Sioux City artist Jeff Baldus is familiar to many in our community. He has made some of our region’s most consistently elegant pottery for many years. However, Jeff expanded his artistic output greatly during his time in graduate school at the University of South Dakota, where he completed his degree in 2012. He has found great beauty and meaning in the simplest and humblest of natural objects, from fallen branches to stones. Using a variety of sculptural skills, Jeff transforms decaying sticks into majestic bronzes or combines clay and wood to make large, stone-like, ceramic orbs. In 2017, he received a grant from the Iowa Arts Council to support the production of many of the cast metal sculptures included in this exhibition.

This exhibition has also been funded in part by a donation from the Aalfs Family Foundation.