Jim Zver

Jim Zver
Los Angeles, California, USA

STATEMENT

My long interest in collage has taken two different but related directions. One is paper collage, which is more oriented towards painting and drawing concerns, and subtle transitions of color and tone. These collages often imply a 3rd dimension becoming a kind of sculpture themselves functioning in a two-dimensional space. The other direction is painted wood sculpture and reliefs, which I think of as a kind of construction/collage, assembled rather than carved or molded. Both directions involve preparing a “visual vocabulary” of forms, both paper and wood, altering their surfaces in various ways, and then finding connections and relationships between them. This is the most intuitive aspect of making my art.
Over time my work has changed in material and appearance but the visual vocabulary has remained consistent: a collage/assemblage format, repeated forms, and the juxtaposing of subtle transitions of tone with sharply contrasting colors, surfaces, and shapes.

BIO

I studied painting at the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA) and Cornell University (MFA). After a two-year army stint in Darmstadt, Germany, I moved from Chicago to New York where I continued developing my visual ideas and where collage gradually became my main focus. I feel this was the beginning of my fully realized art.

I worked in the display department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and taught at the School of Visual Art in New York, Hofstra University on Long Island, and Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. I also was commissioned to make collages for the windows of Tiffany and Co., Bloomingdale’s jewelry windows, and Macy’s premier Broadway windows.

Now relocated to Los Angeles, my collage development has evolved into a 3-D sculpture/collage format as well as continuing with paper collage. A 20-year survey of 79 of my Los Angeles collages and sculptures was held in the Kellogg Gallery at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

ARTIST CONTACT

(323) 632-5205
[click to email]
www.jimzverart.com

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