The Ohio Artist Registry (OAR) is an exciting opportunity for artists to share their work, connect with the creative community, and establish an online presence—all on a free, virtual platform! The OAR encourages artists working in all art forms, throughout Ohio and beyond, to create a profile, which allows them to better promote themselves and their work. Being listed in the OAR provides artists with new opportunities to share their work with clients, galleries, patrons, and audiences. A listing in the OAR does not confer an endorsement, approval, or verification by the Ohio Arts Council.
For more information, contact Kathy Signorino, artist programs director, at kathy.signorino@oac.ohio.gov or 614-728-6140.
2025 Ohio Artist Registry Juried Exhibition
Jonathan Welch
Bio
Jonathan Welch is a Columbus, Ohio based digital media artist and educator working at the intersection of sculpture, 3D modeling, projection mapping, and immersive media. His work combines digital fabrication, found objects, and cinematic lighting to explore themes of perception, play, and technological mediation.
Welch holds an MFA in Digital Animation and Interactive Media from The Ohio State University and has taught at institutions including Ohio State, Wright State University, Columbus College of Art and Design, Arkansas Tech University, and Kenyon College. His professional background spans fine art, instructional design, virtual reality, web development, and experimental installation.
Recent work includes The Gossamer Door, a sculptural installation integrating 3D printed components, mirrors, projection, and custom lighting. Welch’s practice is informed by his experience in emerging media, education, and hands on technical problem solving, with a focus on building systems that blur the line between object, image, and environment.
Artist Statement
My work sits between sculpture and digital image making. I use 3D printing, projection, mirrors, lighting, and found objects to build physical systems that behave like images and images that insist on being physical. I’m interested in how perception is engineered and how easily it can be guided, interrupted, or broken.
Much of the work starts with familiar or toy like forms and then complicates them through scale, fragmentation, and technological mediation. These objects carry associations of play, comfort, and innocence, but the way they are cut, lit, or animated introduces tension, imbalance, and unease. I’m less interested in spectacle than in the moment when something stops behaving the way you expect and you become aware of yourself looking.
My background in emerging media and teaching shapes how I work. I build my pieces as functional systems with visible constraints, improvised solutions, and intentional friction. The labor, wiring, seams, and hacks are part of the meaning. The work doesn’t try to hide how it’s made; it asks what it means to assemble experiences from tools designed for entertainment, instruction, and control.
Ultimately, I’m interested in how objects teach us how to see, and how digital techniques can be used to slow that process down, expose it, or let it fail.