Inadvertent Arson: Paintings and Drawings by Patrick Duegaw

INADVERTENT ARSON PATRICK DUEGAW

Inadvertent Arson Paintings and Drawings by Patrick Duegaw Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art Kansas State University October 5, 2012 through January 13, 2013

Inadvertent Arson: Paintings and Drawings by Patrick Duegaw Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, Manhattan October 5, 2012—January 13, 2013 Work reproduced by artist permission. For image rights, contact Patrick Duegaw, Fisch Haus, 524 South Commerce, Wichita, Kansas 67202, 316-305-6062, patrick@patrickduegaw.com, patrickduegaw.com.

Photography by Dimitris Skliris, Dallas, Texas, except where indicated.

Graphic design by Kim Curry, Wichita, Kansas.

Printed by Heidel Print Co. Ltd., Bundang, Seongnam, South Korea.

This publication is funded in part by a gift from Emprise Bank, M. D. Michaelis, Chairman.

First edition.

©2012 by the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, Manhattan.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by other means, electronic or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-890751-19-7 Library of Congress: 2012943783 Distributed by the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, 701 Beach Lane, Manhattan, Kansas 66506, 785-532-7718, beach.k-state.edu

BEACH MUSEUM OF ART 14th and Anderson, Manhattan, KS P: 785.532.7718 beach.k-state.edu Tuesday - Saturday: 10-5 Sunday: 12-5

FRONT COVER:

INSIDE FRONT COVER:

PAGE 2:

Fire Extinguisher with Clan MacGregor Scotch Whisky: Fisch Haus, 3rd Floor, West End, Wichita, Kansas

Set Piece (or) Fisch Haus, 3rd Floor, West End, 320º (horizontal) (detail)

The Inadvertent Arsonist (Pyrophobe) (or) An Illicit Collaboration with Pauline Goulet Bressan

2012

2012

2006

INADVERTENT

ARSON PATRICK

DUEGAW

kitchen lights…off burners…out oven…unlit coffee pot…unplugged need to get out and not halfway down the stairs turn back bedroom lights…off reading lamp…out candles…unlit electric blanket…unplugged another attempt this time I get close to the front door before running back bathroom lights…off space heater…out incense…unlit old Christmas lights…unplugged try again exiting this time perhaps I missed something rush back shop wood blow glue

lights…off burner…out torch…unlit gun…unplugged

actually make it a whole city block when I hear sirens fly back… is it possible to be an arsonist if you are afraid of fire?

TABLE OF CONTENTS

9

FOREWORD

10

INADVERTENT ARSON: A STILL PLAY ESSAY

14

CAST

26

PROPS

36

SETS

62

UNDERSTUDIES

80

CHECKLIST

82

CHRONOLOGY

For Jake

8

FOREWORD

Inadvertent Arson. How can arson, the act of intentionally setting a destructive fire, be inadvertent? Like the koans that Zen Buddhist teachers use to help students step outside of conventional assumptions, the phrase that is the title of Patrick Duegaw’s installation seems to defy logic. It’s grammatical; our language allows us to use the adjective “inadvertent” to modify the noun “arson.” However, the contradiction inherent in the combination reminds us that reality is not always captured accurately by language. Or, rather, that language can fool us into a false sense of order and control.

Patrick Duegaw has created a tragic, humorous, and very human theatrical experience for visitors to the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art’s Pelton and Hyle Galleries. His deftness as a painter and his rejection of the consumption-driven values of contemporary society strike one immediately. Figures and objects are evoked with an almost John Singer Sargent-like ease; the artist’s materials are a motley assortment of salvaged sheetrock and interior moldings.

More significant, though, is the way his fable about fear and loss seems to unfold before our eyes as we walk through the space.

Many people made it possible for Patrick to realize this project.

Kim Curry designed the graphics related to Inadvertent Arson: Paintings and Drawings by Patrick Duegaw, and Dimitris Skliris served as the photographer for this catalogue. Lindsay Smith, Beach Museum of Art exhibition designer, worked closely with the artist to develop the gallery installation. Former Senior Curator Bill North originally championed the project and Associate Curator Liz Seaton stepped in to carry it forward. Registrar/Collection Manager Sarah Price arranged loans and transport. Assistant Director for Operations Cindi Morris coordinated the marketing, and various museum staffers worked on public and educational programs related to the installation. Sincere thanks to Michael Michaelis of Emprise Bank for a generous gift in support of the project.

