Assistant Professor Donovan Widmer has been teaching jewelry and metalsmithing at the University of North Dakota since 2004. He received his BFA at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and his MFA from the Schoolof Art at Illinois State University. His creative research is concerned with a production of objects that examine the ways in which ideologies are affected by external institutions. The objects are meant to be amusing, sardonic, and peculiar. It is his intention to portray the realities of our failures and dysfunction, but equally celebrate the idea and initiatives towards progress.

Widmer’s current work investigates the subject of transience. As a condition of this precept, the temporal qualities of transience concurrently suggest a fragile and vulnerable state of existence as well as the subjectivities of preciousness. The sculptures are constructed to prolong the ephemeral phenomenon or display the residue of their degenerating processes. The works are designed to reference antiquated technologies and scientific instruments. The resulting sculptures explore science’s endeavors to objectify and categorize incorporeal subjects such as faith, theism, mortality, etc. In turn, the works imply the ways in which human thought and understanding evolve as newer models replace obsolete technologies and knowledge.