Brochure from 2015 exhibition by Mary Jo S. Bole

1. Mary Jo Bole
Tombs & Toilets

2. Jun 5–Jul 25, 2015Mary Jo Bole
Tombs & Toilets
William Busta Gallery
2731 Prospect Avenue
Cleveland OH 44115
W williambustagallery.com
T 216.298.9071
E bustagallery@gmail.com
Cover:
Back to Nature, 2015
enamel (version of tintypes)
on steel; 30 x 26.5 in.
Right:
Purge Incomplete at Eastern
State Penitentiary Historic
Site, 2012
installation
Opposite:
You Remember, 2006
enamel on steel, iron,
polystyrene;
12.5 x 55 x 55 in.
Below, left:
Winifred, Ruth, Winifred,
2000–12
mosaic, bronze, silicone;
17 x 56 x 41.5 in.
Below, right:
Good-Bye Water Bubbler,
2008
chromed, nickel-plated cast
iron; 12 x 17 x 8.5 in;
41 x 13 x 12 in, with stand.

3. . . . . breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
—T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland, part 1, The Burial of the Dead
There is something in the work of Mary Jo Bole that suggests a
reading from piece to piece. It is a narrative that makes the most
sense if you sidestep the natural tendency to create plotline and
instead entangle in the connective roots of memory, and then
open to the tease and tickle of the tendrils of repressed passion.
These are the things that underlay all desire.
The exhibition Tombs and Toilets presents in two parts: a larger area
with work that is of and about memory and memorializing; and a
smaller area, a cell, with work that studies and presents sanitation
in its day-to-day function in penal systems. That the two parts of
the exhibition struggle against each other is reflexively obvious.
But they fit together as well—with an underlying sympathy of
approach and texture and materials. There’s an unsettling in all
the work, and an elegy for the spirit, and a centering of place.
Important to the creation of the work in this exhibition is the artist
residency program at the The Kohler Company in Sheboygan,
Wisconsin. Since 1974, 500 artists have participated in this program,
which provides studio space and access to the company’s industrial
ceramic, enamel, and metal casting, fabricating, and firing
capabilities. It has become both an honor and a rite-of-passage
for artists, particularly for those who were trained in ceramic media.
In 1988, Mary Jo Bole was an early participant in this program
and she returned in 2008 to work in the Cast Iron Foundry.
Her experience encouraged her artistic practice in other residencies
which provided access to industrial equipment—some of these were
formal programs and others were initiated by her to expand the
possibilities of her work.
Mary Jo Bole has been constructing and deconstructing her visual
vocabulary since the 1970s. One of the pivotal influences in
organizing her perception of history was the 1973 ground-breaking
book, Wisconsin Death Trip, by Michael Lesy. The book reached a
popular as well as an intellectual audience with a history based on
an odd assortments of visual materials from late 19th-century
Wisconsin. It was an unvarnished, intimate, messy history, a search
for meaning in the melodrama and tragedy of everyday life.
Mary Jo Bole
Memory and Desire
So you start with the images in the
exhibition, suggestive of a century or
more in the past. There are emblems
and suggestions, piles of artifact cast in
memorial, and novelty photographs.
It makes a difference to the artist that the
people and objects and structures that are
presented here are mostly from her own
family history. While it does not seem as
important for the viewer to know that,
the impact of that intimacy, that connection
of generation to generation, does amplify
the transcendent generational dialogue
of the work.
At the back of the gallery is a cell of parts,
real and imagined, from prisons—places
where people are held against their will in
close quarters. The modern prison is an
invention of the enlightenment of the late
18th century, developed further by the social
reform movements of the late 19th and early
20th centuries. Prisons were the first large
institutions to have sanitary systems. In this
part of the exhibition, Mary Jo Bole uses
drawing, decals and prison plumbing in
usual and unusual materials to provide a
history of sanitary fixtures. It is somehow
humanizing at the same time that it is in
the context of dehumanizing experience.
Transitioning from one part of the exhibition
to the other leaves you unsteady,
particularly as you move from institutional
to personal memorials.
The human body is a prison of sorts and
memory is a landscape of liberation.

