Multimedia Exhibit to Feature Internationally Renowned Artists

April 6, 2015

Johnson State College’s Visual Arts Center will host a multimedia exhibit from Thursday, April 16, to Thursday, April 23, highlighting the work of artists Hee Sook Kim, an internationally renowned printmaker, and Christopher Shultis, an accomplished experimental composer and musician who collaborated with and wrote a well-received biography about the late American composer John Cage.

Titled “Encounter,” the exhibit in the Black Box Gallery in JSC’s Visual Arts Center includes projected video images, 12 paintings and 12 glass jars with dried medicinal plants by Kim, along with sounds and 12 poems on wood panels by Shultis. An opening and artist talk is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 16.

In addition to the exhibit, Shultis will present “Experimentalism Revisited,” a concert at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 21, in the Stearns Student Center’s Performance Space. He will incorporate two of his own works – Metaphysics (1992) and 64 Statements re and not re Child of Tree (1989) – as well as those by two major composers who have influenced him: Edges (1968) by Christian Wolff and Child of Tree (1975) by John Cage. The concert will featured a performance by students in the JSC “Intermedia” class.

Both events are free and open to the public.

Shultis is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Regents Professor of Music at the University of New Mexico (UNM). His career began as an orchestral musician in the late 1970s, and in 1980, he was hired as director of percussion studies at UNM, where he collaborated with a number of musicians, including Cage, Wolff, Lou Harrison, Konrad Boehmer, Michael Colgrass and James Tenney.

Shultis’ scholarly work on Cage is internationally recognized; his book, Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the American Experimental Tradition (1998), recently was reprinted by Northeastern University Press. He now lives near Philadelphia, dividing his time between composition and writing.

Currently chair of fine arts at Haverford College in the Philadelphia area, Kim also teaches printmaking and works as an artist. She is represented by Causey Contemporary Gallery in New York. Her pieces are included in many collections throughout the United States, Korea, Japan and Taiwan, and her shows and work have drawn numerous reviews nationally and internationally.

Kim has a master of fine arts and bachelor of fine arts from Seoul National University and M.A. from New York University and has received numerous grants and fellowships, including serving as an artist-in-residence at the Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been shown worldwide, including at the National Museum of Modern Art, Seoul Art Cosmos Center in Korea, the Taipei City Museum of Art in Taiwan, Le Centre d’Estudis d’Art Centemporari in Barcelona, Spain, Galleria de Marchi in Bologna, Italy, and Ulft, Netherlands.

For information, contact Sean Clute, assistant professor of fine arts, sean.clute@jsc.edu or 802-635-1496, or Emily Neilsen, emily.neilsen@jsc.edu or 802-635-1408.