[cid:image002.jpg@01CEDAF1.E3E7B5F0]Join us TONIGHT (Wednesday, November 6) from 5:00 - 6:30 PM at the Kittredge Gallery at the University of Puget Sound for a reception for printmaker Randy Bolton's exhibit, "Have A Terrific Great Nice OK Day :)". Refreshments will be served and the event is free and open to the public. A campus map can be found herehttp://www.pugetsound.edu/about/campus-the-northwest/campus-map/, the Kittredge Gallery is #23 on the map.
Randy is currently visiting the University of Puget Sound Art Department as part of a weeklong residency program titled Living Arthttp://www.pugetsound.edu/academics/departments-and-programs/undergraduate/art/living-art/. He teaches at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where he has been head of the print media department since 2002. Randy's work is characterized by an exploration of images that seem familiar and comforting on first glance, but become strange and disturbing on further consideration. His prints borrow from and adapt the nostalgia-evolving illustrations of early children's books and science texts. In their original contexts these pictures served as visual tools to help educate young minds about acceptable morals and beliefs. In his work, however, Randy has reclaimed these illustrations with a more subversive intent. By digitally altering and recombining fragments of these old illustrations, new meanings are suggested in which an undercurrent of uncertainty or apprehension undermines the initial flash of familiarity and comfort. Images originally intended to reflect childhood security and innocence become ironic metaphors of a chaotic world that is threatened by forces beyond our true comprehension and control. Randy's work is about the power these illustrations have in shaping our view of the world as children, following by the disillusionment that occurs when these images fail us as adults. Despite the seemingly amusing quality of the images he employs, there is an element of concern in Randy's work and a vague feeling that the valuable things in life are in jeopardy. Prior to his time at Cranbook, Randy was professor of art at the University of Delaware. He received his B.F.A. from University of North Texas and his M.F.A. from The Ohio State University. He has taught at institutions across the country, including four years at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Laura Edgar | Art Department Assistant and Curator, Abby Williams Hill Collection
UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND
1500 N. Warner St. #1072
Tacoma, WA 98416-1072
T: 253.879.2806
pugetsound.edu/art