Juror, Laurie Hogin included the work by 27 artists in Anthropomorphism from September 1 to 28, 2006. Hogin earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute, Chicago, Illinois and her BFA from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. She is Associate Professor and Chair of the Painting and Sculpture program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
In her juror’s statement Laurie Hogin elaborates on the theme: “Anthropomorphism, literally the attribution of human shape or other human characteristics to non-human things, is a tendency probably born of anthropocentrism. Its various permutations, from the emotionality and magical thinking of the talking animals, plants and furniture of fairy tales, through the surrealist activity of allowing the unconscious to find meaning in happenstance, human shapes in clouds, rock faces, trees, tools, cars, and other inanimate things, to the attribution of human feeling to the non-human, anthropomorphism has been criticized as a failure of objectivity, of intellect. But to resist it is to separate our selves from the non-human world, to abandon our surest route to empathy and connection with it.”
Featuring work by Jane Fulton Alt, Laurie J. Blakeslee, Moira Carlson, Criss Chaney, John Cichon, Jan Deswik, Frances Ferdinands, Emile Ferris, Rosalynn Gingerich, Rebecca Hamlin, Laura C. Hewitt, Nancy Hild, Nancy Huggins, Heidi Jensen, Katherine Kaminski, Sharon Micheal, Kendall Mingey, Jessie Mott, John Murdoch, Laura Olear, Ellen Rosenberg, Sura Ruth, Jaye Schlesinger, Mardy Sears, Jere Van Syoc, Jennifer Weigel, Scott Ziegler.
(Banner artwork: artwork by Jaye Schlesinger)
