2024 Minnesota State Fair
August 25, 2024
A nice Instagram post from the Northrup King Building on my acceptance into the State Fair. Preview night was a lot of fun, seeing an award, a sale and all the beautiful arts people.
Art-A-Whirl 2024
May 15, 2024
I am, again, showing some work this May 17-19 at Art-A-Whirl 2024 in Minneapolis. My work will be in a new gallery this year in the Northrup King Building, Follow the Muse Gallery #166.
I met David Hockney?
December 3, 2023
It was only a few years ago that my father bothered to mention that I met David Hockney. I was in the same room with him? No, you met him. Apparently, not a big deal to my father. I mean, in grad school, my best friends were the English students – it would have been nice to drop that in conversation with them. Oh yeah, I met Hockney. They're going on about Anthony Caro, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth...I met Hockney! The picture to the right is about the Hockney I would have met around 1970. I'm all of 7 or 8 years old, and have absolutely no recollection of the event. My dad got a call from his friend teaching over at UW-Madison, "hey bob, we've got David Hockney over here for an artist-in-residence, why don't you come by?" I guess we did. Anyway, as a longtime admirer of Hockney's work and intelligence, this was a most pleasant surprise.
Sister Corita Kent
March 26, 2024
For my whole life, this one of two original Sister Corita Kent prints, has been in our kitchen at my parents house. Eating a bowl of Cheerios, year after year, how many times did I read the quote by Camus inscribed on the print: "Great ideas, it is said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirrings of life and hope...."
Via humor, I am honing your eye...
September 27, 2022
“Via humor, I am honing your eye, the Emperor told his art agent. Arcimboldo, you see, began with fishes, but out of fishes he made the most magnificent face, whereas Bronzino began with a face and ended up with nothing. You cannot aim right at the face! The goal of course is a human face, not fish, but one arrives at human faces only through the roundabout route of fishes. (The Emperor added: I am saying something fundamentally philosophical when I say: The Bronzino is boring.) The true artist walks straight toward the insignificant, while slyly keeping an eye on the significant, and moving at all times away from the gorgeous. The Emperor had a lot more to say on the subject of significance and insignificance, but he noticed … that the art agent had urinated down one of his pant legs, so he thanked him graciously for both paintings.”
from The Organs of Sense, by Adam Ehrlich Sachs
The above passage is but a sippet of a much longer segment between the Emperor and his much too learned art agent, who has seemingly been blinded by book learning. Prior to the bit quoted above, the Emperor had threatened to gouge out the eyes of the art agent because he can't see with them anyway, a nasty joke. The timeframe and place is post-Mannerism in Vienna. The book is often pitch perfect in its satire of...well...intellectual, know-it-alls. I really found Mannerism refreshing in its way after coming out of a study of the High Renaissance, like a break from rationality. A stop making sense kind of thing, and a really important development in human thought at the time, that we now live with everyday. Anyway, this little vignette between the art agent and the Emperor ends with a blind Astronomer, saying, "One wants above all to understand the Sun, but one cannot aim one's telescope right at the Sun!" The essence of metaphor. Oh, and Bronzino boring! That'll ruffle a few feathers.
T.L. Solien
September 6, 2020
The painting above is by T.L. Solien, a marvelous artist that came by Moorhead State when I was in the midst of my art schooling/training. Our painting class trekked down to the Plains Art Museum, where he was showing. The class got a tour of the show, and had a Q & A with the artist. Nobody every talked in that group, and the silences were downright painful. We may have been in front of this painting, and because nobody would ask anything!, I asked him if his paintings told a literal story. Somebody had to say something!, and I didn't really know the answer, but it was clearly not a question he was anything but annoyed to get from the group of young minds. You're hungry, if not starving, for concrete answers to bewildering phenomena in the world, as a student. I was attracted to Solien's work, but baffled by it at the time. Plus, we all want solid answers, we're literal minded, in a world where they may not even exist. In the end, Solien's annoyance was perfect, it's like, kid, you don't get straight-forward answers in this world, figure that out.
For the most part, I don’t care much about what artists have to say 
about their work. Except maybe, the artists that weave (sometimes cryptic) insights into their process, along with a more philosophical overview. The work is laid out in plain view for everyone to see, so what’s your question? As a student, this used to drive me nuts, but now I appreciate it so much. When artists get specific about what a picture is about, more often than not, it takes away from my own absorption/intake of the work. Occasionally, I’ll want to know more, but not usually. It’s one place where facts kill the work. Poetry lives and breathes without everyday facts, but you sure know it when it’s false.