SEASONS
Steve Joy, 2024
with text from Belinda Smith
"We invite you to somethin' epic, y'all know?
Well, we hustle out of a sense of, hopelessness
Sort of a desperation
Through that desperation, we 'come addicted
Sorta like the fiends we accustomed to servin'
Well, we feel we have nothin' to lose
So, we offer you, well, we offer our lives
What do you bring to the table?"
- Shawn Carter (Jay-Z), "Can I Live." Reasonable Doubt, Irving Lorenzo (New York City: D&D Studios, 1996) track 8.
‘The Seasons’ can be interpreted as a record of the artists’ own movements through time and space, across oceans and continents, a transnational appeal from a lifetime of travel and search. Yet these records, akin to layers of rock strata, equally exist in the present moment and reach back through Time to the once-present ‘Now’.
Like a quartet of Neolithic stelae – inscribed with hand carved messages and whittled down over centuries to smooth, even frail flatness – or mysterious Celtic standing stones indicating the passage of the firmament’s astral beings - the harmonious composition of four panels gives the impression of musical notes set to the grid-like lines of a stave.
Interspersed with the promise of a golden half-silence, a bass drone, or a spinal chord of gold – a connective hinge of threaded light - these gaps, or margins, offer a rhythmic pattern. A bridge between different shades of verses. As regularly spaced as a metronome’s even swing, these golden sections traverse the close distance between these separate components marking time and space.
existing at the very edge of society and orbiting its endless margins
shifting frameworks of contemporary cultural perspectives throughout these many relocations
Waterbound Blue, Stonebound Grey, Earthbound Green, Lightbound Yellow
rain spots quivering on a mammal’s fur
little daub of red
stucco-like backdrop of pink as through a seismic tremor
the golden wings of Icharus
Steve Joy, 2024
with text from Belinda Smith
"We invite you to somethin' epic, y'all know?
Well, we hustle out of a sense of, hopelessness
Sort of a desperation
Through that desperation, we 'come addicted
Sorta like the fiends we accustomed to servin'
Well, we feel we have nothin' to lose
So, we offer you, well, we offer our lives
What do you bring to the table?"
- Shawn Carter (Jay-Z), "Can I Live." Reasonable Doubt, Irving Lorenzo (New York City: D&D Studios, 1996) track 8.
‘The Seasons’ can be interpreted as a record of the artists’ own movements through time and space, across oceans and continents, a transnational appeal from a lifetime of travel and search. Yet these records, akin to layers of rock strata, equally exist in the present moment and reach back through Time to the once-present ‘Now’.
Like a quartet of Neolithic stelae – inscribed with hand carved messages and whittled down over centuries to smooth, even frail flatness – or mysterious Celtic standing stones indicating the passage of the firmament’s astral beings - the harmonious composition of four panels gives the impression of musical notes set to the grid-like lines of a stave.
Interspersed with the promise of a golden half-silence, a bass drone, or a spinal chord of gold – a connective hinge of threaded light - these gaps, or margins, offer a rhythmic pattern. A bridge between different shades of verses. As regularly spaced as a metronome’s even swing, these golden sections traverse the close distance between these separate components marking time and space.
existing at the very edge of society and orbiting its endless margins
shifting frameworks of contemporary cultural perspectives throughout these many relocations
Waterbound Blue, Stonebound Grey, Earthbound Green, Lightbound Yellow
rain spots quivering on a mammal’s fur
little daub of red
stucco-like backdrop of pink as through a seismic tremor
the golden wings of Icharus
Photos Courtesy of Mike Nesbit
Photos Courtesy of Dan Schwalm
Email conversations with Steve Joy regarding this exhibition:
About the Artist:
Steve Joy was born in Plymouth, England, in 1952, Joy served in the Royal Air Force from 1968 to 1975 and visited museums and cultural sights during his furloughs. In 1975, he enrolled at Cardiff College of Art in Cardiff, Wales, to pursue his passion for art. In 1979, he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Exeter College of Art, Devon, England, and in 1980, he graduated from Chelsea College of Arts in London with a Master of Fine Art in Painting. Joy has worked and taught in a number of locations throughout Europe and Japan, and he moved to Omaha in 1999 as the curator of the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.
Joy’s work is featured in the collections of many Nebraska and Iowa homes, corporations and institutions, as well as in international museums, including the British Council Arts in London, the Japan Foundation in Tokyo, the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona in Barcelona, and the New York Public Library in New York City.
www.stevejoystudio.com
Steve Joy was born in Plymouth, England, in 1952, Joy served in the Royal Air Force from 1968 to 1975 and visited museums and cultural sights during his furloughs. In 1975, he enrolled at Cardiff College of Art in Cardiff, Wales, to pursue his passion for art. In 1979, he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Exeter College of Art, Devon, England, and in 1980, he graduated from Chelsea College of Arts in London with a Master of Fine Art in Painting. Joy has worked and taught in a number of locations throughout Europe and Japan, and he moved to Omaha in 1999 as the curator of the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.
Joy’s work is featured in the collections of many Nebraska and Iowa homes, corporations and institutions, as well as in international museums, including the British Council Arts in London, the Japan Foundation in Tokyo, the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona in Barcelona, and the New York Public Library in New York City.
www.stevejoystudio.com