Art faculty exhibit in national, regional venues

 

 

PULLMAN, Wash. – The creative work of Washington State University faculty member Michelle Forsyth will be showcased through Feb. 10 at Auxiliary Projects gallery in Brooklyn, N.Y., and regionally in Spokane. Faculty members Nik Meisel, Hiromi Okumura and Io Palmer also have regional exhibits in January and February.

 

Forsyth’s solo exhibition, “Letters to Kevin,” was cited as “one of the 10 best shows of the month” in the online publication Blouin ARTINFO. Comprised of 100 5-by-5 inch plaid watercolor paintings in various colors, textures and forms, the exhibit includes fabric that Forsyth wove, a technique she learned from YouTube videos.

 

“Michelle’s exhibition is located in one of the most important national and international centers of art,” said Thom Brown, chair of WSU’s Fine Arts Department. “She has been working at a high level for a number of years; her New York exhibition demonstrates this, placing her well within a vital contemporary context and discussion.”

Photo of Forsyth at work by K. Baum, 2012

The inspiration for the exhibit, Forsyth explained, came from a colleague who told her that a painting she was working on reminded him of her husband’s shirts. “Letters to Kevin” began tongue-in cheek at first, she said, but soon transformed into something more. Forsyth traveled extensively for much of her previous work, but “Letters to Kevin” is a shift in focus to her domestic life.

 

“That was kind of a new and fruitful place for me, you know,” she said. “What happens when you close the door? Can you seek inspiration out of what’s around you every day, (rather) than going out to search something out? That’s the genesis.”
 
The meaning and inspiration behind “Letters to Kevin” became clear to her when, in an attempt to create a reproduction of a shirt that did not belong to her husband, she did not have a personal connection to the pattern.

 

“I decided to make them almost like love letters, so to speak, or kind of mementos,” she said. “Almost like a gift to my husband. They document his plaid shirts but, at the same time, they’re abstract paintings so they kind of oscillate between those two states of representation.”

 

A more comprehensive exhibit of Forsyth’s work, “Gray/Grey,” is being shown at the Lied Center for the Visual Arts at Whitworth University in Spokane through Feb 9.

 

Also on the regional front are Hiromi Okumura’s exhibition, “Perpetual Motion,” at the Wawawai Canyon Gallery in Pullman; Nik Meisel’s exhibition, “Yakima River Diaries,” at Central Washington University in Ellensburg; and Io Palmer’s exhibition, “Parted Leisure/Labored Ways,” at Whitman College’s Sheehan Gallery in Walla Walla.

 

Io Palmer’s exhibition “Parted Leisure/Labored Ways” Feb. 22-April 12, at Whitman College’s Sheehan Gallery, Walla Walla: http://www.whitman.edu/sheehan/Sheehan_Season12-13.html