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January 31, 2005
ARTIST JAMES SEAWRIGHT PRESENTS ONE-PERSON
SHOW OF ELECTRONIC SCULPTURE AT WILLIAM PATERSON UNIVERSITY
James Seawright, who has been recognized as one of the foremost
technological artists since the late 1960s, presents a one-person
exhibit in the East Gallery of the Ben Shahn Galleries at William
Paterson University in Wayne from January 31 through March 4, 2005.
Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission
is free. A reception for the exhibit will be held on Monday, January
31, from 4 to 5:30 p.m.
The exhibit, titled “CONSTELLATIONS,” features a selection
of Seawright’s recent works, created between 2001 and 2005,
which were inspired by various constellations, some in the Zodiac,
some not. Seawright describes them as “meditations on particular
constellations, their structure and their history, or rather the
history of the lore that has grown up around them.” The three-dimensional
works are constructed of metal, plastic, and electronic parts.
A pioneer of kinetic, electronic sculptures, Seawright began making
sculptures in the 1960s, when transistors were just becoming available
to the public. He began by working with analog circuitry, and by
the mid-1970s was involved with microprocessors, building specialized
digital circuits to control interactive sculptures. “Nowadays,
embedded systems hardware is universally available, and software
is the whole ball game,” he says. “It seems to me that,
after a few false starts along the way, digital art has a limitless
future --- it’s no longer the language of a few isolated souls,
but a language spoken everywhere.”
Seawright has produced works that are in the permanent collections
of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum and the Guggenheim
Museum of New York, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University,
the New Jersey State Museum at Trenton and other museums throughout
the world. A graduate of the University of Mississippi, Seawright
received a lifetime achievement award in 2003 for his significant
contributions to sculpture from the Mississippi Institute of Arts
and Letters.
A professor of the Council of the Humanities and visual arts at
Princeton University, where he has been a faculty member since 1969,
Seawright served as acting director and then director of Princeton’s
program in visual arts from 1975 to 2001. In 2004, Seawright was
presented with Princeton's Behrman Award for distinguished achievement
in the humanities.
Seawright’s exhibit is one of three shows on view concurrently
in the Ben Shahn Galleries. On view in the South Gallery is “Blue
Crystals,” a one-person exhibit of paintings by Janet Filomeno.
“Chronologies and Connections, 1855-2005: The Evolution of
the University in a Global Context” is on view in the Court
Gallery.
This exhibit is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey
State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency
of the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Ben Shahn Galleries are wheelchair-accessible. Large-print handouts
are available. For additional information, please call the Ben Shahn
Galleries at William Paterson University, 973-720-2654.
Note to editors and reporters: High-resolution,
downloadable photographs are available at http://ww2.wpunj.edu/publicityphotos/Galleryphotos05/
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