born 1977, Rochester, NY. Lives and works in Houston, TX.

Ives is concerned with being a helpful and useful artist. This desire leads him to create customized solutions which are humorous reevaluations of architecture and design. Creating interactive sculptures and props for his videos from cast-off materials, Ives especially enjoys the social relationships and situations devised by his installations. Ives' functional sculptures customize objects found in his surroundings. Rather than functioning as objects from a larger utopian plan, they exist as a rethinking of everyday encounters, actions, and/or objects.

In one instance, instead of getting a ladder to run an extension cord along a wall, Ives built a staircase of stacked crates with a railing made of scrap wood he gathered. The extension cord was for another artist's work in a group show. The helpful gesture was nullified when the other artist found another route for the cord. The other artist may have felt that this gesture of support, while intended to be helpful, could have created a parasitic relationship. His Height Equalizing Sculptures are objects that began as step stools and became portraits of the individuals they were created for. The portraits, while assisting with his subjects' posture and leveling height differences, point out the varying height of the individuals that he intended to equalize. For the show Texas Prime at Diverseworks Art Space, Ives chose three colors that would complement other artists' works in the group show. His addition to the show was the Trim-Paining Contraption, a twelve-foot tower that painted a striped trim of the colors around the room, altering the room so that it could be a better host to the artworks it contained.

Ives was a 2004 Artadia grant recipient and has shown his works in a number of group exhibitions, including Woods, Negative Space Gallery, Houston (2005); Home is Where, Project Row Houses, Houston (2004); Faculty Show, Glassell School of Art, Houston (2004); and Texas Prime, DiverseworksArt Space, Houston (2004).


Born Rochester, New York
1999 B.F.A., The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
2000 PA Instructional One, The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
2004 M.F.A., The University of Houston, Houston, TX

(SELECTED) SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2004 Dance Party for Wannabe Stars, Univ. of Houston Project Gallery, Houston, TX

2002 Action Paintings, Commerce Street Artist's Warehouse, Houston TX

(SELECTED) GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2005 Woods, Negative Space Gallery, Houston, TX

2004 Home is Where…, Project Row Houses, Houston, TX

Faculty Show, Glassell School of Art, Houston TX

Texas Prime, DiverseworksArt Space, Houston, TX

MFA Show, Blaffer Gallery, Houston, TX

2003

The Store, Negative Space Gallery, Houston, TX

Appearances Can Be Deceiving, Commerce Street Artist's Warehouse, Houston TX

The Big Show, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX

It’s a Trend, Not a Fad, Aurora Picture Show, Houston, TX

Debut Show, Powerball:1,Galveston, TX

Space, Commerce Street Artist's Warehouse, Houston TX

2002

Half a Dozen, Oneten Studios, Houston, TX

Please Only Take What You Can Eat, Joan Grona Gallery, San Antonio, TX

Stacks, Oneten Studios, Houston, TX

Annual Student Show, Blaffer Gallery, Houston, TX

Big Dan's Bowling Show, Oneten Studios, Houston, TX

2001 1st Invitational Show, The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Philadelphia, PA

2000

The International Miniature Biennial, Salle Augustin-Chenier, Montreal, Canada

Art of the State 2000, Harrisburg Art Museum, Harrisburg, PA

Annual Juried Show, Artforms Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

Celebrating the Spirit, Artforms Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

1999

Works on Paper, The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Philadelphia, PA

Emerging Artists, Artforms Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

Works on Paper, Beaver College Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

Black and White, The Banana Factory, Bethlehem, PA

BFA Student Show, 141 N. 1st St., 4th Fl., Philadelphia, PA

1998 Paris Prints Program, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

(SELECTED) BIBLIOGRAPHY

2003 Kelly Klaasmeyer, "Right at Home: Local artists show off their work at Lawndale's      annual Big Show," Houston Press Volume 15, Number 33, August 14 - 20.

Darryl Lauster, "Ten Years and Still Crawling," ArtLies, No. 37, Winter.

2002 New American Painting MFA Annual, 22 - 25.

Jahje Bath Ives, "Please Only Take What You Can Eat: New But Old Reflections On      Painting's Plurality," Voices of Art, Volume 10, No. 3.

AWARDS

2004 Artadia grant recipient
2003 Eizabeth Lucille Szymanski and Marritt Smith Faris Scholarship
     Stella Ehrhardt Memorial Fellowship/Cullen Graduate Scholarship
2002 Stella Ehrhardt Memorial Fellowship/Cullen Graduate Scholarship
     Friends of Art Scholarship
1999 The Kaplan/Feldman Prize in Printmaking
Lessing Rosenwald Scholarship for Printmaking
1998 James Eiseman, Sr. Memorial Travel Award, trip to Spain