Brian Jobe

CINCHES (Ceramic Octo) - Reductive Minimalist Industrial Sculpture, Terracotta

2020

Brian Russell Jobe (American, b. 1981) is an artist and non-profit director based in Knoxville, Tennessee. Jobe's studio practice is focused on sculpture, installation, and public art. His solo exhibitions have been on view at venues such as Mixed Greens Gallery (New York, NY), Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum (San Antonio, TX), University of Wyoming (Laramie, WY), Alabama Contemporary Art Center (Mobile, AL), and McNay Art Museum (San Antonio, TX). He has permanent, outdoor sculptures located at the Western North Carolina Sculpture Park (Lenoir, NC) and Knoxville Botanical Garden and Arboretum (Knoxville, TN). Jobe often creates schemes for public interaction through the delineation of pathways. His most recent work collages material into assemblages utilizing signifiers of natural and manufactured landscapes. The work is stacked, held in compression, or bound, but without the use of hardware or adhesives. He desires a sort of inevitability to be felt within the viewer’s experience as they consider the material’s history and stream of consciousness associations. He is inspired by the act of construction and the space between reductive minimalism and human touch. Born in Houston, Texas and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, Jobe received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Tennessee in 2004 and Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2006. Brian R. Jobe founded Tri-Star Arts with Carolyn Jobe in 2015 and is also its Executive Director. He has called Knoxville, TN home for more than a dozen years and has a passion to see the contemporary art communities of Tennessee thrive. Tri-Star Arts serves Tennessee by cultivating and spotlighting the contemporary visual art scenes in each region while fostering a unified state-wide art scene. Tri-Star Arts programs promote art dialogue between the different cities in the state, and between the state and the nation. Tri-Star Arts initiatives include a gallery space and artist studios at the historic Candoro Marble Building, Current Art Fund grants, state-wide exhibition projects, a speaker series, digital content, the forthcoming Tennessee Triennial, and the LocateArts.org web resource. Jobe also regularly serves as a visiting speaker, conversation moderator, and juror across the Southeastern U.S.