Super stoked his installation " What connects us" is going to the Trout Museum of Art in Appleton for the TMA Contemporary Exhibition.🎉
It's such a warm feeling to have my most abstract conceptual work included in one of the most competitive juried exhibitions in WI among amazingly skilled colleagues and friends.
To pick up on a sentiment I mentioned earlier this week
This is not the first time I have entered work into this juried exhibition and it's not the first time I have even entered this installation into a juried exhibition. There are many factors that lead to either acceptance or rejection and most of it has nothing to do with your work or you as a person. It has everything to do with timing, how your work speaks to other submitted work, if there is space AND the subjective tastes of the jurors themselves.
If I have learned anything in the past decade of being an artist it is to accept rejection gracefully, to not take it personal. I have also learned not to make artwork I think will get into exhibitions or I think will sell. ( it is totally fine if you do this) I make artwork I want to make because if I don't those thoughts and ideas will consume me.
I say all this because it's important to celebrate these moments and also keep this space here transparent and real. I tell you all of this because I wish someone had talked about this stuff with me and in general artists need to talk about all the hidden elements.
This installation is about all of the patterns in nature and our bodies that overlap and connect. Transparency always invites conversation, welcomes our imperfections and our complex intertwined connection.
Congrats to all accepted artists and to those that received a " no for now" please continue to make the art that opens you up and sets you alight.
Photo from Interconnected an exhibition at Wisconsin Lutheran College last fall depicts 2 of 4 panels of this installation