Linda Duke DIRECTOR, BEACH MUSEUM OF ART | MANHATTAN, KANSAS

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INADVERTENT ARSON: A Still Play THE PAINTED THEATRE PROJECT Creation. Destruction. Preservation. These phenomena provide the core themes of artist Patrick Duegaw’s Painted Theatre Project. This ongoing creative endeavor synthesizes his training as an architect, past work as a set designer, skills as a painter, and love of poetry and storytelling. It evolves in a series of what Duegaw calls Still Plays—exhibitions in which individual paintings, presented in a highly-designed gallery space, stand in for characters, props, and sets on a stage. These theatrical installations, and the project as a whole, revolve around three figures—creator, destroyer, and preserver—that personify the key themes.

Though informed by the artist’s interest in the divine triads found throughout many mythologies and faith traditions, these protagonists are emphatically vernacular, drawn from Duegaw’s secular life and the lives of those around him. His first Still Plays focused on his creator character, The Builder. In this installation, he introduces his unwitting destroyer, The Inadvertent Arsonist.

CAST Dark and intimate, the exhibition’s first gallery presents a selection of exactingly realistic and emotionally taut portraits spotlit to dramatic effect. The six figures within these images comprise an enigmatic ensemble cast. Included among them is Amy, hands folded and resting on her massive middle as she sits patiently in a laundromat. Next to her Jürgen holds a toy gun, but appears more pensive than playful as he stares downward, his tilted head revealing an arc of surgical sutures.

To their right, Kent and Mel turn their backs on one another within a tension-filled diptych; and across from them Jake evinces obvious frustration as he struggles with a ring on his finger.

The paintings’ double titles—such as Amy with Butterknife (or) Dreaming of Open Washers and Empty Dryers and Hit Man (or) Jürgen with Absent Microphone— simultaneously name their subjects and call attention to secondary images embedded in their complex surfaces. Duegaw executes each portrait on a substrate of jigsawcut wallboard segments screwed to wooden panels. The gaps between the pieces create forms—a butter knife, a microphone—that function as carefully selected props for the characters under which they lay. Alongside the paintings, poems provide further, albeit cryptic, information. Duegaw’s subjects are his close friends and relatives; the details of their images and texts born of long-standing relationships and private anecdotes. But they can also be understood in broader terms, as common individuals enduring ordinary human struggles—Amy battling obesity, Jürgen warring

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with what one imagines is a cancer beneath his stitches. Such images could be overtaken by pathos, but Duegaw instead invests them with empathy. Indeed, the artist even includes himself within the cast. One finds his self portrait in the lower right corner of a quartered painting near the gallery’s doorway. Lips pursed and gaze steady, he pinches a lit match between his thumb and index finger.

The painting’s label explains that he is The Inadvertent Arsonist (Pyrophobe), confronting his greatest fear.

One finds art historical precedent for Duegaw’s stark portraiture in the early20th-century German artists whose work was labeled Neue Sachlichkeit, “new objectivity.” Following the horrors of World War I, these artists—such as Otto Dix, George Grosz, and Christian Schad—eschewed the popular styles of impressionism and expressionism to create eerily realistic—even brutal—images. Frequently depicting people struggling through difficult lives on the fringes of respectable society, they maintained what art historian Ian Buruma describes as “a tension between typecasting and individual eccentricity,” and often employed “exaggerated, typical settings, suggesting that people are all actors in a great stage play.”1 In his twenty-first-century project, Duegaw pushes that strain between the generic and the unique, and that eye to grander implications, to actual theatrical dimensions.

SETS The exhibition’s second, larger space features three panoramic paintings that serve as the sets for this play. These long, slim images depict Fisch Haus, the warehouse in Wichita, Kansas, that Duegaw and a band of fellow artists have transformed over the past two decades from a vacant shell into a vibrant conglomeration of living, studio, and exhibition spaces.2 The building’s former emptiness is now replaced by a decided fullness, the distinctions between its spaces blurred by an intuitively organized chaos of things: shelves of paints and books; a ceiling jangling with upturned bicycles; walls covered with paintings, photographs, magazine clippings, and handwritten notes; piles of salvaged wood and industrial equipment; tables stacked high with clusters of tools; and bins of found objects—pool balls, jars, old cameras, home hardware.

