The Visual Arts Center and the Department of Art’s Visiting Artist and Scholar Program will host the exhibition New Residue, a collaboration by artists Michael McFalls and Jon Swindler. The exhibition will open Jan. 26 and continue through March 16 in Gallery One of the Visual Arts Center.
The artists will give a free public lecture at 6 p.m. Jan. 25 in the Bishop Barnwell Room in the Student Union Building. An opening reception will take place from 5-8 p.m. on Jan. 26 in Gallery One of the Visual Arts Center.
The artists create their work through a collaborative interdisciplinary approach that blurs the lines between printmaking and sculptural installation. McFalls and Swindler started working together in early 2015, and since then they have collaborated on numerous exhibits. In many of these exhibitions, remnants from the previous shows are combined with elements from each artist’s individual studio practice. These combinations often reveal themselves as massive, composed piles of art material that serve as both repository and resource for an installation. Previous manifestations of these piles have consisted of printed matter created by McFalls and Swindler, cast-off materials from their respective studio practices, as well as found discarded materials from art-making facilities.
In New Residue the artists are planning to create an installation composed of mostly new materials, constructed on-site. They will attempt to divorce themselves from the history of the objects and images (real and imagined) from their previous projects and capitalize on the limited vocabulary of a few basic materials, creating something of a shadow of their previous collaborative ventures.
The artists will create their Boise installation on-site from Jan. 22-26 in the Visual Arts Center gallery located in the Liberal Arts Building, Room 170. A variety of classes and students will work with the artists during the installation, said Kirsten Furlong, gallery director. Anyone is welcome to watch the work in progress, or get a “great bird’s eye view” of the gallery from the second floor, Furlong added. McFalls and Swindler will be using tools in the sculpture studio and will also work in the printmaking lab during their Boise stay.
McFalls is a practicing artist, professor of art and the director of Pasaquan. He received his BFA in fine arts from The Columbus College of Art and Design and his MFA from The University of California at Davis. Before joining Columbus State University, he served as the art program coordinator and assistant professor of art at The University of Maine at Farmington. Over the last couple years, McFalls has focused on several collaborative, interdisciplinary projects, including print installations with Swindler. More recently he worked on the opera Eddie’s Stone Song; Odyssey of the First Pasaquoyan with composer James Ogburn and librettist Scott Wilkerson. In the last year, he also completed a permanent public art piece with the poet Nick Norwood on the Riverwalk in Columbus, Georgia, a poem written on a 350-foot piece of steel. In 2014, McFalls was a Fulbright Scholar in Sweden at the University of Gothenburg, HDK Steneby. He has received numerous scholarships and awards, including the Pritzker Foundation Endowed Fellowship, College of the Arts Faculty Research Award, as well as being nominated for the University Regents’ Excellence in Teaching Award. McFalls has been a resident at Sculpture Space, Inc., The Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and Australia National University, and a visiting artist at Dartmouth College and Furman University.
Swindler is faculty in printmaking and book arts at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia, and serves as associate director for technology, space and community for the school. He holds a BFA in studio art and art education from Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas and an MFA from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Over the last several years he has exhibited his work nationally and internationally in numerous solo, competitive and invitational exhibitions. Swindler has also performed visiting artist workshops and lectures at various institutions including: The Art Academy of Cincinnati, HDK School of Design and Craft in Steneby, Sweden and the Society of Northern Alberta Print Artists in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
For more information, contact Visual Arts Center Gallery Director Kirsten Furlong at kfurlong@boisestate.edu or (208) 426-3994
For more information about the Art Department’s Visiting Artist and Scholar Program, supported by the Modern Hotel and Bar in downtown Boise, contact Kate Walker at katewalker1@boisestate.edu