Today's Message
Posted: Thursday, February 23, 2017Artists on the Road Series: 'My Own Tribal Art Inspired by Ireland and Celtic Nations' - Today
Jonathan Thornton, professor of art conservation, will present “My Own Tribal Art Inspired by Ireland and Celtic Nations” today, February 23, in Science and Mathematics Complex 170.*
Professor Thornton, who specializes in object conservation, makes hand tools and uses them to create sculpture that draws inspiration from the nature-based belief systems of pre-Christian Celts. Animals, animal spirits, and the “changeling” have been recurrent themes in these objects made of wood, stone, glass, steel, and leather. He will discuss how knowledge of his heavily Celtic ancestry prompted him to travel to Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall, and Brittany over the years.
"I have traveled extensively for fun and work as well, and have been to all continents except South America and Antarctica and all states except Alaska,” he said.
Although Professor Thornton was born in Colorado and spent his young life in Iowa, his love affair with international travel began when he was 12 and his parents took the family to live in Delhi, India. After that, they moved to Uganda, East Africa. With his parents still in Africa, he went to an international school in Switzerland for his last two years of high school and came back to the United States for college. Parts of his family remained in Africa, and he has been back to visit them more than once. After college, he was briefly in the Peace Corps in Iran. During and shortly after his art conservation training, he lived in London for over a year. He also lived in Italy in 1999 when he was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome.
The Artists on the Road: Travel As a Source of Inspiration series is co-sponsored by the Design Department and the International and Exchange Programs Office. For more information on the series, please contact Carol Townsend, associate professor of design and coordinator of design foundations, 878-4986.
*Please note the change of venue: all presentations in the Artists on the Road series this semester will be held in Science and Mathematics Complex 170 while Upton Hall 230 is under reconstruction.