Duegaw presents this cacophony in vibrant, compulsive detail. Two-feet high and twenty-four-feet long, the first painting depicts a 360-degree view of the Fisch Haus workshop—a main-floor room shared by all of the artist occupants.

That space, filled with every imaginable hand and power tool, is an index of the skills, ingenuity, and labor that permeates Fisch Haus as a whole. When Duegaw

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and his collaborators moved in, the building lacked interior walls, plumbing, and electricity; those structures, pipes, and functional wiring were all installed piece meal (often with scavenged and salvaged materials) by the artists. It is the last of these elements that makes Duegaw a pyrophobe. Despite subsequent inspections and modifications from trained electricians—the artist lives in fear that the original ancient wiring and his own novice work will cause a deadly spark. Duegaw copes daily with a fear of fire consuming the space that houses his life and work.

In his painting of the workshop, that fear manifests in the slim orange line of an extension cord snaking its way through the crowded space. A decidedly subtle linear element in this image, the cord plays a more conspicuous role in the other two panoramas.

With similarly narrow dimensions and panoptic scope, these paintings provide vertical and horizontal views of Duegaw’s dense living and studio space two stories above the workshop. In them, extension cords are accompanied by seemingly countless details indicative of the artist’s obsessive fear of fire. Panning the horizontal painting, one finds numerous potential hazards: the wood-burning stove’s door is ajar; candles sit unattended and flickering on various tabletops; an espresso maker’s dripped coffee sends small tongues of gold fire sputtering from a gas stove’s blue flame; and grease pops in a skillet. One also finds references to heat more broadly defined: cans of curry paste and a jar of Vietnamese hot sauce line the kitchen shelves; a newspaper weather map tacked to a bulletin board shows high temperatures spreading across the country; and another clipped image displays a reproduction of Otto Dix’s sultry painting The Dancer Anita Berber. A notorious 1920s German performer and seductress whose battles with substance addictions led to her early death, Berber appears in flame-red gown against an equally intense vermillion ground—her sickly, mask-like face stark white in contrast. Art historian Sabine Rewald describes her as “a flame consuming itself.”3 The metaphor is apt. Duegaw’s inclusion of Dix’s image not only confirms the importance of the Neue Sachlichkeit artists’ precedents, but also underscores the idea that Duegaw fears not just fire, but the thought that he might start it—that he would cause his own destruction. At the far right of his panorama, a fire extinguisher waits conspicuously at the ready to assuage these fears, yet it is decades out of date— its inspection tag reads 1993–94, the year of the building’s purchase.

PROPS The fire extinguisher serves as The Inadvertent Arsonist’s chief prop. Across from the panoramas, at the gallery’s center, individual paintings of these devices

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display an uncanny illusionism—set behind glass in metal frames inside architectural columns, each work appears to be an actual extinguisher in its designated cabinet. Close examination not only gives away the deceit, but also reveals that Duegaw has subverted these symbols of the would-be arsonist’s possible salvation with yet another image of his potential demise: Cut into each painting’s substrate is the form of a bottle—a reference to the self-destructive vice of alcohol. In conversations about these paintings, Duegaw has shared memories about his family history of alcoholism. He worries that—though not nearing addiction— he too, as have many artists before him, may drink more than is healthy.

STORY What will happen to The Inadvertent Arsonist in this seeming trap of danger and human foible? The set pieces are rife with clues to a narrative chronology. Close attention reveals: undrawings of bottles and the remains of a past party seeping through their surfaces; a lit candle in the horizontal image blown out, or waiting to be lit, in the vertical painting; and background images of Duegaw’s past work, a record of his own artistic evolution. But, despite these temporal suggestions, the artist offers no linear tale, no organized dramatic arc. Instead, having set the stage, he leaves the story untold. What could become merely a work of autobiography or a predictable morality tale of human shortcomings is instead left purposely open-ended. Though he provides many details, Duegaw ultimately—and importantly— offers the narrative’s final construction to the viewer’s imagination.

Emily Stamey ASSOCIATE CURATOR, SCOTTSDALE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART | SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA

1. Ian Buruma, “Face of the Weimar Republic,” in Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s

by Sabine Rewald (New York and New Haven, Conn.: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2006), 18, 16.

2. The original Fisch Haus members include John Ernatt, Eric Schmidt, and Kent Williams. Duegaw now shares his living space with his wife, artist and architect Elizabeth Stevenson, who has assumed much of the organizational responsibilities for the building’s evolving role as a not-for-profit events space.

