I'm told artists and other creative
professionals should spend a significant portion of their time on professional practice,
things like emailing, photographing work, applying to shows, and flossing. I
struggle to prioritize my studio time as it is and so this sometimes seems
daunting to me. No matter, as I've learned: no one else will do it for you. If
I wait on the world to find my work and tell me how great it is, I
will be waiting a long time. And so world, I am here to practice the
time-honored practice of shameless self-promotion.
Below is a three-year update of recent
exhibitions, studio work, and my life in between. And here you can browse a PDF catalog of my smaller work for sale.
Exhibitions
This past year I was lucky to be included in a
couple exciting group shows this year: State Park in San
Diego, CA; CNTRL+P:Printmaking in the 21st Century by
University of Tennessee Alumni in Knoville, TN; and the Neville
Museum’s 70th Art Annual in Green Bay, WI. |
| State Park at UC-San Diego's University Gallery, La Jolla, CA |
State Park, curated by artist Mike Calway-Fagen, is up through May 1st at the University of California San Diego’s University Gallery. My work in the show includes a felt Land Scout sash and badges and a newly published Land Scouts’ Guide Book. I’ve not seen the show, but the gallery website describes it as, “unpack[ing] state parks as sites rich with conflict and complexities---where landscape, myth, identity, class, exclusivity, exploitation, wildness, tragedy, erasure, memory, leisure, spirit, holism, play, and adventure exert their individual and collective forces.”
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| What You've Got (front and center) at the Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville |
CTRL+P: Printmaking in the 21st Century byUniversity of Tennessee Alumni was held in conjunction with SGCI 2015,
an annual international printmaking conference. Sarah Suzuki, Associate Curator
for the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Museum of Modern Art, was the
curator. My piece in the show What You’ve Got featured a grid
of seed balls and an offer to trade. The seeds included for this particular
show were all for orange and white blooming flowers, a nod to UT’s colors.
 |
| Nerd alert! Posing with What You've Got at the Neville Museum, Green Bay |
The same seed ball piece What You’ve
Got also made it into the Neville Museum’s 70th Art
Annual where it won Third Place and the juror’s Legacy Prize. (Woo hoo!) This
iteration of the piece included a mix of Midwestern prairie wildflowers in the
seed balls. The Neville curators were excited to have participatory art in the
show and the piece has been entirely traded out. I’ll be delivering a refresher
batch of seed balls to the museum later this week. The show is up through May
10th.
Studio and Print Work
This past summer I collaborated with Green Bay
printmakers and fine human beings Johanna Winters and Don Krumpos on a large wood cut
print for the ReallyBigPrints! event. We carved a 3’ x 5’ piece of birch plywood with Saints of the Fox River. (Shown below.) Each artist drew and carved a saint framed by an arched window. In the
background we floated the molecular model of polychlorinated biphenyl, a toxic contaminant of the Fox River. You can see photos of our print and process here. Krumpos, Winters, and I donated two copies of our print to the ReallyBigPrints traveling exhibition. One copy remains for sale if you're looking for some Really Big Art.
Earlier this fall I got to print a small edition of prints with Paper Fox Printmaking Workshop, the project of Ben Rinehart at Lawrence University. Ben and his students helped me pull an edition of 30 two-color screen prints. The image was part of the Land Scouts’ Guide Book and looks great in the blue and gray we used. Ten prints remain from my half of the edition and are available for sale in my catalog for $50.
Earlier this fall I got to print a small edition of prints with Paper Fox Printmaking Workshop, the project of Ben Rinehart at Lawrence University. Ben and his students helped me pull an edition of 30 two-color screen prints. The image was part of the Land Scouts’ Guide Book and looks great in the blue and gray we used. Ten prints remain from my half of the edition and are available for sale in my catalog for $50.
 |
| Detail from screen print made with Paper Fox Printmaking Workshop |
Lastly and most recently, I was honored to draw illustrations for the promotional materials of the bell hooks Residency at St. Norbert College. hooks is a public intellectual and feminist scholar, and she didn't mind me drawing her as Yoda. One of the original pencil drawings is now part of the recently opened bell hooks Institute in Berea, KY.
The 3-Year Life Summary
In late 2012 I quit my marketing job to start
teaching art and design part-time in Nashville at Tennessee State University
and Volunteer State Community College. In early 2013 I interviewed and later
got a full-time teaching job at St. Norbert College in Wisconsin.
Stephen, dog, and I moved to Wisconsin later that summer. Our first Wisconsin
winter had a name (the Polar Vortex) and we learned to be stoic and mostly
pleasant through a long winter. In the summer of 2014 we moved to Manitowoc, a
smaller town on Lake Michigan. We can see a lighthouse from our kitchen window
and watched the shallow parts of the lake freeze and thaw all winter. I enjoy
finding lake glass and fish carcasses on the beach near our house. I love my
job at SNC.
See you all again for the next 2-3 year update.
Thanks for your ongoing support of my work.
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