Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 29, 1995 TAG: 9510030034
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ADRIANNE BEE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
That's what you do when your artistic medium is shadows.
Look around at the other Radford faculty members' art on display this month in the Flossie Martin Art Gallery. A painting of an old man with a face full of lines hangs on the wall next to Jones' work. A clay shoe rests on a pedestal in another corner.
"The other work is substantial and solid," says Jones, chairman of the art department at Radford for the past two years.
People are puzzled by the "shadowgraphic constructions" Jones has been creating since 1989. "They can't figure out what's real and what isn't" he says. "My constructions are not solid objects but I make them solid through lighting."
Jones paints images on Plexiglas and adjusts the lighting to shine through. The result?
"My work reverses the whole concept of what a shadow is," Jones says. "The shadow becomes much more vivid than the image that casts it and makes the shadow better than the real thing."
Standing before an image of The Last Supper, Jones explains "viewer participation is very important" to his work. A grin spreads across his face as he waves his arm over the Plexiglas and one shadowy disciple appears to jump up and down out of his seat.
"Look, now he's up, now he's down," says Jones with the excitement of a child who just discovered how to make shadow puppets on the wall.
Jones' creation takes a two-dimensional picture, puts shadows behind it, and creates the illusion of another dimension. "We live in a world where how things appear legitimize them as what they are," Jones says. "I'm testing what's real."
A fascination with language is an intricate part of Jones' art. His three images of The Last Supper are titled "Illusion/Disillusion/Delusion."
"If disillusion negates illusion, it should be positive," Jones says. "But the word means a let down or losing of faith." Another work reveals the word "Pun" from one angle and "Punish" from another.
"Are you being punished when you use puns?" Jones asks with a smile.
Recently Jones encountered the work of a contemporary Russian artist who uses shadows as well. "So at least two of us had the same idea," Jones says. "We both made images cast on a wall that aren't really drawings but shadows."
Works by Jones and other faculty members are on display at the Flossie Martin Gallery Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. until 4 pm; Thursday evenings, 6 p.m. until 9 p.m.; and Sundays, noon until 4 p.m. The gallery is located inside the Powell building on the Radford University campus. The exhibition will remain open until Oct. 1.
by CNB