The Subconscious Landscape-Mother Earth

October 19 - December 9, 2009
Alice R. Rogers Gallery, SJU
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 24, 4:30 - 7:30 p.m.
Artist Talk: Saturday, October 24, 6:00 p.m.

In 2007, Junko Nomura was awarded the Jermone Foundation's Emerging Artist in Residencies Program award at Saint John's Pottery Studio.  The work in this exhibit was created during her time at Saint John's University.

Artist Statement:
What does it means to be human? How does man coexist with nature? In The Subconscious Landscape, I allow time, space, and chemical reactions to act on clumps of shaped clay to simulate the action of man and weather on the mineral matter that surrounds us, and that is us. Thus long forgotten memories of the body’s past resurface, connecting human consciousness with the earth and the surrounding celestial bodies. Landscape does not render a specific place. Rather it acts as a metaphorical landscape that makes material a Collective Unconscious.

I am moved by the power of nature, and I am interested in the notion of tracing the history of life on earth. My interest in, and knowledge of, archeology, history, and psychology informs my work. I create intuitively, not intellectually, but I know that all I have absorbed goes into the alchemy that is my process, and impacts my vision. This project has allowed me to introspect, to look inwardly at myself, at my preoccupations, as well as to look outwardly at larger issues of time and space. I want to invite the viewer to share this communion with me, a communion that muses on universal history, human history and life in general.