Joyce Owens, visual artist

Coming Events:

Feb, 2 reception: Koehnline Museum, Oakton College: 2+2= Preston Jackson, Joyce Owens, Bernard Williams and Rhonda Wheatley

The Chicago Gallery News

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Aug 22, 2011 – examples such as the painter Joyce Owens, who works with a group of .... Founding Publisher, Chicago Gallery News. Phyllis Bramson, The ...

Artist statement:
For a black woman to persist in making art it takes a bit more. My state of Blackness, negritude, Afro-Afri-African American, and the other nouns that are applied to me that I will not touch, signal the existence of a precarious road that one is born to, as the royals are, but from which one cannot resign. Race is bred into us (as is gender). It is genetic. It is permanent. And it is a trial for black people within racist societies. Born out of ignorance and expediency, some of the racist tendencies that started hundreds of years ago hang on. But I think that most African Americans would not exchange our selves to be some other self for the world. Besides, that might make a softer cushion than I need. I could address women's issues in my work. I could deal with no issues, just mark making, color theory, etc. on their own are compelling challenges. I choose that which touches me every day.

I do not interpret my history as a dark past (no pun intended). I believe that stressing an understanding of what we have overcome and accomplished , rather than what we have suffered will help us build on that legacy, and not one of victimization. In my portraits, as well as my more conceptual work, I look to the survivors who lived long lives, meeting obstacles as all humans do and overcoming them, persisting despite them. I choose work over complaints, action over excuses, risk over security, and study over ignorance.

I paint the stories I care about and have done so since I was an undergraduate years ago. I do pay attention to current fashion and trends in contemporary art practice, but my vision doesn't depend on trends. I have been attracted to using found materials since I was a graduate student in New Haven, Connecticut; Louise Nevelson was an influence and later Betty Saar, Art Deco, and Joseph Cornell. While at Yale University I traveled around with a classmate looking for “stuff” in alleys. I delight in facilitating the transformation from a mechanical component to an art object.

I tend to use color intensely or not at all, working in black and white sometimes to not distract from the force of the character. Kathe Kollwitz was an early and persistent influence. I have traced my unusual color sense to my mother and her decorations in our home. It was pointed out to me as a very young artist, when I had no idea what it meant, that I was a “natural colorist.”

No matter the media, the size, the content, at the end of the day I simply choose to be an artist.

website: www.joyceowens.com
blog: Joyce Owens: Artist on Art
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Since January 2011 Joyce Owens has had a solo exhibition at the Catholic Theological Union in Hyde Park, a 2-person exhibition with accompanying lectures at the Museum of Greater Lafayette in Indiana with renowned sculptor Preston Jackson.  During the run of the exhibition Owens did a sold out Workshop at the museum, well-attended lectures at Purdue University's Black Cultural Center and at the museum. One March 5 Owens lectured at the Art Institute of Chicago, also with a significant audience. Along with these major events Owens participated in Ethereal Fauna an invitational at Carthage College in Wisconsin and an exhibition at Governor's State University featuring artists including Kehinde Wiley, Floyd Atkins, Cleveland Dean, J. Thomas Pallas and Jeff Stevenson. 

Ragdale Fellow Joyce Owens has won Best of Show, First Prize and other prizes from artist Faith Ringgold, sculptor Martin Puryear, arts consultant Madeline Rabb, and Margaret Hawkins, Artnews correspondent and art critic, among others. 3Arts, Chicago Women’s Caucus for Art and the African American Arts Alliance all honored her work in recent years when she was nominated and then won for her achievements in the visual arts. Owens earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from Yale University and a BFA from Howard University. She is in many public and private collections including the Daniel T. Parker, Patric McCoy, Luisa Gaines McDonald, Paul R. Jones, Mt. Sinai Hospital and Oakton Community College, among others. Her work is in numerous publications, including books, catalogs, and newspapers, and as illustrations. Nationally and internationally exhibited, Owens’ artwork has shown on four continents, currently exhibited in Monrovia, Liberia, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at U.S. embassies and was exhibited in Georgetown, Guyana. Owens’ “Out of the Box” series was shown at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

The Parish Gallery in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. presented her work with Bobby Sengstacke’s photography in an exhibition honoring, then, President-elect Barack Obama. “From Slavery to Freedom: A Tribute to Obama” was well-received. Her work has been shown at the National Black Fine Arts show in New York at Gallery Guichard, Nicole Gallery and Woman Made Gallery. Owens was the featured artist for Columbia College’s DanceAfrica Chicago 15th year, an honor artist Kerry James Marshall had the previous year. Art dealer, John Martin featured Owens in his annual fine art fair in Chicago as did Gallery D’Estee (Delta Sigma Theta). Owens has had numerous solo exhibitions at universities and galleries and group shows in galleries and museums, the Philadelphia Museum, two at the DuSable Museum, the Spertus Museum, The Koehline Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry where she won First Prize, and others. She has sat on panels, juries, advisory boards, focus groups and workshops that address art and artists. Owens is a member of the artists’ collective, Sapphire and Crystals, for whom she had been the main curator for the ten years until 2010.

Owens is an art professor specializing in drawing and painting. She is the curator of the galleries at Chicago State University.