Joe Kagle was born in Pittsburgh, Pa., attended Dartmouth College,
has had numerous grants to study art around the world (including
a Fulbright Scholarship to China), has shown in over 400 national
and international exhibitions, headed five university art departments
and four public museums. In 1987, Kagle came to Texas from the
Boston area as Director of The Art Center of Waco and began working
with printed, electronic and found images from television, commercials,
national magazines, and other contemporary sources. These images
went through a kind of metamorphosis, moving from collage to laser
printed images. Since 1995, these images are then painted, laser
printed and again collaged, only to be painted and laser printed
again. It is what Kagle calls "vertical time and space",
images freed from linear time or story or gravity. In 1996, Kagle
showed these images in Europe at the Archa Gallery in Prague and
the National Land Museum in Brno, Czech Republic. These works
of art then traveled to nine colleges and museums in Central Texas
under the title of "Pixel Images". In early 1998, the
collages are undergoing another transformation by being covered
almost completely with paint and then, again, laser printed. Also,
Kagle showed these new works in a group exhibition in mid-1997
at a Texas museum.
Since 1986, Kagle has written "Opinion articles" for
the Waco Tribune-Herald. With these writings, he reaches over
96,000 readers each month (two articles per month to 48,000 readers).
With these short essays, he is concerned with story and idea.
With his visual works, he is creating a non-linear series of images
from our world. Since 1995, Kagle has created over 1500 collages
and 400 painting with collage, ranging from 9" x 11"
to 44" x 44", and approximately 70 opinion articles
for the Waco newspaper.
As scholar, my Fulbright experience in 1965, studying Chinese painting and culture at the Palace Museum in Taiwan, set off a life-long study of brushwork, system analysis, philosophy, and color in Chinese painting. As a professor at the University of Guam from 1970 to 1976, I taught classes in Chinese Painting Art History. Also, I took students to Taiwan in the summer for study. I lectured extensively at the University of Taiwan and other Taiwan universities on a comparison of contemporary American art and traditional Chinese painting.
As an artist, I have come back to the bright colors of the
temples and the people's "Hell Scrolls" as sources of
wonder and enjoyment. My collection of these disappearing scrolls
is the most complete outside of China (www.kaglecollection.com).
Since 1966, I continue to return to the color combination of these
works and used that knowledge in the thousands of paintings that
I have completed.
More than anything, my Fulbright experience in the study of Chinese
painting has led me into some profound changes in my outlook on
the world. The lessons learned about the relationship man to man,
man to nature, man to his demons, and an individual's techniques
of how to harness the power of one's ch'i (spirit) to "make
the beauty I love be what I do" have stayed with me for a
lifetime.
Joseph L. Kagle, Jr. started art school at the Carnegie Museum
in Pittsburgh at the age of 8 before going on with his studies
at Dartmouth College, 1951-55, A.B. and the University of Colorado,
1955-58, M.F.A. Since then, he has had over 400 national and international
exhibitions. He is
listed in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in American Art.
In 1969, he studied Chinese painting and art history in Taiwan
under a Fulbright grant and is a Fulbright Scholar to the Republic
of Georgia in 2001-2002. He has directed five university art departments
and five museums over the last 43 years. He was selected as a
Kellogg Fellow at the Smithsonian Institute in 1983 and 1984 to
research museum practices for small museums. Also in his long
career, he has been a disc jockey and directed over 50 television
shows, 1965-1995.
While at the University of Guam, he completed over a dozen large
architectural sculptural and painted works of art (the largest
being the 40' x 60' mosaic wall for UOG Student Center). Since
returning to the States in 1976, he has concentrated on smaller
works in watercolor and acrylic. His subject matter is "system
thinking" rather than object depiction. His motto for his
work and life is: "Let the beauty we love be what we do."
EMAIL:joe_kagle@hotmail.com