IOWA CONTEMPORARY ART | 58 North Main Street, Fairfield, IA 52556
641-919-6252 | bill@icon-art.org | iconbillteeple@gmail.com
GALLERY HOURS: Tuesday through Saturday, 12:00 to 5:00pm and by appointment.
ICON is an IRS 501(c)(3) non-profit educational charity. All donations are tax-deductible.
IOWA CONTEMPORARY ART
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Celebrating The Hudson Collection
ICON Gallery is celebrating ICON’s collection of Shiva Linga Paintings by showing the entire
collection of 55 works in the Hudson Gallery on the ICON mezzanine. The show opens on
Friday, September 1st, 6:30 to 10:00pm.
Ten years ago David T. Hanson began working with Hudson, Founder and Director of the
New York art gallery Feature Inc., to organize an exhibition for ICON of a suite of 71 anonymous
Shiva Linga paintings that had been assembled by Hudson and the French poet Franck André
Jamme. Sadly, due to the unexpected death of Hudson, this exhibition had to be cancelled.
But two years later Hudson’s siblings granted Hanson permission to purchase twelve of the
paintings. He subsequently organized an exhibition at ICON of those twelve paintings along
with a few of his color photographs of Indian temples. Patricia Hudson was so impressed with
this small show and the Fairfield community’s interest in it that she and her two brothers
decided to very generously donate the remainder of the suite of paintings to ICON’s permanent
collection. In response, ICON created a dedicated space, the Hudson Gallery, to exhibit selections
of the Hudson Collection along with other related artworks.
Shiva Linga paintings on found paper are created anonymously in northwestern India by
practitioners of Tantrism, some of whom are artists, to represent and embody fundamental aspects
of Tantra, a vast and complex spiritual and philosophical practice. Made to awaken heightened
consciousness, these devotional images are used for visualization and meditation as part of
Tantra’s spiritual practices.
Despite their expression of an unbroken, centuries-old tradition, the works in this exhibition
(made between 1966 and 2004) seem both timeless and utterly contemporary. They also possess
a remarkable affinity with examples of twentieth-century abstract art.
NEXT 2023-24 ICON EXHIBITS:
Winter Art Flea Market
March 1, 2, & 3rd, 2024
Jim Weidle Art
April 5 through June 15, 2024