FIBER & FIRE
Featured Artists: On-KYEong Seong & Jonathan Mess
February 13 - April 12, 2025
OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, February 13, 5 - 7 PM
This exhibition puts into conversation the artwork of fiber artist On Kyeong Seong and ceramicist Jonathan Mess, two talented makers whose processes and use of materials are exciting and unconventional. These bodies of work complement each other visually and also, perhaps, energetically in their incorporation of a similar ethos in each artist’s approach to making as well as in their use - and reuse - of materials. Also shared is a commitment to pushing the boundaries of their discipline. And both bodies of work are tied to the natural world, literally and metaphorically: Seong’s imagery frequently includes representations of flora and fauna, as well as “robust and visceral textures reminiscent of fluids in an organism.” Mess, on the other hand, characterizes his sculptures as “wasteland form[s] of refuse resembling geologic strata.”
Line, palette and texture are integral to both bodies of work, as is a sense of immediacy borne of experimentation and manifested through deliberately induced tensions: between intention and intuition, control and spontaneity, roughness and refinement, strength and fragility. Seong refers to the sewing machine as an “automatic writing” tool, and Mess’s process involves “walk[ing] away [to] let nature shift, dry, and slump the work.”
COVE ST. ARTS
71 Cove St.
Portland, Maine 04101
207.808.8911
www.covestreetarts.com