Heights Arts Presents Independent Together: 30 Years of Collaboration and Spotlight Joseph Van Kerkhove

By Amanda Bohn

Rescheduled from 2021, Independent Together: 30 Years of Collaboration features Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland’s Senior Exhibitions Manager, Ray Juaire and his collaborating partner Patti Fields. Together, even independently, they often transform a variety of media to create artwork that, at times, symbolizes their professional and personal relationship and explores issues of place and memory. Their work can be singular or done in small series that play with balance, utilizing dynamic forms, conceptual narratives, and a re-imagined history of the objects they incorporate in each of their pieces. They suggest new histories in the combinations of fabricated and found objects and work to create metaphors for the nucleus of human, scientific, and metaphysical relationships. For the first time, the couple is showing a few solo works together, carving out new territory.

Along with the exhibition Independent Together: 30 Years of Collaboration, Heights Arts features artworks by Toledo based artist Joseph Van Kerkhove in the Spotlight gallery.  His body of work incorporates various printmaking techniques that expresses his personal experience. He edits, slices and reassembles the elements of the prints to create new images and compositions. He is discovering a visual language that includes a combination of objects, surface and color. Mr. Van Kerkhove juxtaposes objects and imagery to make the work more quizzical, evocative and contemplative. A common object like a doily or a chair is something that he finds interesting because of the personal memories they evoke. He uses its traditional formal quality along with its endless conceptual interpretations to contrast the process with an idea. The work allows the viewer to make their own interpretations of the images that relate to their memories and personal experiences.

Heights Arts welcomes the press to attend Independent Together: 30 Years of Collaboration, as well as, the artist Spotlight featuring Joseph Van Kerkhove. Appointments are available for those wanting one and can be made HERE. Normal business hours are Thursday-Saturday, 1-7 pm and Sunday, 12-5 pm.