Jon Rappleye employs a wide range of sources mined from his interest in biology, nature, literature, and folklore. Using drawing and painting he creates a fantastic array of creatures inhabiting environments that blur the organic and the manmade. In Where Grows the Vine in Woodland Waste, owls, snakes, birds and moths rest on an invasive structure that contains familiar species mixed with mutated forms. The scene’s forbidding orange sky portends disaster. While not specifically related to Thoreau, the work suggests an indeterminate future world that has not heeded his warnings.

Jon Rappleye’s solo exhibition, Out of the Silent Planet, is on view through August 17 at the Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ. His work has also been shown at Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York, NY; Aron Packer Gallery, Chicago, IL; Miller Block Gallery, Boston, MA; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA. He participated in residencies at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA; Salina Center for the Arts, Salina KA, with printmaking fellowships at the Pyramid Atlantic Silver Spring, MD; the Lower East Side Printshop, New York, NY; and Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, New Brunswick, NJ. He received grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and a Geraldine Dodge Foundation Award. He earned his BFA from Utah State University, Logan, UT and his MFA from University of Wisconsin in Madison and studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.