Jerry Bleem is an artist, teacher, writer, Franciscan friar and Catholic priest. He examines the cultural construction of meaning by looking at what we discard and by transforming the nonprecious through time-intensive accumulation. The work raises issues ranging from apprehension to beauty, ecology to politics.

 

He is represented by the Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago: www.packergallery.com Bleem teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His interests span historic and ethnographic textiles, the dynamics of collecting, and material culture expressive of popular religious practices. In his writing, Bleem investigates the intersection of art and religion in a monthly column for U. S. Catholic magazine; his essays have appeared in journals and exhibition catalogs.