From San Antonio, Texas
Artist Statement:
A flock of sheep near the airport
or a high voltage generator beside the orchard:
these combinations open up my life like a wound, but they also heal it.
That's why my feelings always come in twos.
--Y. Amichai, poet, translated by C. Block & S. Mitchell
We share the cyclical nature of human experience and memory -- the emotional and the intellectual to provide a poetically whole expression of human life. Dualities persist. Austerity and excess, minimalism and obsession, reason and passion, physicality and consciousness interconnect to create the mysterious enigmatic equilibrium of existence.
Existing simultaneously is the state of being between those comparative perspectives. The transition of conversion between waning light and waxing darkness is a metaphor for the human experience of transformation. Dawn and dusk, the blue hour, reference a moment of transitional beauty, the time and space in which anything can happen. The unknown invokes wonderment. I hope to create visual poetry that references this moment of transience.
Artist Biography:
Bedgood creates multi-media art that reflects her questioning of the duality of human nature, and the transitional moments between. She has BFA in painting and art history from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, mixed media sculpture and art history. Residencies include: Kunstlerhaus Bethanien Residency in Berlin 2022, the Rockefeller Foundation Center in Bellagio, Italy, Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome, Italy, the MacDowell Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Grants include New Forms Regional Initiatives Grant, funded by the Rockefeller - Andy Warhol Foundation - NEA, Mid-America Arts Association-National Endowment for the Arts Award in Sculpture, and Art Matters Inc., NYC.
Bedgood’s site specific installation Even Song,* exhibition “Tensile Strength” Silos-Sawyer Yards, Houston, 2017, reflects on the transition of conversion between waning light and waxing darkness as a metaphor for human experiences of transformation. “Oar: Barnacles,” referencing possessions as an evaluative measurement of our life’s worth, was exhibited in True North, Heights Blvd., Houston, from March – December 2019. Solo exhibitions: Barnacles of Existence was on view at Women & Their Work-Austin, 2020**; Jill Bedgood at University of Texas at Arlington 2020, Cantos of Light at ArtScan Gallery-Houston, 2019, Soliloquy at Box 13, Houston, and Book of Hours: Intervention at Blue Star Contemporary in San Antonio, Hanover College - Indiana, and Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. Landmines & Poppies was part of the exhibition Texas Sequels at the National Painting School, Athens, Greece, which traveled to Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul, Turkey. Her love book was added to Let’s talk about love, baby: Love Book Project at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, spring 2012. She has exhibited work at the Holocaust Museum Houston, Houston Center for Contemporary Crafts, Austin Museum of Art, San Antonio Museum of Art, Women & Their Work Gallery, Lawndale Art Center, Blue Star Contemporary, as well as alternative spaces in the U.S. Reviews include the New York Times, The New Art Examiner, High Performance, Sculpture, Art Lies, CNN online, NPR.
Bedgood has a history of involvement with art in the public realm, with work included in The Art of Placemaking and Stuck at the Airport. She engaged the public with Contagion: Measles, Influenza, Smallpox, soap cast in the form of communicable diseases, which was distributed in rest rooms at the University of Texas El Paso as part of the Visiting Artist Program. Her art for the City of Austin include: San Jacinto & Second Street: Currency, Community Screen: Charms at the Northwest Recreation Center, Texas-Mythology-Reality at Austin Bergstrom International Airport, Botanical Paintings Austin Convention Center, Community Quilt Mosaics with Steve Wiman at the South Austin Senior Activity Center, Zilker Park Playscape Designs. She is currently working on a Master Plan and art for a Prairie Park for the City of Fort Worth. Bedgood has served as Chair of and Panelist for the Art in Public Places Program for the City of Austin.
Bedgood has been a Professor, Adjunct Faculty – Visiting Artist at the University of Texas at Austin, University of Tennessee - Knoxville, Trinity University, Texas State University-San Marcos, Southwestern University and Austin Community College. She lives and works in San Antonio, Texas.