TCC Sculpture Blog: Jo Hormuth

Jo Hormuth was in born Grand Rapids and raised in Rockford. Her involvement in art started at a very early age. Following extensive travel throughout the US and studies at Western Michigan University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Alaska, Anchorage, Ms. Hormuth found herself back in Michigan in 1978. She enrolled that year at Grand Valley State College and in 1979 was the recipient of the Calder Fine Arts Scholarship. Her studies included a semester at the Slade School of Art in London. After graduating from GVSC she went on to receive her M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1983). She has exhibited in Europe, Japan and throughout the U.S.

After completing her graduate studies Ms. Hormuth worked on the restoration of many churches for the Archdiocese of Chicago. A growing interest in restoration and preservation coupled with a lifelong interest in painting materials and techniques led her to found Chicago Architectural Arts in 1984.

An essential aspect of each and every one of Jo Hormuth’s pieces is humor. Humor is the thread that created the web of Hormuth’s body of work. At times, it’s a visual pun, as with Chicago Window; at others it is flat-out weirdness, as withLast Night I Dreamed I Was a Butterfly. If there is a weft to the warp of humor, the weft would be color. Hormuth uses repeating color fields over and over, most directly in the Wink pieces, but manages to draw unique parallels between pieces, such as when Wink and Cabrini are seen next to each other. As John Phillips points out, “She transforms ‘the familiar’ to create situations that become springboards for the viewer to consider many relationships, contradictions and possibilities.”

( ww.gvsu.edu/cms3/assets/D653A93F...in.../Hormuthbio07.doc and http://chicagoartmagazine.com/2011/02/40-over-40-with-my-own-two-hands-chicago-sculptors/)