Artist Talk moderated by Stacey Holloway
October 15, 2026 at Space One Eleven Arts Center
“After Image“
John Douglas Powers
My creative work takes many forms, including kinetic sculptures, installations, drawings, prints, videos, animations, sound compositions, carvings and assemblages. The topics that give rise to these works are equally diffuse. Classical myth, Buddhist philosophy, and visions of the afterlife intersect freely with technology, music, history, language, and geometry.
The allure of the unattainable and its connection to the passage of time have become central to my artistic practice, encouraging the inclusion of sound and motion as compositional elements in my sculptural work. The temporal logic of this kinetic work mimics the viewer’s own existence, broaching questions of reality and illusion, the corporeal and the spiritual. Solid, tangible materials of construction are used in distinct counterpoint to the ephemerality of movement, sound, and time.
In many ways the questions embedded in my creative work are timeless. What are the animating forces that drive our world? What is the relationship between the invisible and the visible? What lies beyond death (or outside of life)? My goal is to create work that taps into the essence of these questions. Movement, sound, material and form are all tools used to create objects and temporal spaces where narrative is collapsed, allowing for reflection and contemplation upon these topics.
John Douglas Powers received his M.F.A. in sculpture (with distinction) from The University of Georgia and a B.A. in art history from Vanderbilt University. His work has been featured in The New York Times, World Sculpture News, Sculpture Magazine, Art Forum, The Huffington Post, Art in America, The Boston Globe and on CBS News Sunday Morning. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Virginia A Groot Foundation Award, a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant as well as a Southeastern College Art Conference Individual Artist Fellowship. His sculptural work has been exhibited internationally at venues including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The European Cultural Centre, The Hunter Museum of American Art, The MUST Museum, The MIT Museum, The Wichita Art Museum, The Mariana Kistler Beach Museum of Art, The Huntsville Museum of Art, The Masur Museum, The Gadsden Museum of Art, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, Brenda Taylor Gallery, The Vero Beach Museum of Art and Cue Art Foundation.
Powers is a Professor of Sculpture and Time-Based Art as well as the Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies in the School of Art at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
“Keep it Open”
Ty Smith
The work that interests me engages intelligence and emotion. My goal in art making is to find complex situations related mostly to light and measurement, and carries with it an energy that is intuitive and open. I often show the process of how a work is made— how materials are layered, erased, or wiped, or leaving charcoal lines that are used to explore the structure of a work. I have never placed much concern for style or repetition of ideas. I want instead to find each works’ purpose— its own visual situation, something that hopefully carries with it a great sense of poetry.
Ty Smith is an American artist, art educator, and curator who lives and works in Birmingham, Alabama. A native of Montgomery, Smith graduated from the University of Alabama with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. While working on his undergraduate degree, Smith studied with Professor Alvin C. Sella. Smith received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Tulsa. In Tulsa, he studied with painter Mark Lewis, as well as artists Deborah Kahn and Stanley Lewis, during a summer program at the Chautauqua School of Art. Smith currently teaches as Adjunct Faculty for the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Samford University. Smith’s approach to the studio is congruent with that of the Color Field and Minimalist art movements of the post-war painting era and his methodical process is loaded with tradition and experimentation. He has extensive exhibition experience and his work has appeared in museums and other venues throughout the U.S.