piece.work

CINCINNATI, Ohio–On Friday, June 20, from 6 to 9 p.m., the Cincinnati Arts Association's Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts will premiere three new summer exhibitions: Exodus/Elegy, an elegant installation by Anthony Becker inspired by the graceful flight of birds; piece•work, a series of meticulously crafted wood sculptures by Walter Zurko informed by the simple beauty and function of tools; and Fundamentalism, a new series of abstract paintings by Jeffrey Cortland Jones with enigmatic surfaces revealed through a succession of scraped layers.

Consistent throughout Walter Zurko's elegant and superbly executed wood sculptures is his interest in the vernacular of tools and implications of utility and making. Primarily referencing utilitarian farm implements, Zurko (Wooster, OH) enlarges their original scale and subtly transforms them, manipulating their context to address the act, craft and process of handiwork. Piece•work continues this ongoing exploration with a series of sculptures completed by Zurko during the past few years.

Walter Zurko is a professor of art at the College of Wooster (Wooster, OH). He earned a bachelor of arts from the University of Wisconsin in 1977 and a master of fine arts from Southern Illinois University in 1980. He has received Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and has completed a residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. He was an artist-in-residence at the Foundation Svoboda in Prague, Czech Republic, in 1996 and at the Artist Residence in Herzliya, Israel in 1998. Recent exhibitions include Miami University (Oxford, OH) and the Southern Ohio Museum (Portsmouth, OH).

Gallery Talk Series: Wed., June 25 at 7 p.m.