Valley City State University Show

Later this morning, I am headed to Valley City ND for an artist reception with several of my UND classmates. Besides the two hour drive out and back, it should be a great day. I am really looking forward to seeing our work in a gallery. Our work is so distinct from one another so I am really curious how it comes together into show.

Below is the press release from VCSU.

UND Graduate Students, Meghan Duda, Ryan Stander, Patrick Awotwe, and Jessica Christy will be on campus Friday, September 24 working with the VCSU Art Students. A panel discussion is scheduled in McCarthy 356 at 2:00 pm and a reception for the artists will be held in the VCSU Art Gallery 4:00 - 5:30 pm. The VCSU community and the public are welcome to attend.

Five Graduate Students from the University of North Dakota’s Master of Fine Arts program were invited to submit work for the exhibition that sets the stage for the artists' visit. The exhibition includes weavings from Patrick Awotwe; altered photographs from Meghan Duda; monoprints / monotypes from Anna Jacobson; lithographs, Ziatypes, and Cyanotypes from Ryan Stander; mixed media lithographs from Jessica Christy.

The Exhibition runs through October 1.

In his weaving and jewelry making Patrick Awotwe creates designs using traditional symbols that reference compositions from his African culture. Mr. Awotwe enrolled in graduate school in metalsmithing and jewelry and found a second creative voice in fibers. His homeland, Ghana, is noted for unique traditional weaving called kinte but his first fiber-works were created at UND. He describes the weaving of his daughter: "The Sunrise is a damask wall hanging that was inspired by Nhyira, my daughter. The bottom part shows a silhouette of her picture with fewer details and the top shows her full portrait. Traditional Ghanaian symbols “Gye Nyame” and “Afe “were used to give it an African identity. Nhyira literally means Blessing and the Sunrise is to describe her.”

Meghan Duda is fascinated with two things, architecture and photography. She has a professional degree in architecture from Virginia Tech and teaches an architectural photography seminar in the Department of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at North Dakota State University. Ms. Duda states, “My selected photographs are a study of cutting.” She frames her photographs around elements that can be removed thus creating negative space. Meghan has exhibited through out the Midwest and Virginia. She also has been published and received a finalist recognition twice in competitions presented by Photography's Forum Magazine.

The family farm lifestyle and the fundamentals of organic farming have been ingrained in Anna Jacobson inner self and thought process and thus is the basis of her work. Nature’s cycles and the North Dakota landscape found their voices in the color, texture, and process of her work. Coming from the flat plains of rural North Dakota, Anna learned the value of simple beauty. Her work is not filled with complex details or bright commercial colors, but rich, full earthtone colors and textured details of the great American Midwest. Anna received her BA in studio arts with an empasis printmaking from Concordia College in Morehead, MN.

Ryan Stander's interests in theology and art are rooted in ideas of place/space, memory and identity formation. Mr. Stander has a MA in Theology from Sioux Falls Seminary and a BA in Art from Northwestern College. His work included in the exhibition comes from two bodies of work. The Religion as a Chain of Memory Series draws upon his theological research into place and memory. His Ziatype and Cyanotype Icon / Altars “draw upon the interplay of memory, identity and the photographic object itself, while playing with the traditional forms of Christian iconography and devotional altars."

Jessica Christy’s mixed media lithographs are a response to mass media, contemporary art history, and family heritage. Technically her work examines not only traditional printmaking but also the territory beyond the practiced techniques. Her work has been exhibited through out the Midwest, on the west coast and in London winning numerous awards. She works with the master press at UND, as both an assistant to the master printer and as a master printer, printing lithograph and intaglio editions for various well-known artists. Ms. Christy teaches drawing, printmaking, and design at UND. Jessica is a Valley City State University alumni who graduated with a BS in Art.

Even More Prints...

As promised...A few more finished prints, including my Oktoberfest invite. The first two are obviously related to the ongoing series. The invite...well...thats just for fun.

More Prints

Today I finished 3 more prints...2 in this ongoing series which will appear here in a few days and an invite to an Oktoberfest party which will show up here too.

Again these prints fall under the Foreign Policy series of prints that utilize texting abbreviations as a shorthand for some kind of American attitude. The maps too function as a shorthand that represents real space.

Fall Beginnings

Somehow it is already the 4th week of classes? Where did this past month go? I have made great progress on my print for the semester. So rather than waiting until the end of the semester I thought I would put up a few now.

This semester's focus is on mapping. Toward the end of the summer I started playing with a few cultural maps. See them here. I am taking a similar approach to my current series as I did for the fly-over states print by hand tracing the map and using a separate plate for text formatted in Photoshop.

The first map, is from a larger series that will show up here over the next few weeks. It might be called something like Foreign Policy, with a companion series Domestic Policy. It plays with the idea of cartography as a shorthand in a sense for real places. Here it is paired with a text abbreviation, another shorthand, that describes some sort of foreign relationship the United States has with another country.

The 2nd print is suggestive of a stereotypical arrogant American attitude about the rest of the world and America itself.

Recent Listenings II

A couple more of my recent favs...





and one old skool vid

Recent Listenings...

Occasionally I will post links to youtube.com for some of my favorite new music or videos and such. This is one of those posts. Over the summer, UND's Wellness Center has been playing a XM radio alt rock station and I have discovered a few new artists. Below are a few of my favorites...

Here is a link to the Kooks song Naive (sorry cant embed the video).