4. Mary Jo Bole
Born 1956, Cleveland, OH
Lives and works in Columbus, OH
maryjobole.com
Education
1982 MFA, Alfred State College (SUNY); Alfred, NY
1979 BFA, Cum Laude, School of Art & Architecture,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Selected Recent Solo Exhibitions
2014 Tree of Life, Future Tense, permanent installation,
Dublin Arts Council, Columbus, OH
Tombs and Toilets, Mt St Mary’s College, Los Angeles, CA
2009 Purge Incomplete, Eastern State Penitentiary Historic
Site, Philadelphia, PA
2008 Through the Hourglass, Kenyon College, Gambier, OH
2006 Terse, Tender, Feinkunst Kruger Gallery, Hamburg,
Germany
2005 Dear Little Twist of Fate, The Arnoff Center,
Cincinnati, OH
2001 Relics & Reliquaries, William Busta Gallery,
Cleveland, OH
1995 Ann Nathen Gallery, Chicago, IL
1993 My Yard, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH
Selected Artists Books
2014 White Elephant 1860–1960, Logan Elm Press,
Columbus, OH
2013 Combing Columbus: Photogenic Drawings for the
Bicentennial, edition 1000, commissioned by
Columbus Public Art 2012, Columbus, OH
2012 Toilet Worship, Logan Elm Press, The Ohio State
University, Columbus, OH
2005 MJ’s Daily Spy History, Knust Press, Nijmegen,
The Netherlands
Artist in Residence selections
2015 KVO Industries, Santa Rosa, CA [also 2014, 2009, 2007]
2012/10 Logan Elm Book Press, OSU Libraries, The Ohio State
University, Columbus, OH
2000–12 Belden Brick Company, Sugarcreek, OH (every summer)
2008 Artist in Industry, Kohler Cast Iron Foundry, Kohler, WI
Camp Tin-type, Dundee, NY
Pilchuck Glass School, Seattle WA
2005 Knust Press, part of Extrapool, Nijmegen, The
Netherlands [also 1997, 1996]
2004 Dresden Artist Exchange
Program, The Greater Columbus
Arts Council, OH
2004/02 Dedouch Monument Plaque
Company, Chicago, IL
2002 Headlands Center for the Arts,
Sausalito, CA (sponsored by
Ohio Arts Council)
2000 Sanitary ware “Gustavsberg”
Factory, Stockholm, Sweden
Rossato Co. SRL, Vicenza, Italy
(tombstone monument plaques)
1997 New Castle Refractory, New
Castle, PA
1991 Soviet / United States / Baltic
States Symposium at Dzintari
Arts Institute, Latvia
1989/88 Artist in Industry; Kohler Factory,
Kohler, WI
Grants and Honors
2012 Finding Time: Columbus Public
Art 2012, Columbus, OH
2010 Visual Arts Fellowship, Greater
Columbus Arts Council,
Columbus, OH
2007 Individual Excellence Award,
Ohio Arts Council [Also 2000,
1989, 1985, 1984]
1999 Andy Warhol Foundation Grant
through Woman’s Studio
Workshop, Rosendale, NY
Selected Public Collections
Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH
Detroit Institute of the Arts, Detroit, MI
Dublin Arts Council, Dublin, OH
J Paul Getty Museum (Artists Book Archive),
Los Angeles, CA
Kohler Company and John Michael Kohler
Art Center, Sheboygan, WI
Museum of Modern Art (Artists Book
Collection), New York, NY
Pushkin Museum, Moscow, Russia
Tallerija Langas, Vilnius, Lithuania
William Oxley Thompson Library,
Ohio State University, Columbus
Professional
1989–01 Professor of Art, The Ohio State
University, Columbus, OH