Prints and paintings by artists from Ohio and Illinois are on exhibit in two gallery spaces at UW-Stout.
The exhibits, “A Series of Entanglements,” by Taryn McMahon and “Re. Rainbow Girl” by Tim Lowly, will run through Saturday, April 9, at Furlong Gallery.
Face masks are required indoors at UW-Stout through Friday, March 11.
The north space in the gallery features monotype and laser monotype prints by McMahon, who is an associate professor at Kent State University’s School of Art in Kent, Ohio.
“Human impact on ecologies and cultural preconceptions of nature have been the primary concerns of my artwork for nearly 10 years,” McMahon said. “My exhibition ‘A Series of Entanglements’ layers silhouettes of objects found on the shores of the Cuyahoga River. These highly layered prints point to the current state of entanglement between people and our environment.
“The spaces I draw and photograph reveal complex interactions between the human and nonhuman. The drawings and photographs are manipulated and filtered through digital and handmade printmaking processes to generate mixed media works on paper and installations. As viewers walk around the installations, they shift from pictorial image to sculptural object; their constructed-ness is revealed. My works in both installation and two-dimension move between real and artificial, landscape and construction,” she said.
McMahon gave a virtual presentation March 3 as part of UW-Stout’s School of Art and Design Speaker Series, exploring how art has fueled and shaped fantasies of nature.
The south space in the gallery features paintings by Lowly, a Chicago-area artist, curator, musician and teacher who has been affiliated with North Park University as gallery director, professor and artist-in-residence.
The central subject of Lowly’s work is his daughter Temma, born in 1985, who has cerebral palsy with spastic quadriplegia.
“The works in this project all focus on a single woman, my daughter Temma, who — by visual associations with well-known artworks — is positioned as a meaningful human being: perhaps even some kind of ‘super hero,’” Lowly said.
“The eventual comprehension by the viewer that the person depicted is ‘profoundly other’ complicates conventional expectations of power, agency and human significance,” Lowly added, noting that the term “profoundly other” is used in lieu of the “problematic and misleading categorization ‘profoundly disabled.’”
UW-Stout’s School of Art and Design offers seven fine arts programs, including a master’s in design. First-year SOAD students start in the Pre-Bachelor of Fine Arts program, which is the gateway to a BFA degree. The university also offers a B.S. in arts administration and entrepreneurship.
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