Jerry Bleem, an artist, educator, writer, Franciscan friar and Catholic priest, earned his M.F.A. at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his M.Div. from the Catholic Theological Union.

Bleem examines the cultural construction of meaning by looking at what we discard and by transforming the nonprecious through time-intensive accumulation. The resulting work—both 2- and 3-dimensional surfaces—raises issues ranging from apprehension to beauty, ecology to politics, valuation to class.