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About the Artist
More About The Artist Blue Ribbons and cash awards are not new to this accomplished artist, her studio wall is full of them. She has had several university one person shows as well as gallery shows. Her education began at Western Michigan University in chemistry and she finished with a degree in Fine Arts from Kean University of New Jersey, Cum Laude. Her major interest being printmaking, she switched to watercolor after her late husband’s corporate move to St. Louis. These varied interests and experiences have given her work its unique quality and influence. Her more recent skip over to the book has been most successful, winning her praise and success. Her books are unique with the added compliment of her own poetry. If anything we can call Goerke a renaissance woman doing all that is possible to do in the art field. She writes, she paints, she sculpts, she teaches, she juries, she curates, and she even says she cooks! Her teaching skills are being praised and sought after by many venues. All in all, an artist to watch and admire, Goerke may be one of the more dynamic St. Louis artists. She is an active member of Art St. Louis, St. Louis Artists’ Guild, Chesterfield Arts, The Foundry Art Centre, The Jacoby Arts Center, and The Peoria Art Guild, serving on boards of several. Her dedication to the arts in St. Louis, she is one of the founders of a collaborative group called Thirteen Squared, an organization dedicated to raising funds for arts-based organizations in the St. Louis area.
Reviews of the Work of M.J. Goerke “An ecology of mind, spirit and nature imbued the recent works of (Wayne Ferguson and) M.J. Goerke. The works suggest life in the balance, a fitting concept for our times. Goerke’s work constituted a new direction. Unlike her typical realistic watercolors, the 25 collage/assemblage wall boxes were abstract, representing states of mind. Aptly this St. Louis artist titled her works “Containments” repositories of “personal references…. A scrapbook of my mind.” These abstract were visible only through “windows” of the artist’s changing moods: wistful, philosophical, mystical, painfully sad and borne of hard-won wisdom. Goerke’s poems should have been a more integral part of each work. After all, how the mind works may have been her ultimate message.” Linda Horvay Barnes dialogue: arts in the midwest “There are many little treasures, such as M.J. Goerke’s collage-covered “Wish Boxes” Carol Ferring Shepley St. Louis Post Dispatch “Goerke’s longer description of her work is so fascinating; we have chosen to share it here.” As I run past another decade and rapidly approach a new century, I reflect, introspect and project. Each day is a gift and each new work a wonder. My ideas spin, bounce, and collide, giving me joy and frustration. I am now working on small contained spaces of “things” that range from churning reminders to reflective stillness. My fascination with word, poetry, history, and religion influences my work. Looking is emotional and seeing becomes the intellectual process. The ability of an object to transform my thoughts into my reality; something magic, an inner communication, is what my art is about. “ Review: West End Word …“M.J.Goerke’s wonderful “FOR ME,” a box containing photos of children and birch woods amid objects such thin bones and an egg. The whole gives the feeling of poignant but somehow unspecific memories.” Carol Ferring Shepley St. Louis Post Dispatch “And finally, M.J. Goerke’s tiny box depicts an even more awkward state of affairs. Set in a frame of blue sky, her box is lined with pictures of clocks and a hand cutting clocks, symbols of the passage of time, and a butterfly, symbol of transformation and transience. Within the box, sit tiny three dimensional figures. At one end, two women take off their clothes; at the other, a man on a park bench sits idle and disengaged. ““Games People Play” Art St. Louis Carol Ferring Shepley St. Louis Post Dispatch “Perhaps my favorite pieces this year are mixed media assemblages by M.J. Goerke, one of which took an Award of Excellence, the other a purchase award. The exquisite “Book of Mind” has eight double-sided pages, stiff enough to stand up. Unlike a book the pages attach end to end and unfold like an accordion. Each page has a window in the center with tiny, three-dimensional objects. Around each window is a collage of such pictures as butterflies, angels, clocks, globes and astrolabes. They seem to represent the ephemeral and transitory: love, time, travel. Her accompanying poem says, “I dream the words and symbols. I see them in the dark places of my mind. They are my vision, my memory, not quite reality, almost prophecy.” This seems an apt description for this haunting work and for her artistic process.” Art St. Louis VII Carol Ferring Shepley St. Louis Post Dispatch review “My current fascination with working three-dimensionally started with the REACT container project. It was fun. I liked solving the problems. It is another direction for me to go. I did have two semesters of sculpture but it was not my area of concentration. I am finding now in the “pyramid” forms that the work is not fast enough for me. I like to work more spontaneously. I have trouble sustaining the drive that is required for developing three-dimensional forms. But, I’d still like to see where this new direction might take me.” St. Louis Artists Coalition Magazine “Rereading this statement over after many years I now know where it took me… to the book. It is strange to find that even then I was searching for a project that could absorb my artistic energy. MY feeling is one should never pass an opportunity to step out of the box. The journey that unfolds is worth the effort.” “The book is a very sculptural object or can be in my opinion. I have attempted to show the book as a more decorative object than a utilitarian one.” “Goerke’s technique involves hours of patiently cutting fine strips from a book or pleating and folding pages and assembling them into a variety of shapes. All of the strips are cut by hand. This deconstruction of a book provides the basic material for a series of altered books. Visitors to the Contemporary Art Center of Peoria’s third floor Gallery II can see what Goerke means by viewing an exhibit of her excellent experimental works that turn books into objects of art. “ Theo Jean Kenyon Journal Star Peoria Illinois “M.J Goerke’s watercolors show the evidence of her skill as a painter. Her use of black as the background is both unique and dramatic. The Perfect Gardens series is especially fine work in the details of rocks and weeds making a garden which we are all familiar. The commission for the Monsanto corporation came as a result of the series on weeds in all their” beauty”. Extremely large, they are almost photographic in content, yet have a real abstract quality as well. Beautifully rendered they hang in the atrium of the International building, The Shaw series is watercolor at its best.” Betsy Schein Goldman a critique
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