Expanded Drawing
By Tamatha Sopinski Perlman
Jack Pavlik draws in steel, animating line with gears, shadow,
and sound. Pavlik’s work has never been about the finished
object. It’s about the action, the gesture. His kinetic sculptures
are finished works, but their undulating forms are an ongoing
Once considered an exercise in preparation, drawing has grown into its own. Over the last fifty years, it has become
act of gesture, rhythm, and surrender. They are ever evolving,
a medium in which boundaries are pushed and limits tested. The exhibition “Expanded Drawing” features new
ever morphing drawings.
interpretations of draftsmanship in which tradition and ingenuity collide, broadening our definition of drawing.
Pavlik began making kinetic drawings after hearing a friend
play the handsaw at a Cinco de Mayo party. He went to
Landscapes of the twenty-first century are complex examinations
nature and industry, of man and beast entwined in cause
of the tangle of urban, suburban, and rural. Often, as in the
and effect. Folk traditions such as Mexican papel picado
works of Nicholas Conbere and Sonja Peterson, they are a way
(the elaborate cutouts made for the Day of the Dead) and
to sort through the cacophony of the information age—not to
Chinese paper-cuts depicting scenes of rural daily life inspired
find a nostalgic past, but to map out the future.
her style. Peterson’s large cutouts stand away from the wall,
Nicholas Conbere’s dreamlike panoramic landscapes are
explorations of time, space, and memory. Beginning with
sketches from specific sites, Conbere applies graphite, paint,
casting shadows onto backgrounds made with pencil and
paint. The shadows add depth to her narratives, forcing the
viewer to participate, to observe the truth on the surface and
the studio and began experimenting with cogs and gears,
bending the steel into various forms that would clank and
hum in response to the action. He worked in this manner
until he made his first version of The Storm (2000). Then
the real breakthrough came: he realized he needed to let
things work with him, to let the steel bend naturally instead
of forcing it to stay straight. In 12 Bands (2006), Pavlik
allowed the steel to bend into U-shaped curves which create
perceive the complex tale deep within.
waves and arcs that sing as they sway gently back and forth.
palimpsest. In Landscape with Ups and Downs (2007)—part
Peterson’s recent works focus on food production and its
intersecting as their shadows touch, briefly crossing before
ruin, part forest, part industrial park—nature and industry
effect on the consumed and the consumer. Show Us What
continuing their dance.
overwrite each other, as water fountains, skyscrapers,
You’re Made Of (2008) tackles genetic engineering in the
billboards, and rocks compete to be the uppermost layer.
beef industry. The Underground Plot of the Royal Pommes
and photographs to Mylar, creating the layered effect of a
Conbere’s fine lines, forced perspective, and circular layout
harken back to Albrecht Dürer’s sixteenth-century landscape
etchings. But Conbere pushes traditional practice to its limits.
To express current notions of time and space, he presents
images in the jumbled way that memory can. The animation
Frites (2008) refers to the history of the potato in France.
King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette appear in their heavily
protected potato field. The queen, with towering hair and
lace collars, has potato flowers in her hair. Hidden in the
cutouts are the peasants who sneaked in to steal this new
The edges of the steel bands dissolve into delicate lines,
is satisfaction in hearing the scratch of pen on paper and
seeing the lines convey your meaning. Calligraphy is the
haute couture of penmanship. It expresses mood and feeling
through letters, imbuing them with grace and communicating
through their aesthetic beauty. This is what attracted Michelle
Johnson. She began exploring the calligraphic mark shortly
reaches of time into a cosmos of cause and effect that leads
In drawing as in life, a degree of surrender is necessary,
by a relative crossing the country in a wagon train. The
us through history to a present-day pond where the same
of letting things work for you instead of trying to force
handwritten words, even those crossed out, added depth and
raindrops are dripping. Linear order, reality, and dream have
the outcome, of giving in to muscle memory and allowing
personality to the messages.
collapsed into a single plane in the ongoing struggle between
yourself to enjoy the meditative repetitiveness of patterns.
humans and nature to be the last line drawn.
Jack Pavlik and Michelle Johnson create abstract patterns and
Traveling past the fields of the Midwest and Latin America
on her motorcycle, Sonja Peterson felt a connection to the
land—the family farms, the corporate farms, and the slash
and burn patches. Her cut-paper works create a web of
forms through repetitive motions. Both use their drawing
methods as a way of examining time, the beauty of line, and
the transformation of something common into something
different altogether.
Far left: Jack Pavlik, 6 Bands (detail),
2003, welded steel, motor, electronics,
164 x 84 x 48 inches
Writing is a private and personal act. As with drawing, there
vegetable freshly imported from the Americas.
Doorways (2007) follows a few raindrops from the earliest
Michelle Johnson, H Variation 2, 2008,
ink on paper, 11 x 8½ inches
after graduate school when she came across letters written
competitiveness of the Good/Bad series (2008) pits the
than pen nibs and ink. But the transformation of the
words against each other. Like Pavlik, Johnson explores the
letter, the ongoing repetitive movement, is the true joy for
differences that can be created through the same basic
Johnson. The meditative, cleansing act of the ritual keeps
structures. Each drawing is worked to a different level of
it appealing. It frees the mind, puts on paper the jumbled
In calligraphy, Johnson says, the words themselves are often
complexity (and the mistakes stay in).
mass in our heads—which sometimes, on paper, becomes
superseded by the expression of the letters. So she frees the
Johnson sees her drawings as a bit rococo, a little decadent
letter of any meaning. She selects a single letter—an H, a
D, an S—with satisfying curves and lines and repeats it in
for the time, when the computer keyboard is more efficient
beautiful.
Tamatha Sopinski Perlman is the Interim Program Coordinator
for the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program.
meandering patterns that give it a new aesthetic identity,
as in her H Variations series (2005–8). The humorous
This exhibition is presented by the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program, an artist-run curatorial department of the Minneapolis
Institute of Arts, which is made possible by generous support from the Jerome Foundation.
Expanded Drawing
Works by Nicholas Conbere, Michelle Johnson,
Jack Pavlik, and Sonja Peterson
January 23 to March 15, 2009
Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program Galleries
Opening Reception
Thursday, January 22, at 7 p.m.
Gallery Talk
Thursday, January 29, at 7 p.m.
Critics’ Trialogue
Thursday, February 5, at 7 p.m.
With critic Jay Gabler
ALL EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
For more information about the artists, this exhibition, and MAEP, visit:
Sonja Peterson: sonjapete.com
Nicholas Conbere: nickconbere.com
MAEP: www2.artsmia.org/wiki
Front: Sonja Peterson, Blind Mindwalk (detail), 2008, acrylic on acrylic, 50 x 48 inches
Flap:
Nicholas Conbere, Footbridge (detail), 2008, etching with digital print, 22 x 28 inches
MINNESOTA ARTISTS EXHIBITION PROGRAM
2400 Third Avenue South
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55404
www.artsmia.org