Art Gallery to show work of Jon Donlon

A photo show by Jon Griffin Donlon will be on display in the Art Gallery located in the Center for Performance and Technology on the campus of LSMSA beginning Monday, Jan. 16.

The show, “Ad Hoc Gardens of Japan,” will continue through Thursday, Feb. 2. A closing reception will be held at 4:30 p.m. on the final day of the show.

The large full-color photographs record images Donlon made during his eight years living and traveling in Japan.

“My Ad Hoc Gardens of Japan both extends and breaks with the tradition of recording images of the exotic other,” said Donlon. “I spent almost a decade living and traveling in Asia, primarily Japan, strolling the lanes of Kamakura, wandering about Kyoto, rubbernecking in Nagano, walking the streets of Tokyo, happily capturing the images I loved of a setting which moved my soul.

“During this time I captured an enormous number of iterations of these vernacular Ad Hoc Gardens. Now I have selected a suite of images to print and display.”

According to Donlon, these particular photographs often show wonderfully informal appropriations of marginal space. Some of these examples of container gardens are obviously fully developed landscaping efforts, designed to bring plants into a peopled space. Others involve utterly ad hoc, or “for this use,” situational settings of found containers populating otherwise fallow edges and borders.

The Art Gallery at LSMSA is open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. For more information about this exhibit or future exhibits, contact Chris King at cking@lsmsa.edu.