A Nameless Wind
John Powers
Guggenheim Fellowship recipient John Douglas Powers brings A Nameless Wind Nov. 12 through Dec. 14 to the Lightwell Gallery, located on the second floor of the Fred Jones Center, 520 Parrington Oval, on the University of Oklahoma Norman campus. An opening reception is scheduled from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 13.
Both the exhibit and reception are free and open to the public.
A Nameless Wind will include kinetic sculptures and carved objects. The works in this exhibition draw inspiration from and point back toward Buddhist iconography, classical mythology, prehistoric burial mounds, and architectural structures ranging from temples to barns. They interface freely with Powers’ interests in technology, music, history, language and geometry.
Powers stated that he “would like to think visitors would spend time with the individual pieces and consider what their relationship is to forms and materials they see.” He hopes they will “consider the communicative power of movement and, depending on the background of the viewer, perhaps they leave with some new idea of what art can be or do. “
Powers studied art history at Vanderbilt University and earned his master of fine arts degree in sculpture, with distinction, at the University of Georgia. His work has been featured in The New York Times, World Sculpture News, Sculpture Magazine, Art Forum, The Huffington Post, Art in America, The Boston Globe and on CBS News Sunday Morning.
He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Virginia A Groot Foundation Award and a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant as well as a Southeastern College Art Conference Individual Artist Fellowship, an Alabama State Council on the Arts Fellowship and the Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award. His sculptural work has been exhibited nationally.
He currently has work on exhibition in the Hunter Invitational IV at the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the SECAC Members Exhibition at the Abroms-Engel Institution for the Visual Arts in Birmingham, Alabama.