by Mat Rude '98 and Paul Rude LC '95
Kristin Wigley-Fleming Fine Arts Gallery, Center for the Arts
January 18 - February 29, 2012
There will be a Gallery Reception held on Friday, February 24, 2012 from 5:00 - 7:00 p.m. All are welcome.
Mat and Paul Rude are brothers from Decorah, Iowa. Their exhibit at Luther College is the first time they have shown their work together.
Mat Rude is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. He earned a BA from Luther College in Decorah, IA and an MFA from Montana State University in Bozeman, MT where he focused mainly on atmospheric firing techniques. Prior to graduate school, Mat was an assistant to studio artist Don Reitz and worked with Donovan Palmquist of Master Kiln Builders as well as studio artist Abe Cohn and Luther alumni David and Jeanne Aurelius. In 2010, Mat travelled to China where he participated in a research expedition examining indigenous ceramic materials and their uses. In 2011, Mat returned to China as an artist in residence at The Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen. Past exhibitions include International Ceramics Magazine Editors Association Emerging Artist Juried Exhibition, Fuping, China, Potters for Peace Exhibition at the National Council for Education on the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) conferences in Tempe, FL and Phoenix, AZ, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, Lyndhurst Gallery, Tarrytown, NY, Glassworks Gallery, Louisville, KY, East Central University, Ada, OK, Helen N. Copeland Gallery, Bozeman, MT, The Clay Studio, Missoula, MT, Akar Gallery Iowa City, IA, Figge Museum of Art, Davenport, IA and The Cedar Rapids Art Museum, Cedar Rapids, IA.
"Throughout our lives we discover secret places that give us comfort, escape, or just a place to hide. This body of work is representative of those places in which we seek refuge. As time passes, we may lose or out-grow a particular space just as the relationships we develop that take us to or make us leave those spaces transform as well."
-Mat Rude
Paul Rude graduated from Luther College in 1995 with a degree in art. He continued his education at the University of Northern Iowa (Cedar Falls) where he earned a masters degree in art. In the studio, Paul explores abstraction through the mediums of painting and collage.
"This show contains recent works from the Lilt, Path and Place, and Paraclete Series.
These works explore the use of rhythm in abstraction as a method of creating and discovering ceremony and sacred place. I use spatial rhythms to create the action of ceremony. If art is ceremony, then rhythm is art’s sacrament.
I look to the experience of the everyday natural world to uncover sacred place and to learn ceremony. Ceremony creates the discovery of an other beyond the self. In this way, ceremony aids us to listen, feel, and play with the skill of awareness. These images attempt communion with an other as opposed to communication for the self."
-Paul Rude