On Friday,
The Burnet Gallery in downtown Minneapolis held an exhibition for Target employees with artistic works outside of the office. I included a series of four pieces titled "Wendigo".
Here is my artist statement:
How does the mind react when it's presented with the unknown? What does it conjure when faced with nothingness? Is it comforted or threatened? What lies in the mist and what is possible in the abyss? How can one connect with that that is soulless? Does it paralyze or satisfy? Is one transformed from the other and when does the transformation begin?
In light of halloween, I wanted to touch on something with an edge of spookiness. When I was a kid I loved horror stories (I still do) and I especially loved a story about a Wendigo. It's a creature from the Algonquian people that has many different interpretations. One in particular stuck out to me– it described Wendigos as an invisible creature in the wind. Set in the far north, it would sweep men into the sky and kill them. It was also said to make them run until their feet burned away. What struck me most about this tale was the lack of information. It left you with no explanation of what the creature looked like, what it was, where it came from or how it was made. It came from nothing and disappeared afterward. The thrill that not knowing left me was fascinating. With these pieces I wanted to explore the line between nothingness and the feeling of threat. I wanted to see if I could get the viewer to see a subtle threat in my pieces, or feel that something was amiss. Whether or not I achieved that is up for debate, nonetheless I enjoyed the process and I'm happy with the result.
You can read an article written on the exhibition
here.
