A FAITH IN SMALL GESTURES

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- It's understandable that the son of missionaries Charles and Lucille Ford of Jackson would make art that is almost sacramental.

John Ford uses bits of wood, paper, photographs and other found objects, things most people tend to ignore or throw away, to create installations that reflect his belief in the significance of the supposedly insignificant.

Looking for these materials, taking them back to his studio and assembling them as a work of art "is an act of faith in the small gestures of human life," Ford says.

The alumnus of Southeast Missouri State University will display his prints and sculptural installations at the University Museum beginning Monday and continuing through Nov. 3.

The artist will give a gallery talk from 2:30 to 4 p.m. Nov. 1 and a closing reception will be held for him from 7 to 9 later that evening.

Ford was born in Nigeria thanks to his parents' spiritual travels, but did most of his growing up in Jackson. At Southeast, where he enrolled after deciding he didn't want to be a mechanic, he took his first art instruction under famed muralist Jake Wells.

"I got something from everybody," he said of his art studies at the university.

Ford graduated from Southeast in 1982 and earned his master of fine arts degree at SIU-Edwardsville. After graduating, he spent a year as artist-in-residence at Southeast.

A year Ford and his artist wife, Suzanne Woods-Ford, spent in Derry, Northern Ireland, was pivotal in the development of his art. There in the attic of an old funeral parlor, he found "extremely poignant personal objects" that once belonged to one Mary Kirkpatrick.

"Both of the installations I built in Derry that summer sort of were in homage to this person's life," he said.

All the art in his new exhibit was influenced by his experiences in Derry and much of it refers directly to the material he found.

"Having found those interesting objects in obscure places has made me much more aware of looking in secluded places for bits and pieces," he says.

"It is a devotion to the simple act of finding little things that seem important."

Elevating the familiar and unheralded lives reminds us of origins, simple meanings and our place in the cosmos, Ford has said.

"We all know heroic things our grandmothers and grandfathers have done just living life," Ford says. "I think those are as meaningful or more meaningful as the events that come through history as significant to a society."

Just before the exhibit opens he will be in Krakow, Poland, as one of 65 artists invited from all over the world for a conference aimed at attempting to chart a path for independent artists into the 21st century.

Now living in Indianapolis, where he is a part-time instructor at the University of Indianapolis, Ford says that returning to Southeast to exhibit offers him a chance to give something back and to touch base with his educational origins.

"I don't mean school origins," he said. "Much of what I do as an artist came from living in Southeast Missouri."

His parents still live here, having ended the foreign chapter of their missionary work. Though three brothers and a sister have gone into non-religious lines of work as he has, all of them have "the same passion and conviction our parents devoted to the church," Ford says.

"We are all devoted to our mission in life."