iPhone photography subject of April art gallery

The Krempp Gallery at the Jasper Arts Center will host Rockville, Indiana photographer, Jonathan Soard for April.

For the last three years, health-related obstacles kept Jonathan Soard from painting or drawing, and he turned exclusively to photography and found a sympathetic medium.

“It was a medium I could use while flat on my back. Technology had advanced, and I was able to use nothing but an iPhone as my camera of choice. Both my media and my medium were always as close as my back pocket.  Drawing uses my eye, hand, and heart.  A good photograph is also made with the heart and the mind.  Technology is just a means to an end in the creative process.  My camera is a tool. I have a long-term relationship with digital technology that allows me to make something, an image that is more than just the sum of its parts,” Soard said.

Soard has been exploring a recent movement in the fine arts that involves the artist celebrating technology’s potential for misinterpreting data in a way that produces a glitch — a short-lived fault in a system.  His work is often a derivation of Glitch Art. “I have learned to guide technology into a figuratively abstract composition by anticipating a glitch or forcing a glitch. This process can take many attempts before technology, and I agree on an outcome,” said Soard.

All types of systems including human organizations and nature experience glitches. A glitch is usually slight and often temporary. Other times a glitch can be a thing of beauty and a visual marvel.

“When I think of the many happy surprises in the course of making art — a glitch is just another welcome interloper,” Soard said. “Some say that the process of evolution is little more than a series of glitches in genetic code… but those glitches sometimes make the “glitched” better equipped to survive. Again, serendipity. Nature is wild, but maybe not chaotic. We often experience nature as chaotic when we don’t understand the bigger picture. Regardless, there is an inherent spiritual quality in a glitch whether it’s a glitch of nature or a computer glitch. It’s the interference of something beyond ourselves.”

Jonathan Soard grew up on a farm in Dana, Indiana, and eventually moved to New York City where he lived and worked for 30 years. He now lives in Rockville, occasionally teaches at Indiana State University or Saint Mary of the Woods College, and advocates for the Arts in Indiana.  Soard holds a Masters of Fine Arts from Columbia University and will pursue another Master’s degree, this time a Master’s of Art Therapy beginning this Fall, 2018.

Meet the artist and listen to a Gallery Talk at the FiRST THURSDAY Reception at the Krempp Gallery on April 5th, 2018 from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. Cash bar and refreshments will be served. This is a free, family friendly evening out.

The Krempp Gallery, located in the Jasper Arts Center adjacent to the VUJC campus, is open to the public Monday through Friday from 8:30 am to 5 pm, until 7 pm on Thursdays, and Sunday from noon to 3 pm.   School groups, clubs, and students are welcome. Admission is free.

For more information, please call the Arts Center at 812-482-3070.  The Jasper Arts Center is managed by Jasper Community Arts, a department of the City of Jasper.  JCA is supported by Friends of the Arts, Inc., the Indiana Arts Commission through its regional partner the Vanderburgh Community Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.