Fine Art Shows Feature Talent of Jeanne Dueber

By Mary Swain

Jeanne Dueber won the Second Place Merit Award Feb. 25 in the Owensboro, Ky., Art Guild’s 55th Juried Exhibition. Forty-nine artists, each with one or two pieces, entered the exhibition. Entries were in multimedia, painting and sculpture. Jeanne’s piece is named “Birth” and is in cast aluminum. It is reminiscent of the work of Giacometti, a Swiss 20th-century sculptor known for very thin sculptures. Pauline Albin and I were with Jeanne at the award ceremony.

The Owensboro Museum of Fine Art has two pieces by Jeanne in its permanent collection. One, familiar to many who come to the Motherhouse, is a cast paper sculpture of a young woman with a child over her head; the other is a bronze of the risen Christ.

Marie Ego, Pat Kenoyer and Marian McAvoy joined Jeanne for the Feb. 24 opening of Shawn Marshall’s solo painting show at Pyro Gallery in Louisville. The show features Jeanne as a guest artist. Shawn, who wanted sculpture along with her paintings, asked Jeanne to put six pieces into the exhibit.

The Pyro Gallery website announcing the show reads, “Jeanne Dueber is a sculptor who is proof that women can make huge, heavy works that are animated with motion and feeling and that the ability to work BIG isn’t owned by men. She carves and splices many pieces of wood together to create large, expressive abstractions.”

Marshall and Jeanne are both members of “ENID, Generations of Women Sculptors,” a group of 17 women sculptors who meet monthly for dinner, conversation and business. ENID will have an exhibit at Pyro Gallery April 13 to May 27 where Jeanne will have a sculpture.

Jeanne has work in 15 corporate collections and more than 440 works in private collections in 28 states.

She was the subject of a TV documentary by KET (Kentucky Educational Television) and has won grants from Fulbright-Hayes and the Kentucky Foundation for Women.