On My Head. In My Heart, is the current installation of the M. Rosetta Hunter Art Gallery located in 2BE2116, just across from the Atrium Cafeteria in the main Broadway Edison building. The opening reception took place on the evening of September 26, with the installation slated to be open from September 24 to October 18. Gallery hours run from 9 AM to 3 PM Monday through Thursday and is also open 5-7 PM Tuesday and Wednesdays. Admission to the gallery is free. A dozen portraits of various headgear-donning Seattleites, done by Seattle artist Jean Bradbury, hang around the otherwise empty room in this colorful – and diverse – installation.
“It asks the question ‘who are we and how do we express that?’ and answers with both our relationships to our group and our own uniqueness,” reads the artist statement from Bradbury. The portraits were originally done in acrylic paint on cut plywood, then enlarged, printed, and installed with corresponding written pieces from the initial interview. They feature everything from a Muslim woman explaining her hijab’s personal connections, to helmet-clad athletes, to a Dungeons and Dragons fan clad in custom-made horns. Ordinary people we might pass in the street, or sit next to on trains, now splash the viewer’s mind with a rainbow of questions: what are we doing to express our hearts through our outward presentation? How does the stranger next to me love, cry, laugh and live, and what might I learn of that from their head alone?
Jean Bradbury “[has] chosen to celebrate the diversity of human culture” in a time of fraught political tensions and social unrest in the United States. She was born in Scotland in 1963 and grew up in rural eastern Canada. Before earning her BFA from Queen’s University in Ontario, 0she studied illustration right here at Seattle Central College. Her website showcases her many other installations and her outreach work in various communities, including her work in art education for Syrian refugees living in Jordan. She can be reached for contact at jean@patchworkplanet.com.
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