THE MAC GALLERY GETS POST-APOCALYPTIC

By Ron Evans

This First Friday the MAC Gallery gets a little post-apocalyptic with a group show called Uncertain Nature: The Sublime In The Contemporary Landscape. MAC director, Scott Bailey, uses the term post-apocalyptic a bit loosely when describing certain aspects of this exhibit.

“These are images or representations of actual places, things that people have seen today. But they have this kind of postapocalyptic feel in the present. These artists kind of stare unblinkingly at some of the more uncomfortable aspects of nature. But they are finding this odd beauty which is the sublime - on the knife’s edge between horror and beauty. As soon as you look at the pieces, you realize, whoa, I’m looking at something very disturbing. And then it’s hard to decide which side of the coin you’re on as you look at them.” Bailey says.

Participating artist, Edgar Smith agrees with this assessment.

“I think you hit upon that quite nicelyfinding the balance, visually. Drawing the viewer in with something compelling visually, but there’s more to it than just prettiness. And it’s hard to find that balance, because I like to explore elements of darkness but I don’t like pushing it into the macabre. So it really is about that compelling balance for this show.”

Bailey adds, “Also the balance carries over into the contrast and the colors and the shapes of these worlds. These artists know how to construct an abstract formalist work, so the layers of imagery on top of that can be appreciated on multiple levels.”

Along with Smith, (a Wenatchee based artist showing paintings); Karen Rice (Missoula based artist showing mixed-media drawings); Patrick Kikut (University of Wyoming Professor showing paintings); and Marcy James (Missoula based artist showing photographs) make up the collective exhibiting works for Uncertain Nature. I sat down with Bailey and Smith to learn more about the origins of this group showing.

You have four artists for this show - have you curated everything at this point so that you know the exact pieces you will have?

Bailey and Smith look at each other and laugh.

Smith: No, we are gonna have a lot of work between all four of us, and we will just have to edit it down when we are setting up the show.

I’m curious how this show came together, but also how the MAC decides on all of the shows and exhibits to feature in the gallery.

Bailey: First of all, I want anything that we put in the gallery to be strong, compelling, in whatever form it is, whether it’s sculptures, or installations, or paintings, or drawings. I want the shows to be contemporary, and by that I mean I want artists making art about their experience in this time. I don’t want paintings that look like they could have been done just as easily 100 years ago. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I appreciate art history, but that’s not what we’re doing. So, with that kind of broad experience - I’m open to all sorts of things. I’d like to show students’ work, especially alumni who have, you know, learned some things and then gone off and become professionals in their own right and have really strong bodies of work to show. Then we like to do three shows a year that I fund raise for to bring in something from outside of the area. I’m looking for quality, I’m looking for something unique - when I find something I like I will go out and ask them, would you be interested in showing? What would that look like? What would you need in order to make it happen? And that’s how it was for this when I had become interested in Edgar’s work. We started talking, Edgar made a proposal for this show and we brought it to the MAC Gallery.”

Talk a little bit about the funding for the projects and shows. How far out do you typically plan these exhibits?

Bailey: To be honest, we’re kind of year to year based on how much grant money we make, and what we can afford. I like to be more than a year out, but it tends to be six months, maybe nine months. And because of the nature of grants, you don’t know what you’re really going to be working with down the road so it makes it tough to plan too far away.

Edgar, tell us a little about your recent artistic endeavors leading up to this show.

Smith: My most recent show was in Missoula this past summer. But prior to that, I took a hiatus a little bit from the art scene and raised our now six year old. I was kind of like the stay at home dad for a little while. I kept painting, but not as consistently. And I didn’t show it all that much. I teach online SPSCC in Olympia and I’ve shown at the colleges.

Do you find the breaks helpful?

Smith laughs.

Smith: No. Breaks are not good. I mean… I’m an avid cyclist. And now that I’m 57 if I take a week off, it’s not good. And it’s hard to get going again, that’s what I’m terrified of with taking breaks. But sometimes you have no choice.

What pulled you out of the break?

