Artist Bob Erickson will be on hand to give a talk on his ongoing body of work North, which is on view in the Henry M. Kashiwa Eco Gallery from April 23-July 10, 2016. The lecture is free and open to the public. Join us afterwards from 5-7pm for a reception celebrating the opening of Branches, Brambles, and Roots, Atelier Four and The Art of Logging: drawings and sculpture by Lavern Kelley.
Bob Erickson received his BFA at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and his MFA from Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. He is Emeritus Professor of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.
According to Lesley Wright, Director of the Faulconer Gallery at Grinnell College “Erickson captures his North experience in prints and paintings of isolated, evocative, familiar yet unidentifiable objects: humps, mounds, piles, stacks, tangles, and skeins. As subjects, seen without the benefit of a relative point of comparison, they are almost impossible to identify as monumental or tiny. The original source could be a forest leaves or a cloud, a stack of peat or an ocean cliff. The confusion of scale happens no matter what the size of the art work: his panels and prints range in dimension from six by six inches up to 43 x 53 inches. In their earth tones and mottled backgrounds, his works are infused with the passage of time, erosion, decay, and with processes that gather, organize and collect small pieces into larger accretions. Erickson revels in the multiplicity of association that his images evoke, hoping we will bring to them our own memories of river beds, dangling moss, hay stacks, or weird rocks distilled from wherever we find our spiritual connections in the natural world.”
Erickson’s work is in the permanent collection of the Milwaukee Art Museum, Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum, Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Amoco Oil Corporation, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Wisconsin Special Collections and and many others. He has been an artist in residence at the Blue Mountain Center, Blue Mountain, NY, Studio Camnitzer, Valdottavo, Italy, Armstrong-Prior Inc., Phoeniz, AZ, and The Contemporary Artists Center, North Adams, MA. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad including Bob Erickson: Recent Works on Paper-Gail Art Museum, South Korea; Arts in Isolation: Contemporary Printmaking in the Rural United States, Tartu, Estonia and Trondheim, Norway; 150 Years of Wisconsin Printmaking, Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, WI, Bob Erickson and Rita Wobbe: Rock & Water, Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar, Ireland and the 1999, 2002 and 2005 Wisconsin Triennials, Madison Museum of Modern Art, Madison, WI. He is represented in the United States by Armstrong Prior Inc., Phoenix, AZ and the Addington Gallery, Chicago, IL
For more on Bob Erickson click here.
