The new year is starting out fairly active on the art front. I’m excited to have a piece in the juried show “Pushing Paper” at the Indianapolis Art Center from February 8 to April 10. I’m particularly excited about the piece that they chose. Of the pieces I have in my series of cut paper grids, people tend to gravitate towards the “busier” ones. And in general the more popular pieces I make are the ones that have the more obvious visual hooks – something with a complexity or contrast that actively tries to attract your gaze into the work. It makes sense why this would be the case, but then some of my personal favorite pieces often get overlooked. I don’t like to look at my own pieces, I like to think about them, and because of this I’m more drawn to the pieces that are more visually understated, or that maybe move into a more unusual direction that explores new ways of working than ones I’m already comfortable with. But in the instance of this show, they picked the more understated one over the flashier one! Because of this, I can only assume it’s going to be an awesome show. Below is the piece of mine that will be on display:
In other news I was also invited to be part of a group show at the Art Bar here in Milwaukee. It was a good chance to pull out some old work that I still enjoy but don’t have a lot of use for going forward. In my pre-MFA days I was still working primarily with representative imagery, but that type of work doesn’t fit into the new direction my work is heading right now. Interestingly, I hadn’t actually seen the works I put in the show since the last time I’d displayed them, which was my final show before entering grad school. Following that show I wrapped them in packaging and they have been in storage since. And now this is my first show since finishing the grad program, so in a coincidental cycle they form the bookends of my MFA experience. Below is one of the pieces from the show, titled “IndiVisuals”, which runs through February.
Looking ahead I hope to continue finding small shows here and there where I can display work that I’ve previously made. The transition from spending 40 hours a week in the studio to working full time and spending 6 hours a week in the studio has slowed my production down quite a bit. It was about September before I was able to work on art regularly again, but I have been able to produce a series of new pieces that are now posted in the “paper” section of my site, and I have a large amount of material to make more pieces from deconstructing failed works from my time in the grad program, so time to get back at it.
-MK