3. Sabine Rewald, catalogue entry #38, “The Dancer Anita Berber,” in Glitter and Doom.

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14

CAST

Plastic Boxes Discussing your lecture on painter Howard Hodgkin, it suddenly occurred to me that I’ve known you for over twenty years and have never seen you eat.

--Plastic boxes filled with irony, meticulously organized by genus and subgenus.

“Whereas ‘Holiday’ ‘Sport,’ and ‘Religion’ are their own categories, as are ‘Cats’ and ‘Dogs,’ ‘Monkeys’ and ‘Frogs’ would be subdivided.

Normally ‘Hello Kitty’ would be impossible to classify; examples might be found in ‘Japan,’ ‘Anime,’ or ‘Toys,’ while ‘Copyrighted,’ despite its vagueness, seems to work as an effective catch-all.

Jake with Open Scissors (or) My Mother Would Always Make Me Go to Vienna 2010

Arguably ‘Post World War Ealing Comedy and Homemade Horror’ is rather specific.

As are ‘The 46 States and Eleven Countries Where I Have Been Drunk With My Friend Brad’ and ‘Guitar Playing Doughnut Makers Who Have My Name Tattooed On Their Calf.’

Favorites include ‘Utilities.’

‘General Information,’ ‘Alpha Numeric,’ ‘Stamps,’ ‘Flags,’ ‘Currency,’ ‘Nine One One,’ ‘Fire Response,’ and of course ‘Travel,’ both ‘Terrestrial’ and ‘Space…’”

--Our last conversation was awkward, in the YMCA locker room; gripping your toothbrush and dollar-store razors, you acted surprised to see me, though I’m a regular swimmer.

16

Dusk Paintings We sat on the stairs in front of my place.

I loved his accent as he told one of his best: the one with the lion.

I’d heard them all before.

Maybe a hundred times.

But I listened, rapt, watching the glowing end and the paintings it made as he spoke.

Hit Man (or) JĂźrgen with Absent Microphone 2009

PHOTO by GAVIN PETERS

18

Filter I forgive you these moments of dullness everything somehow dimmed as if attempting to pierce through sheets and sheets of neutral density.

--I recall being impaired in dusk-dampened interiors the tiny furniture barely visible below the lone bulb that absorbs hungrily my ability to see.

PAGES 20–21:

Two Rooms with Insufficient Light (or) Portraits of Kent and Mel 2007 AT RIGHT:

Today these rooms are cold, cold, cold gray, blue numbing and fluorescent-lit with one, last, buzzing tube obstinately struggling to survive.

Two Rooms with Insufficient Light (or) Portraits of Kent and Mel (detail) 2007

Opening the blind and, as my eyes adjust to the deluge of light and color, the warmth upon my skin reminds me sadly that it is wrong, even in the sun.

22

The Seductress of South Wichita Men don’t stand a chance against the Venus in stretch pants.

An unlikely Salome; she sways, not with allure, but with guilt and Toll House cookies.

She is Cleopatra of Wal-Mart, ruler of third shift.

Amy with Butter Knife (or) Dreaming of Open Washers and Empty Dryers

She is a pudgy Scarlett O’Hara in the all-night Laundromat.

2006

She is a confused Mata Hari; convincing, with her small deceptions and a large screen television with satellite reception.

She is a four-eyed Delilah with chocolate shears.

She might be Rita Hayworth, only she’s four foot eight.

Holofernes got off easy: he only lost his head.

He never had to move Judith’s queen-sized sofa bed.

24

PROPS

PAGE 26 and AT RIGHT:

Fire Extinguisher with Clan MacGregor Scotch Whisky: Fisch Haus, 3rd Floor, West End, Wichita, Kansas 2012

28

Fire Extinguisher with Canadian Club Blended Whisky: Le Centre Canadien d’Architecture, Montréal, Québec 2012

30

Fire Extinguisher with McCormick Distilled London Dry Gin: Château de Mont Royal, Montréal, Québec 2012

32

Fire Extinguisher with Nova Vodka: Maison Smith, Mont Royal Park, Montréal, Québec 2012

34

SETS

42

44

PAGE 36:

Set Piece (or) Fisch Haus, 1st Floor, East End, 360º (corner) (detail) 2011 PAGES 38 and 39:

Set Piece (or) Fisch Haus, 1st Floor, East End, 360º (corner) 2011 PAGES 40 through 45:

Set Piece (or) Fisch Haus, 1st Floor, East End, 360º (corner) (details) 2011 PAGES 46 and 47:

Set Piece (or) Fisch Haus, 3rd Floor, West End, 360º (vertical) 2012 PAGES 48 through 51:

Set Piece (or) Fisch Haus, 3rd Floor, West End, 360º (vertical) (details) 2012 PAGES 52 and 53:

Set Piece (or) Fisch Haus, 3rd Floor, West End, 320º (horizontal) 2012 PAGES 54 through 61:

Set Piece (or) Fisch Haus, 3rd Floor, West End, 320º (horizontal) (details) 2012

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52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

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UNDERSTUDIES

PAGE 58:

Study for Fire Extinguisher: Château de Mont Royal, Montréal, Québec (loose graphite) (detail) 2010 AT RIGHT:

Study for Fire Extinguisher: Château de Mont Royal, Montréal, Québec (orange) 2009

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AT RIGHT, CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT:

Study for Fire Extinguisher with Unknown Accelerant (green bottle) 2010 Study for Fire Extinguisher: Le Centre Canadien d’Architecture, Montréal, Québec (with skull) 2010 Study for Fire Extinguisher: 24 Mont Royal Ouest, #904, Montréal, Québec (black paper) 2010 Study for Fire Extinguisher: Château de Mont Royal, Montréal, Québec (loose graphite) 2010

66

Study for Fire Extinguisher and Pernod: Maison Smith, Mont Royal Park, MontrĂŠal, QuĂŠbec (ink) 2010

68

Study for Fire Extinguisher: Le Centre Canadien d’Architecture, Montréal, Québec (blue with skull) 2010

70

Study for Fire Extinguisher with Unknown Accelerant: La Résidence de Ralph Ghoche, Ave. du Parc, Montréal, Québec (detailed graphite) 2010

72

Study for Fire Extinguisher: Maison Smith, Mont Royal Park, Montréal, Québec (blue and white) 2011

74

Study for Fire Extinguisher: Fisch Haus, 3rd Floor, West End, Wichita, Kansas (red) 2011

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CREDITS

CHECKLIST

Note: Dimensions are given in inches, height preceding width. Frame included in painting size; sheet size given for works on paper. All works are collection of the artist unless otherwise indicated.

Patrick Duegaw (United States, born 1966)

CHARACTERS

PROPS

Amy with Butter Knife (or) Dreaming of Open Washers and Empty Dryers 2006 / Acrylic, ink, screws, and polyurethane on wallboard with aluminum frame 36 x 32 inches With accompanying poem: The Seductress of South Wichita

Fire Extinguisher with Canadian Club Blended Whisky: Le Centre Canadien d’Architecture, Montréal, Québec 2012 / Acrylic, ink, screws, and polyurethane on wallboard with aluminum frame 25 1/4 x 14 1/2 inches Fire Extinguisher with Clan MacGregor Scotch Whisky: Fisch Haus, 3rd Floor, West End, Wichita, Kansas 2012 / Acrylic, ink, screws, and polyurethane on wallboard with aluminum frame 25 1/4 x 14 1/2 inches

Hit Man (or) Jürgen with Absent Microphone 2009 / Acrylic, ink, screws, and polyurethane on wallboard with aluminum frame 84 x 54 inches On loan from private collector With accompanying text: Dusk Paintings

Fire Extinguisher with McCormick Distilled London Dry Gin: Château de Mont Royal, Montréal, Québec 2012 / Acrylic, ink, screws, and polyurethane on wallboard with aluminum frame 25 1/4 x 14 1/2 inches

Jake with Open Scissors (or) My Mother Would Always Make Me Go to Vienna 2010 / Acrylic, ink, screws, and polyurethane on wallboard with aluminum frame 54 x 30 inches With accompanying poem: Plastic Boxes

Fire Extinguisher with Nova Vodka: Maison Smith, Mont Royal Park, Montréal, Québec 2012 / Acrylic, ink, screws, and polyurethane on wallboard with aluminum frame 25 1/4 x 14 1/2 inches

The Inadvertent Arsonist (Pyrophobe) (or) An Illicit Collaboration with Pauline Goulet Bressan 2006 / Acrylic, ink, screws, and polyurethane on wood panels with aluminum frame 60 x 48 inches (four panels installed in a grid) With accompanying poem: The Inadvertent Arsonist Two Rooms with Insufficient Light (or) Portraits of Kent and Mel 2007 / Acrylic, ink, screws, and polyurethane on wallboard with aluminum frame Diptych 60 x 114 inches (60 x 48 inches, 60 x 60 inches) Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas With accompanying poem: Filter

