Aquinas
College in Sparkill, New York spent eight years as Associate professor
of art at Watkins College or Art in Nashville. Yontz teaches 2, 3 and
4-D studio classes as well as contemporary art and issues in
contemporary art and theory. She is an artist and writer, recently
signatured in the Fragile Species exhibition at the Frist Center
for Visual Arts in Nashville, included in the Toxic Landscapes
exhibit at the Jose Marti National Library in Havana, Cuba, and has
exhibited at the Limner Gallery in New York, at the Boston Museum School
and the Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences, New
Jersey as well as other exhibitions throughout the U.S. and in Mexico.
She has written art criticism and articles on art for publications such
as, “Art Papers”, “The Chicago Art Journal” and “InReview” and recently
presented papers at the Popular Culture Conference on Unorthodox
Teaching Methods in the Arts, and the Southeastern College Art
Association Conference on Artists and Action in the Community. An
avid researcher, concepts fuel her work especially ones related to
embodiment and action, materiality and immateriality. Her most recent
experiments are in the area of three and four dimensions…performance,
sound and space. Her work is an interrogation of the notion of
boundaries as it mediates our notions of both personal and social
relations.
Artist Statement:
Using a
variety of media I experiment with ways to resist thinking in binary
terms (mind/body, inside/outside, beauty /abject, organic/inorganic,
self/other, and virtuality/materiality). I am particularly interested in
what penetrates, problematizes and otherwise reconfigures how we come to
think about the concept of boundaries as it mediates our notions of
personal and social relations. Looking for ways through which we
separate from and connect with each other--skin, voice, touch, action,
and language are examined. I choose materials carefully, hog gut, iron,
sound, the body, all have meaning as matter, metaphor and for what they
do. My working processes, (sewing, welding, acting) and the presentation
methods (time-based, installation, ambient sound, headphones), all are
chosen for how they mean.The
pieces grow out of my own idiosyncratic musings: the subversive and
complex possibilities associated with love, the stunted desire and
pathos of an indiscernible encounter, or the inevitably futile gesture
of attempting to hide the self. I am interested in the material and
psychological consequences of relationships, the paradox of the
encounter between two. Because ultimately, it is in the relationship,
with all its messiness and tenderness, where meaning is enacted. And it
is within relationship where boundaries can be softened.
www.barbarayontz.com
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