January 11, 2024 - Sharp Museum at SIU in Carbondale will feature a collection of artist Michael K. Paxton's work surrounding coal beginning January 16. 

The "Captive Coal" exhibit will showcase Paxton's ties to and miners' stories from the coal industry in West Virginia. The featured art comes in the form of oil paintings and charcoal drawings. 

Exhibition focuses on the coal industry: WM Weston Stoerger, Sharp Museum curator of exhibits at SIU Carbondale, is working to ready the “Captive Coal” exhibition that features fine artist Michael K. Paxton. The exhibition opens Jan. 16.
 

Russell Bailey

"[The exhibit] is an effort to use my bone-deep knowledge and love of what it means to be a native of coal country coupled with my concern and anger at the aftermath of what the greed for coal leaves behind,” said Paxton. “This work reaches both forward and backward as a contemporary artist in a desire to investigate more fully what it means to me to be a ‘Captive of Coal.’”

The collection will remain on display at the Sharp Museum from January 16 to May 10. It will sit in the North Hall Mitchell Gallery, with a similar exhibit from SIU's Advanced Energy Institute, "Coal Mining Families in Southern Illinois," next door at the Continuum Gallery. 

Museum-Curator WM Wester Stoerger hopes the exhibit's portrayal of coal miners will mimic the ancestry of Southern Illinois individuals. 

“West Virginia is coal country,” said Stoerger. “Southern Illinois is built basically the same way. We are a region built largely on the back of mining, it is intrinsic to a lot of towns here."

The exhibit will officially launch with a reception and speech from Paxton on January 19 from 4:30 to 7:00 p.m. Paxton will appear at 6:00 p.m. 

For more information on this and future exhibits, visit the museum's website. The Sharp Museum is open Tuesdays through Fridays from noon to 4:00 p.m. and Saturdays from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.