Jan Brandt: Bio Lab

On display until Friday, May 5, 2017

The Joe McCauley Gallery at Heartland Community College will feature Bio Lab, a site-specific installation by Jan Brandt. The exhibit is on display Monday, March 20 through Friday, May 5. An artist reception takes place Thursday, March 24 from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. at the gallery.

Brandt hand stitches mixed textile media, such as donated clothing, pom-poms, and muslin, to form three-dimensional, hybrid assemblages. In this installation, she uses the specific dimensions and characteristics of the gallery to situate and arrange her works to suit the space itself. The result resembles a science lab gone amuck, with biological forms spilling from the walls onto the floor, spewing from the ceiling and trying to escape from glass specimen jars.

When describing her exhibit, Brandt says, “The physicality of these capsular works offers a macroscopic, larger-than-life expression of cellular growth, whimsical and disconcerting at the same time. My work represents a confluence of art and science through the process of feminist artistic tradition.”

As with her other individual pieces, this installation questions the definitions, contradictions and classification of art and craft while suggesting the interpretation of biological concepts.

About the Artist

Brandt is an artist working in mixed-media, textiles, printmaking, and painting. Her work has been shown in San Francisco, CA, Davis, CA, Chicago, IL, New York City, Oberlin, OH, Indianapolis, IN, Evansville, IN, Peoria, IL, as well as in her local community of Bloomington-Normal. She’s also the owner of Jan Brandt Gallery in Bloomington, IL.

She has been published in three Studio Visit journals, the American Art Collector and will be included Creative Quarterly, the Journal of Art and Design (issue 46 in Spring 2017). In May 2017, her work will be featured on the front page of the Women’s Caucus for Art website.

Brandt earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Design and a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts, both from Illinois State University.

About the Joe McCauley Gallery
Exhibits, events and parking at Heartland’s Joe McCauley Gallery are free. The gallery is located in room 2507 of the Instructional Commons Building on Heartland’s Normal campus, 1500 W. Raab Road. Hours are weekdays from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on days the College is open. 

For more information about this exhibit, contact Danell Dvorak, gallery coordinator, at danell.dvorak@heartland.edu, or call Heartland’s Liberal Arts and Social Sciences department at 309-268-8620.