It is only by looking over your shoulder after having driven an open road that you are able to see the high points and get a complete sense of where you’ve been. But once in a while something happens en route that alters or more fully informs your position and direction.
In the late ‘70s, we regularly organized workshops for area artists at the Creative Arts Studio in Fargo. On about the third day of one of these, photographer Frank Gohlke said to me. “You’re a funny person, but I see little evidence of that in your work.”
That afternoon, I made a picture of an old lab peeing on my Volvo. The car’s license plate suggests how he felt.
I continued making that kind of picture for the next year and a half, culminating an in exhibition at Ralph’s Corner Bar in Moorhead, Minnesota.
In addition to my acceptance of the idea that your art is a reflection of who are you, the work, show, and opening reception at that blue-collar bar – on a dark cold, and raucous January night in 1981 – was a response to the politics of the local art community.
Curiosities
It is only by looking over your shoulder after having driven an open road that you are able to see the high points and get a complete sense of where you’ve been. But once in a while something happens en route that alters or more fully informs your position and direction.
In the late ‘70s, we regularly organized workshops for area artists at the Creative Arts Studio in Fargo. On about the third day of one of these, photographer Frank Gohlke said to me. “You’re a funny person, but I see little evidence of that in your work.”
That afternoon, I made a picture of an old lab peeing on my Volvo. The car’s license plate suggests how he felt.
I continued making that kind of picture for the next year and a half, culminating an in exhibition at Ralph’s Corner Bar in Moorhead, Minnesota.
In addition to my acceptance of the idea that your art is a reflection of who are you, the work, show, and opening reception at that blue-collar bar – on a dark cold, and raucous January night in 1981 – was a response to the politics of the local art community.
Wayne Gudmundson