March 15 – May 25, 2025
Organized by artist, Jesse J Ring
Emily Galusha Gallery
Stone Fruit is a site for contemplation. It is an orchard, a cemetery, a well, a beach. It is a participatory installation which is co-authored by the community that engages with it during its exhibition. During the exhibition, organized by Jesse J Ring, Stone Fruit is one iteration of this ongoing community sculpture intended to create locations where visitors leave thoughts as material in symbolic gesture at a site for contemplation. Stone Fruit invites you to participate with the installation through sculpting a small trace in soft clay to leave behind as part of the work. All contributions will be fired at the close of the exhibition and permanently added to the work.
Originally exhibited at the Pensacola Museum of Art in 2021, the installation’s prompt responded to the profound trauma we as a society suffered over the course of COVID-19 and acknowledged that we all had something to leave behind from the experience. Following its debut, the Director and Curator of PMA noted that on average participants spent 30-45 minutes with the installation. Following the exhibition, over 400 of these objects were photographed before being fired and added to the work. Approximately 200 photographs were then used to compile an artist book of visual poems that reflected the themes apparent in the objects left behind by the community. One goal of this exhibition is to produce a similar record of offerings from the local audience.
Stone Fruit at NCC presents an opportunity to update the prompt for participation to respond to the Twin Cities and the communities that NCC Serves. Ring aims to identify and invite groups from the community, with a focus on community members who may not regularly visit the gallery, to add to the work through visits and short workshops in the exhibition. Through this exhibition, he hopes to expand the community’s exposure to ceramics and advocate for the importance of the cognitive and expressive value of craft and art.
About the Artist
Jesse J Ring was born in the Ozarks in an octagonal home that his father built. In his relationship with clay and sculpture, he has“come to understand making as a form of thinking.” He shares, “As I shape materials, subtle shifts in form change their meaning, much like language. This process allows me to express ideas in both tangible and immaterial ways.
I focus on themes that challenge human-centered views, exploring subjects like the Janus, psychoactive plants, speculative technologies, and the synthesis of urban and natural landscapes. My installations encourage embodied experiences, such as pebble beaches that grow as audiences add sculpted symbols of what they need to leave behind or inviting visitors to draw on a steel monolith that broadcasts the eerie sound of their marks, creating a unique audio landscape that fills the exhibition. Through my work, I ask how we can foster deeper connections between people and their environment. My sculptures provoke reflection on our place within the larger web of existence, inspiring a shift in perspective and encouraging a more thoughtful engagement with the world around us.”
Ring earned his BFA in Ceramics from Kansas City Art Institute (MO) and his MFA from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University (NY). He was a visiting artist at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (Beijing) and artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center (Johnson), Zentrum fur Keramik (Berlin), and Sitka Center for Art and Ecology (Otis, OR). His work has been shown nationally at the Aspen Art Museum CO), Burchfield Penney Art Center (Buffalo, NY, Pensacola Museum of Art (FL), and internationally in China, Germany, and Hungary. Ring is currently Assistant Professor of Art in Ceramics and Sculpture at University of Florida (Gainesville) in the School of Art + Art History.