Smith: I guess it’s a question of what drives you. I’ve always been drawn to things that are sublime, going back to childhood. My parents were quite politically active and politically minded and subversive in lots of ways. I remember them stressing empathy. And I think you can extrapolate and empathize with somebody else’s pain. I think that’s kind of what drives me. Whether that’s painting something that’s psychologically sublime or a landscape that’s sublime - it all kind of comes from the same place. So that’s always the real reason I make art. And if you’re driven to make art you will make it, so it was just a matter of getting back some of the time to really do the work.

Bailey: So in your bio, Edgar, you shared some experiences of driving and staring out the window as landscapes passed. And where was it? Indiana?

Smith: I lived in Grand Rapids at the time and we would drive to Chicago once in a while. I’ve never seen anything like the industrial areas in South Chicago, especially in the 70s and early 80s. The smell and just the sight of it was so overwhelming - especially being eight or nine years old. And that had a huge impression on me, realizing how all this stuff is actually made and it’s really…terrible!

Bailey: Yeah I think you talked about a yellow glow in the sky and how the smell of the chemicals sorta burned your eyes. And yet, even there, you noticed that there was a type of beauty to it. The yellow sky was unhealthy and gross but the hue was sort of a beautiful thing to see. Even if it was being seen through the tears from the chemicals.

Smith: Yeah, and that’s on the extreme end of the sublime landscapes - the beauty of the landscape mixed with terror. It’s really kind of horrifying. But you can’t take your eyes off it.

Bailey: That clearly helped set the stage for the work that you would do all these years later, even now.

Smith: Yeah and you don’t often have such a line to draw to a direct influence or what led you down one path or another but that all certainly had an impact.

Bailey: And not in so much that these are the exact kinds of things you put in this show, but maybe that those early experiences influenced how you see everything around you.

Smith: Right, and what I’m doing now is responding to these landscapes, mostly industrial landscapes of rural Montana. I would just get out and walk around taking pictures, and that’s where my pieces for this show came from.

Bailey: Marcy James is also looking at that sort of idea - this violence to the landscapes, and all this stuff that gets left behind when the people have abandoned it.

Smith: Yeah, she’d lived in that region of Montana for years and had immersed herself in those rugged landscapes.

One thing I’m always curious about with artists is how much of the viewer’s experience you have in your head when you’re creating? Do you think about that at all?

Smith: I think about it all the time. And I know some artists that don’t, and they’re maybe even a little proud of that, I don’t know. But, as an artist, I feel a responsibility to create something that makes people think. Something doesn’t feel right if I get too self-indulgent. I still do it here and there, but I always remember there will be a viewer, and I’m going to want to draw that viewer in.

Bailey: Then even after you decide, okay, it’s my responsibility to say something and you focus on, in this case, the extractive industries and the violence that’s been done on the land - then there’s the question of, well, how are you gonna say that? Make paintings that are so straightforward where you’re just saying mining is bad? People would either get it or not get it and move away. There’s nothing to really hold onto. So what you’re trying to do is create this sort of one-two punch. You sucker them in with some aesthetics, but as they come in and they get right up close and they realize what they’re looking at, they may recoil for a second, and then have to try to make sense of those contradictory experiences. This is either terrible and ugly, or beautiful. It’s harder to just walk away from.

Talk about what’s planned for the First Friday opening for the show?

Smith: Patrick will be giving a talk on some of the aspects and origins of the show, and likely some insights on some of the specific works from the show, so that will be a great pairing to the show.

At this point I had turned off my record- er and the three of us were finishing our drinks and rambling a bit. Then Edgar casually mentioned his artwork is on the cover of the Pearl Jam single “Save You.” Of course I had to ask about that.

Smith: So Jeff Ament (Pearl Jam bassist) grew up in Montana and lives part time in Missoula. He’s an art lover and had purchased some of my works and in the early 2000s he approached me to commission a piece for some album artwork. He said I could do whatever I wanted. I asked for the music and I listened to it while I was conceiving the image. I really didn’t know how to handle this kind of thing - and even Jeff was like “well, I don’t know. Tell us what you want for it.” In the end I sold them the rights to the painting for the album and the actual painting itself. But it’s one you likely won’t be able to find.

I pulled out my iPad and found it immediately (it has its own WikiPedia page) which came as a seemingly delightful surprise to the artist.