Behind-the-Scenes of My Upcoming Show
This feels like a new beginning.
In the past, I have mostly done my work solo, but that has changed recently!
Kent Burkhardsmeier and I met about three years ago through mutual friends. He is originally from Bismarck, my hometown, and is an amazing photographer. Kent and I hit it off right away, discussing our passion for art.
We stayed connected and both stay intrigued by each other's art. There was definitely something about the energy of the work that he did that I found beautiful and compelling.
Kent lives in Florida, but photographs landscapes around the world. During one of his visits to Bismarck, he photographed land that was deeply personal to me. I was able to watch him as he worked and was amazed at the incredible way he captured the land...
there was an abstraction to it that I had never seen before.
I told Kent that as an abstract artist people are always asking me things like, "What inspired this? What were you thinking about? What were you looking at when you created this piece?"
These questions have never been something I've been able to answer well because there's a rawness about my work. It's hard to explain in words or in concrete terms.
This conversation is where our collaboration was born.
We began discussing how cool it could be for me to paint what I feel when I look at his work. In other words, anchor my abstraction in a concrete idea - people would know exactly what I was looking at when I created a specific piece.
Then, our minds went wild with different ways we could bring our very different styles of work together and what this connection could symbolize.
connected.
This is the title of our upcoming joint exhibition.
We will be showing this work at The Capital Gallery in Bismarck, North Dakota. The exhibition runs October through December 2019. We are incredibly excited to reveal the many different ways we've been inspired to bring our work together to create one, joint show.
Throughout the past 18 months that we've been preparing for this show, we have not only worked in separate locations...Kent in Florida and photographing around the world, me in my studio in Bismarck...but we have also spent many weeks working together, in the same space.
Kent was recently in Bismarck for two weeks. It's exciting when we get the chance to be in the same space and we're able to spend hours brainstorming and bouncing ideas off of one another. Through this process, it has been incredible to see how everything has evolved and changed.
We have been constantly challenging one another, "Hey, did you think of this? What if we did this instead? I see this from a different perspective."
I've never collaborated with another artist at this capacity or done something, collaboratively, of this magnitude. It's truly been a fascinating process! As time has gone on, our collective body of work for this show has changed. Some of our visions and ideas simply haven't worked and some have turned out better than we could have imagined!
While Kent was in Bismarck, I had the pleasure of introducing him...a modern-day photographer...to a very different type of photographer, Shane Balkowitsch. Kent and I sought Shane out to do the headshots for our show.
Shane is a wet plate photographer. This is one of the earliest forms of photography. It used to be common (in the mid-1800s). However, now we’re in an era where we can easily snap hundreds of digital photos in minutes, and as a result, wet plate photography has become a lost art. In fact, it is believed there are less than 1,000 wet plate photographers in the entire world.
If you'd like to learn more about Shane and wet plate photography, take a peak at this article I wrote on him for Midwest Nest awhile back.
I love the care and energy Shane infuses into his work.
I want to continue to use my camera for change.
- shane
He says, “I hope I leave a legacy of kindness and understanding for my Native American friends. If I am able to achieve this goal of 1,000 original wet plates for that, I think I cannot ask for anything more. At the end of the day, it is all about the final piece, but it is also about the friendships that I am making along the way. I want to continue to use my camera for change.”
I am certainly in a season of collaboration and I'm incredibly grateful for how it has helped me grow as an artist and a human!
Cheers,
