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Fall 2019: Faculty Notes: Catalysts

Catalysts

Jessica Mohl explores the beauty of the natural world by shaping metal. Her husband, Assistant Professor of Art Damon Mohl, made a film inspired by birdsong. 

Jessica creates “an illusion of growth, life, and decay” with her metalwork. With his full-scale and miniature sets, costumes, and props, Damon creates illusions of all kinds in his films. 

Their exhibitions opening the 2019—2020 season in the Eric Dean Gallery of the Fine Arts Center this fall—Unholding and The Bellbird’s Morning Song—were separate and as different as art can be. But the passion they pour into their work was one obvious common thread. 

Damon is dedicated to making art—“the language that embodies and evokes that which cannot be rationalized or explained”—while Jessica says her work makes her “a catalyst in creating something new.” 

Shaping and hammering metal this way, she says, “is a pursuit that reminds me I’m alive.”