Jerry Bleem

Jerry Bleem is an artist, educator, writer, Franciscan friar and Catholic priest. Believing that what is deemed worthless is as revelatory as what is treasured, Bleem considers the cultural construction of meaning by gathering discarded materials and objects and reshaping them through time-intensive accumulation. The resulting work—both 2- and 3-dimensional surfaces—raises issues ranging from apprehension to beauty, ecology to politics, valuation to class. The Illinois Arts Council has recognized his work with grants and individual artist fellowships. Bleem has participated in numerous artist residencies including the Roswell Artist- in-Residence Program in Roswell, New Mexico. Institutions holding his work include the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Art and Design, New York; the Racine Art Museum, Racine, Wisconsin; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. As an educator, Bleem’s interests span historic and ethnographic textiles, techniques and traditions, the dynamics of collecting, and material culture expressive of popular religious practices. As a writer, Bleem investigates the intersection of art and religion in a monthly column for U. S. Catholic magazine; other essays have appeared in journals and exhibition catalogs including the Art Institute’s On Loss and Absence: Textiles of Mourning and Survival.