From Nature: Contemporary Artists and Organic Materials

February 17 – October 6, 2019
at Racine Art Museum

Jan Hopkins
Isadora, 2008
Grapefruit peel, waxed linen, Alaskan yellow cedar bark, lotus pod tops, and Sharlyn melon peels
28 x 14 x 9 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Karen Johnson Boyd in Honor of Bruce W. Pepich’s 35 Years of Service to RAM
Photography: Jon Bolton, Racine

From Nature features primarily objects—sculptural, functional, and wearable—that incorporate items from the natural world as a means to explore materials and a way to investigate a variety of social, personal, environmental, and cultural issues. RAM’s collection, with its emphasis on contemporary craft, offers a unique platform for this conversation as so much of the work is built is from organically-based media such as wood, paper, and clay. The works included here emphasize the natural as a found object—perhaps manipulated, but not in a way that dramatically disguises the source. Elements such as feathers, stones, shells, twigs, and hair play structural, metaphorical, or decorative roles in these artworks created during the last few decades.

More About the Exhibition

Exhibition Notes (PDF)

Press Room

Artists in the Exhibition

Roger Asay, Michael Bailot, Dorothy Gill Barnes, Michael Bauermeister, Dail Behennah, Linda Bills, Jill Nordfors Clark, Rod Cronkite, Akemi Daniells, Rebecca Davis, Robert W. Ebendorf, Justin Phillip Erny, Patty Fawn, Arline Fisch, Norma Andersen Fox, Elsa Freund, L. Flecther Hartline, Marion Hildebrandt, Jan Hopkins, Shoichi Ida, Mary A. Jackson, Janel Jacobson, Susan W. Kilmer, Esther Knobel, Gyöngy Laky, Ken Loeber, Daniel Mack, Thomas Mann, K. Lee Manuel, John McQueen, C. James Meyers, Clifton Monteith , Judy Mulford, Harold O’Connor, Audrey Peck, Michael J. Peterson, Maria Phillips, Binh Pho, Tom Rauschke, Fran Reed, Ivy Ross, JoAnne Russo, Norm Sartorius, Hisako Sekijima, Sylvia Seventy, Steve Sinner, Doug Stock, Mecky Van Den Brink, Kaaren Wiken, Laura Wood, and Marci Zelmanoff