I viewed these objets d'art during a recent visit to Ness City.
A few highlights from the exhibition catalog:
Exhibit No. 1
Title: Cleavage
Medium: snow, dirt, shadow, tin shed
The placement of two lone snow objects just inside a stark demarcation of shadow emphasizes the oppressive co-dependency of duality and the limitations imposed upon close juxtapositions despite the inherent bond that exists in such arrangements.
Exhibit No. 2
Title: Bullhead
Medium: snow, buffalo grass, dirt, water, wire fence
Muddied and pocked from the clumsy scramblings of passing children, the dominant snow object in the foreground sits squarely on the field in a manner that suggests defiance, in contrast to the more desultory piece melting behind it. The fact that disintegration is inevitable confronts the viewer with uneasy questions about their own recalcitrance and denial of their mortality.
Exhibit No. 3
Title: What truth here lies
Medium: buffalo grass, snow, full sun
Conflict, compromise, survival, surrender... community, loyalty, sacrifice, regret.... hope, fear, love, lust.... the interplay of sunlit snow objects on an unprotected plain make obvious the artist's intentions in exploring these themes.
Exhibit No. 4
Title: Holler
Medium: snow, buffalo grass, soccer goal, distance
In this piece, the artist examines how the orientation of two similar but seemingly separate snow balls creates a space that suggests not two separate snow balls but something more. The viewer is cast as eavesdropper, voyeur, and one senses a communication is occurring. Or not.
Exhibit No. 5
Title: Crossings
Medium: yard, street, snow, tracks, telephone pole
This piece grapples with the truancy in our lives. The ambiguity of the tracks --coming, going, stalling--reveal the unsettled movements of schoolchildren who set a course for school, then changed their minds.
Exhibit No. 6
Title: Mount Whoever
Medium: snow, dirt, mud, road gravel, street plow
A heap of indigent snow, dumped in the middle of the street, draws the eye and disrupts the normal flow of traffic, causing the viewer to contemplate the struggle of man vs. nature, beauty vs. utility, humanity vs. expediency and to ask the question, "Who the heck was running the city plow that day?"
