Washington State University’s Compton Union Gallery currently is presenting a mixed media installation of local artist Nickolus “Nik” Meisel, titled “Perspectives.” The exhibit runs hrough Sept. 12.
The gallery is open Monday-Friday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. but will close Sept. 1, Labor Day. Admission is free.
Meisel describes his work as “a debate with conventional form.” He works with ordinary materials from daily life within specific spaces to create installations. Much like a painter working with pigment to conceive a composition of line and form on canvas, Meisel composes with his chosen materials. Using colored yarns and the shadows they cast, he creates lines and defines planes using Styrofoam peanuts, tape, plastic fasteners and utilitarian cylinders as a source for basic shapes.
“Meisel works his magic and the CUB gallery is transformed from an ordinary white- walled space into a three-dimensional landscape,” said Gail Siegel, WSU Campus Involvement coordinator. “It really is a room with a view.”
Meisel grew up in Kansas where he spent his childhood riding its dirt roads in his grandfather’s fuel delivery truck. He earned a bachelor’s degree in art from Kansas State University (Manhattan) and a master’s degree from WSU. Meisel lives and works in Pullman.
