MONMOUTH, Ill. — An exhibition featuring the sculptures of Tom Aprile will go on display Feb. 17 in Monmouth College’s Len G. Everett Gallery in newly-renovated Hewes Library.

On March 21, the final day of the exhibit, there will be a closing reception for the artist in the gallery at 2:30 p.m. Both the exhibit and the reception are free and open to the public.

Aprile is an associate professor of art at the University of Iowa, where he has chaired the sculpture department since 1995. He received a BFA degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1976, and an MFA degree from Syracuse University in 1978.

“I have formed a sensibility layered with images from my childhood in suburbia and a need to accumulate fragments or evidence from the domestic, natural and architectural worlds,” said Aprile of his artistic style.

In 1992, Aprile received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Nigeria with a traditional Yoruba wood carver. The experience, he said, was “life- and art-changing” for him.

“Yoruba sculptors value the technical ability to carve a chain out of one piece of wood,” said Aprile. “The chain is an important icon in the Yoruban creation myth, and the use of the chain image has liberated my sculpture of the last six years by animating it.”

Aprile’s most recent work continues to explore what he calls the use of “multiple layers of branch chains, bureau drawers and letters of the alphabet as I dig deeper into my suburban childhood’s family mysteries and fears.”

Aprile has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including two Pollock/ Krasner Foundation Fellowships; a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship; and several art colony residencies, including Yaddo, the Edward Albee Foundation Fellowship, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He has had many one-person shows in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles and in commercial and university galleries and museums across the country.

Aprile has also taught at the University of Oklahoma; the Cleveland Institute of Art, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Obafemi Awolowo University in Ife, Nigeria, the Lincoln Center Institute, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

The artist says he is currently exploring the possibility of building large-scale labyrinths based on a series of drawings that were on display in January at the Sonia Zaks Gallery in Chicago.

The Len G. Everett Gallery is open during regular library hours: Sunday, 1 p.m. to midnight; Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to midnight; Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; and Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.