ELEMENTAL

Emily Christenson, Steve Banks, Terry Rathje, and I all just finished the run of our group show ELEMENTAL. The show came about mostly within Steve's mind, as he thought about each of us and our individual interactions with nature. We tended to run the gamut in our group, with Emily and Terry being the most immersed in the natural world (Terry living in a rural area where the Wapsipinicon River actually flows in his backyard; Emily taking trips to Alaska to literally paint in glacier lakes - water-based oils... wha?...) to Steve being the most distant from any natural immersion (he can't even see anything green from his downtown apartment or studio windows).

I showed my most recent paintings and drawings. Same goes for Emily - she showed recent paintings and drawings from her work in the Carribean Ocean. Steve gathered driftwood from the banks of the Mississippi - the only "natural" thing he could see from his window (it's two blocks away) and constructed a passageway made of wood and fired clay totems/masks. Terry gathered willow wood from his back yard and paired it up with 2x2s that had felt the touch of a human hand, creating a construction that was inspired/informed by his recent trip to Istanbul (he had a show there), where he learned about reductive architecture.

All in all, it was a great time, and I always enjoy showing with these locals. We had great attendance at two receptions. We were featured guests for an hour-long interview on Augustana College's public radio show "Art Talks" (mp3 should always be archived here http://www.wvik.org/listings-arttalks.htm look up November 20th 2011). We had some feature coverage in the Quad City Times.

i hope you enjoy the images. click on any of these for a larger view.

the blackest bile

what it's all about.



yeah, that's right.



december approaches, and i will soon be out on foot in the middle of fields taking a lot of photographs of churned up black earth, fog, blackbird groupings, and ultimately – in january – completely frozen-over hellscapes. can't wait.

i'm back.

i suppose i'm coming back from a hiatus of sorts - the main reason for my absence is that i'm now a proud father of a 3 month old.

my daughers rock; studio time had to wait for a while.

so... i've finally caught up a bit on some of the work that was started several months ago. I'll be in a group show this November/December, and most of this new work will be shown when that time rolls around. here's a new painting, followed by a new drawing. i'm a little worn out by painting lately, and i'm not sure how to accurately describe it. things seem a little forced to stay within the boundaries of what i've done so far with this "series," but the more i try to push out of that mold, the more things come full-circle back to what's comfortable. the drawings, on the other hand, are not that different from what i've been doing for the last 6 or 7 years, but they still feel fresh. funny, eh?

here you go:


















all gossamer, temporary
2011
acrylic on canvas
46 x 34 inches





















untitled
2011
pencil on paper
32 x 20 inches

m i d d l e s t a t e s opening reception

m i d d l e s t a t e s opened this weekend and i had the chance to drive to des moines for the reception. the show looked great, i met a lot of very cool people, and we ate good food and had some good beers.

big thanks to:
Benjamin Gardner, Curator of the exhibit and Professor of Drawing at Drake University (and to his wife Amy as well)
Heather Skeens, Director of Anderson Gallery
Gilbert Vicario, Senior Curator at the Des Moines Art Center
John Fender, designer of the exhibition catalogue and Graphic Design Professor at Drake University

Here are some install shots:

oh no! a 2010 wrap-up...

hi there; long time no see.

first off, here's the site for "m i d d l e s t a t e s," the group show i'm in this winter:
http://artsci.drake.edu/andersongallery/current.html

i'll be showing five paintings of mine, and i will doing my best to attend the opening reception (everything revolves around what the weather will be like that weekend). some old friends are in the show, as well as some artists i've never met before. it should be a great time catching up on the old and learning about the new.

now then... as you can tell, there have not been many updates here lately. i've been a little bit jaded about social networking or blogging on teh internets as of late, mainly due to the way Facebook has reduced the conversations (well, usually just the one-sided reading of posts) i have with 90% of my friends to really strange, even smug posts such as "so-and-so hates x, y, and z" (x, y, and z being completely ridiculous things to write long-winded, public gripes about). it just seems that 90% of the lengthier, more intelligent dialogue is absent from my life lately.

now that the holidays are over and done with, i hope to soon finish up a painting and a drawing that have been placed on the back burner for a month or two. and then, of course, i hope to get some real momentum moving down in the studio. this usually happens in the dead of winter, so... fingers crossed.

as far as a wrap-up on 2010 goes, i could go on and on about the details of the daily ins and outs, but there's one quick summation that covers everything: i can still count the number of really amazing close friends of mine on one hand. to each of you in the following photographs, thanks. i love you all a lot.

-m