Ana England and Steven Finke: Imminence

CINCINNATI, Ohio—On Friday, September 20, the Cincinnati Arts Association’s Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts will launch its 2013-14 season with an opening reception for Imminence, a contemplative examination of impermanence, mortality, and grief envisioned through a new series of sculptures by Ana England and Steven Finke.

Returning to the Weston for their second collaborative effort, sculptors Ana England and Steven Finke (Felicity, OH) come full circle from their initial exploration of life’s beginnings in the 1997 exhibition Creation Stories with a new body of work, Imminence, where impermanence, mortality, and grief are the primary themes explored through diverse, elemental materials such as clay, metal, wool, and stone.

While the individually produced works of England and Finke presented in Imminence are distinct from each other, they share a commonality of subject and perspective resulting from the artists’ shared experiences as husband and wife. Featured in the east gallery, Ana England’s work explores conditions of being through a series of sculptures that incorporate figurative and abstracted forms constructed from a variety of materials including wool, human hair, bronze, and ceramic. In the west gallery, Finke’s sculptural series of Peaceful and Wrathful Deities, ornately crafted from metals and natural objects, are intended to function in the tradition of memento mori (a symbolic reminder of the inevitability of death).   In addition to the thematic connections between the artist’s individual works, they collaborated in the creation of Bier, which serves as the entry piece to the exhibition.

Ana England holds a Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy from New College (Sarasota, FL, 1975); a Master of Arts in Ceramics (1983) and a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture (1984) from San Jose State University (San Jose, CA).  Since 1980, she has developed an extensive exhibition history including solo and group exhibitions presented at Linda Schwartz Gallery (Cincinnati, OH); Miami University Art Museum (Oxford, OH); Texas Christian University (Ft. Worth, TX); Carl Solway Gallery (Cincinnati, OH); and New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art (New Harmony, IN). She has completed a number of public commissions for corporate and museum collections including Fidelity Investments (Covington, KY); Cincinnati Art Museum (Cincinnati, OH); Northern Kentucky University Natural Science Center (Alexandria, KY); and USA Funds (Indianapolis, IN). She is the recipient of Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council (1998), Kentucky Foundation for Women (1990, 1998), and Summerfair, Inc. (1995). In 1995, she presented “An Artist Encounters Science” at the Einstein Meets Magritte conference in Brussels, Belgium. Her work is represented in the permanent collections of the Cincinnati Art Museum (Cincinnati, OH); Lois and Richard Rosenthal (Cincinnati, OH); Fidelity Investments (Covington, KY); USA Funds (Indianapolis, IN); Jewish Heart and Lung Center (Louisville, KY); and Duke Energy (Cincinnati, OH). England currently serves as Professor of Art at Northern Kentucky University in Alexandria, KY, where she has taught since 1986.

Steven Finke earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Ohio University (Athens, OH, 1982) and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Miami (Coral Gables, FL, 1982). His work has been exhibited extensively at the local, regional, and national level at such venues as C.A.G.E.; Toni Birckhead Gallery; SSNOVA (all Cincinnati, OH); Northern Kentucky University Art Gallery (Alexandria, KY); Carnegie Arts Center (Covington, KY); Riffe Gallery (Columbus, OH); Southern Ohio Museum (Portsmouth, OH); Akron Art Museum (Akron, OH); Dayton Art Institute (Dayton, OH); SPACES (Cleveland, OH); Huntington Museum of Art (Huntington, WV); and Ruby Green Contemporary Art Center (Nashville, TN). He is the recipient of two Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowships (1984, 1996) and a Major Artist Fellowship (1988). In 2001, he was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship from Summerfair, Inc. His artwork is represented in private, corporate, and museum collections. He currently serves as Associate Professor of Art at Northern Kentucky University in Alexandria, KY, where he has taught since 1989. 

download Ana & Steven’s Statement Panel