Cynthia Gregory

My studio work integrates sculptures, drawings, and furniture pieces that spotlight objects and their relationship to themes of time, history, and containment. A significant source of inspiration fueling my work rests in my interests in poetry, history, the natural sciences, and astronomy. From these themes and sources, I choose subject matter that builds a personal vocabulary of recurring motifs, such as the experiential, tactile world of the everyday, as well as elements found in humanistic spaces of contemplation, knowledge, creation, and wonder—for instance, the stratified clutter of a poet’s desk or star charts juxtaposed with blades of grass.

My style of making leans toward a realism that is less concerned with fooling the viewer’s eye and more concentrated on encouraging what Philip Rawson refers to as the viewer’s ‘habit of attention,’ that is to be drawn in, to dismantle assumptions, to re-evaluate, and unravel what’s seen. I am “of the hand, by the hand,” applying labor-intensive methods to build sculpture installation pieces that house delicately rendered sculptures and drawings. In juxtaposing these objects, my interest is in the potential for these elements to serve as holders of stories within self-contained installation environments that range from shelves, boxes, drawers, architectural elements, and furniture formations. The objects I populate in these intimate spaces map subtle timelines and mysterious markers of experience, thought, and feeling. These metaphoric constructions encourage the viewer to build implied, partial narratives of their own from a lost or unknowable whole.

— Cynthia Gregory

Cynthia Gregory is an artist whose studio work integrates sculpture, drawing, and woodworking to illuminate themes of time, history, accumulation, and containment. She has exhibited her artwork in national and international exhibition spaces including the Evansville Museum of Arts, History and Science; Herndon Gallery (Antioch College, Yellow Spring, Ohio); Bradley University Galleries; Indianapolis Art Center; Manifest Gallery; Kalamazoo Book Arts Center; Budapest’s Raday Kesehay Gallery; and Blue Star Contemporary Museum of Art (San Antonio, Texas), which selected Gregory’s work in 2015 for juried solo exhibition. Gregory has been an artist-in-residence at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, Nebraska as well as at Georgia’s Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences. She holds several degrees including a BA in English (Northern Kentucky University), a BFA in Fine Art (College of Mount St. Joseph), an MLS (Indiana University), and an MFA (University of Cincinnati).