The University of Illinois Springfield Visual Arts Gallery is pleased to present “A More Perfect Union” by St. Louis-based artist John Early. The exhibition will open on Monday, Oct. 21 and run through Thursday, Nov. 14.

In conjunction with this exhibition, the artist will present an Engaged Citizenship Common Experience (ECCE) Speaker Series lecture from 6-7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 6 in Brookens Auditorium, located on the lower level of Brookens Library. Early’s lecture, “Creative Practice for Social Change,” will feature images from his art practice, which engages deeply with cultural and social landscapes to address issues of spatial injustice, urban renewal and community identity. His work highlights the complexities of social change, advocating for spatial equity, racial justice and the preservation of community memory through art.

Immediately following this lecture, the UIS Visual Arts Gallery will host an exhibition reception for “A More Perfect Union” from 7-8:30 p.m. at the UIS Visual Arts Gallery. This event is free and open to the public.

Coinciding with the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, “A More Perfect Union” is a sculptural installation made for a nation at a pivotal moment. Its focal point consists of a massive, fragile panel of compressed earth held up by a wooden frame and cinderblocks. Pierced with fifty holes, the dirt sign sits in front of a bay of windows, thus allowing natural light to shine through an otherwise impenetrable plane. The sculpture evokes old roadside billboards and DIY signage found throughout the Midwest countryside, yet it makes no pronouncements. Rather, it offers an invitation. To reflect, to connect, and, perhaps, even to hope amidst the precarity of the present moment.

Early is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose site-based work explores the textures, layers and histories of place. Much of his recent work addresses power structures of inequity found in the recreational landscape of St. Louis’s public parks. Since 2021, Early has collaborated with sports studies scholar Noah Cohan on “Whereas Hoops,” an interdisciplinary project combining public scholarship, archival research, spatial interventions and activism to address the absence of basketball courts in St. Louis’s Forest Park. In April 2022, Early’s essay about a basketball court in North St. Louis was included in the edited volume, “The Material World of Modern Segregation: St. Louis in the Long Era of Ferguson.” He is currently a senior lecturer in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis and is a faculty affiliate at the University’s Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Equity.

The UIS Visual Arts Gallery is centrally located on the UIS campus in the Health and Sciences Building, room 201 (HSB 201). Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday. For more information and future exhibitions, visit the UIS Visual Arts Gallery website.