DIALOGUE Poems by Patrick Duegaw

PAGE 78:

The Inadvertent Arsonist (Pyrophobe) (or) An Illicit Collaboration with Pauline Goulet Bressan (detail) 2006

80

SETS

UNDERSTUDIES

Set Piece (or) Fisch Haus, 1st Floor, East End, 360º (corner) 2011 / Acrylic, ink, screws, and polyurethane on wallboard with aluminum frame 24 x 288 inches Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas

Study for Fire Extinguisher and Pernod: Maison Smith, Mont Royal Park, Montréal, Québec (ink) 2010 / Ink on paper 34 1/4 x 17 1/4 inches Study for Fire Extinguisher: Le Centre Canadien d’Architecture, Montréal, Québec (with skull) 2010 / Graphite on paper 34 1/4 x 17 1/4 inches

Set Piece (or) Fisch Haus, 3rd Floor, West End, 320º (horizontal) 2012 / Acrylic, ink, screws, and polyurethane on wallboard with aluminum frame 24 x 336 inches

Study for Fire Extinguisher: Château de Mont Royal, Montréal, Québec (loose graphite) 2010 / Graphite on paper 34 1/4 x 17 1/4 inches

Set Piece (or) Fisch Haus, 3rd Floor, West End, 360º (vertical) 2012 / Acrylic, ink, screws, and polyurethane on wallboard with aluminum frame 288 x 24 inches

Study for Fire Extinguisher: Château de Mont Royal, Montréal, Québec (orange) 2009 / Acrylic, graphite, and ink on paper 34 1/4 x 17 1/4 inches Study for Fire Extinguisher: Fisch Haus, 3rd Floor, West End, Wichita, Kansas (red) 2011 / Acrylic, graphite, and ink on paper 34 1/4 x 17 1/4 inches Study for Fire Extinguisher: Le Centre Canadien d’Architecture, Montréal, Québec (blue with skull) 2011 / Acrylic, graphite, and ink on paper 34 1/4 x 17 1/4 inches Study for Fire Extinguisher: Maison Smith, Mont Royal Park, Montréal, Québec (blue and white) 2011 / Acrylic on paper 34 1/4 x 17 1/4 inches Study for Fire Extinguisher: 24 Mont Royal Ouest, #904, Montréal, Québec (black paper) 2010 / China marker on black background paper 34 1/4 x 17 1/4 inches Study for Fire Extinguisher with Unknown Accelerant (green bottle) 2010 / Acrylic, graphite, and ink on paper 34 1/4 x 17 1/4 inches Study for Fire Extinguisher with Unknown Accelerant: La Résidence de Ralph Ghoche, Ave. du Parc, Montréal, Québec (detailed graphite) 2010 / Graphite on paper 34 1/4 x 17 1/4 inches

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CHRONOLOGY 2005 Portrait of an Artist Campaign, online journal project of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Purchase Award, Wichita Art Museum.

1966 Born in New Hartford, New York.

1989 Receives degree in architecture at Kansas State University.

ONE-PERSON EXHIBITIONS: Juste Pour Rire: A Still Play, Fisch Haus (first Painted Theatre Project installation); Montreal Tools (Outils de Montréal), La Frénésie de la Main, Montréal, Québec; New Paintings, Blue Room Gallery, San Francisco, California.

1990 Co-founds Fisch Haus*, a Kansas-based artist cooperative with John Ernatt, Eric Schmidt, and Kent Williams.

Co-produces Heisser Fisch in an abandoned warehouse space, Wichita, Kansas, the first of twelve Fisch Haus multimedia events from 1990 to 2000.

2006 Painting Fellowship, Kansas Arts Commission.

GROUP EXHIBITION: Kalt Fisch, abandoned warehouse space,

ONE-PERSON EXHIBITION: Character Studies for a Future

Wichita, Kansas.

Still Play, Fisch Haus.

1991

2007 Included in New American Paintings, West edition.

GROUP EXHIBITION: Kitch Fisch, Wichita Center for the

Arts, Wichita, Kansas.

ONE-PERSON EXHIBITION: Swimming Through Interiors, Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, Kansas City, Missouri (reviewed in Art in America); Not to Scale: The Construction of Two Rooms, Fisch Haus.

1992 The Fisch Haus has its first bricks-and-mortar address at 424 South Commerce Street in downtown Wichita. Kansas Arts Commission Mini Fellowship.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS: Kansas Masters Invitational Art

Exhibit, Manhattan, Kansas; Kansas Governor’s Inauguration Show, Topeka, Kansas.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS: Kleiner Fisch, Wichita Community

Theater, Wichita, Kansas; Still Fisch, Fisch Haus; Dumb Words, a collaborative project and exhibition with Kent Williams.

2008 Searching in All Places Civilized, Riney Art Center, Friends University, Wichita, Kansas.

1993 ONE-PERSON EXHIBITION: Postcards from the Right Frontal

2009

Lobe, and Other Ports of Call, Fisch Haus, funded by the Kansas Arts Commission.

ONE-PERSON EXHIBITION: The Builder, Removed,

Wichita Art Museum.

GROUP EXHIBITION: When Ponds Freeze Too Quickly,

Fisch Haus.

1994 Fisch Haus obtains a permanent address and a 21,000-square-foot building at 524 South Commerce Street.

2010 Artist Collaboration Grant (collaborating with the Ulrich Museum of Art), Kansas Arts Commission. First runner-up, Governor’s Award, Kansas Arts Commission.

ONE-PERSON EXHIBITION: The Wrong Tools (For The Job), Leedy-Voulkos Art Center.

GROUP EXHIBITION: Fisch Schmish, Fisch Haus.

1995

2011

GROUP EXHIBITION: Calls? O.K., Bye., Fisch Haus.

ONE-PERSON EXHIBITION: Jürgen and the Wrong Tools, Paul Mahder Gallery, San Francisco.

1996 GROUP EXHIBITION: Improper Laundry, Fisch Haus; Kansas Currents, Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, Kansas; The Human Form: A Kansas Survey, Erman B. White Gallery, El Dorado, Kansas.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS: LA Art Show, Los Angeles, California;

1997

ONE-PERSON EXHIBITION: Inadvertent Arson: Paintings and

GROUP EXHIBITION: Salt to Taste, Fisch Haus; 1997–1999 Kansas Triennial, KRATES Program.

Drawings by Patrick Duegaw, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University.

Fisch Haus: 21 (celebrating twenty-first anniversary of Fisch Haus), Ulrich Museum of Art. 2012

1998 Painted Theatre Project concept is developed.

*Fisch Haus is a multi-disciplinary art facility, located in Wichita’s Commerce Street Art District, currently accommodating a steady stream of regional, national, and international artists and musicians. Originally an empty three-story warehouse, Fisch Haus now contains studio and gallery space, a full wood and metal shop, an indoor amphitheater, and a print studio; all designed and built by its members. Fisch Haus produces several largescale exhibitions annually, and hosts numerous community art events, ranging from visiting artist exhibitions and performances, to lectures, classes, benefits, readings, and music festivals throughout the rest of the year; most all of which are offered free of charge and are open to all ages. In 2004, Fisch Haus formed a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) corporation under the name Fisch Bowl, Inc. Fisch Haus, the spaces within, and the people who take part in its operation, all play important roles in Duegaw’s work.

TWO-PERSON EXHIBITION: Limbo with the Devil,

with Eric Schmidt at Fisch Haus.

2000 TWO-PERSON EXHIBITION: Paintings and Musical Instruments,

with Eric Schmidt at Fisch Haus; 49th Spiva Biennial, Spiva Art Center, Joplin, Missouri.

2001 Betty and Frank Brosius Award, Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS: Ulrich Alumni Exhibition, Ulrich Museum

of Art; Figurative Works 01, The Armory Art Center, West Palm Beach, Florida; Dirt Gallery, Kansas City, Missouri.

2002 ONE-PERSON EXHIBITION: Carefully Studied Floor Plans,

Fisch Haus.

2003 ONE-PERSON EXHIBITION: Coffee Pots, Tea Kettles and Other Possible Stories, Fisch Haus.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS: Texas National 2003, Stephen F. Austin AT RIGHT:

State University Gallery, Nacogdoches, Texas; Northern National Art Competition, Nicolet College, Rhinelander, Wisconsin.

PATRICK DUEGAW, 2012

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Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art | Kansas State University | Manhattan