new and recent work from Michael James

“At the height of the pandemic, our personal worlds closed in on themselves in a host of ways. I’d retired from my “day job” only a handful of months earlier, and that retreat, combined with the larger social one forced on us by Covid-19, led me to focus on what was closest at hand. In my basement studio I felt doubly isolated. From its high windows I can catch narrow glimpses of a neighbor’s house, of a bit of sky backlighting the pergola that sits on our outdoor terrace a level up from where one of my worktables is positioned. I hear almost nothing from the outside, though, and feel cocooned and remote and protected…”

Michael James

Past Forward is a collection of twenty-five new and recent works and will be on view in November until the 26th, Thursdays through Saturdays, noon to five pm.

Opening receptions Thursday and Friday, the 3rd and 4th, beginning at 5 pm.

Robin Smith’s still life paintings are the focus of October’s exhibition at WallSpace-LNK. The show is up from October 6 through 29, Thursday – Saturday noon to five p.m.

Join us for a First Friday reception from five to eight on October 7th.

by L. Kent Wolgamott in L Magazine from the Lincoln Journal Star

Wayfaring Strangers will be featured at two locations this fall. The full collection will be at the Great Plains Art Museum through December 17. https://www.unl.edu/plains/great-plains-art-museum

And a smaller set of really big enlargements plus a chance for you to have a portrait made in the same vein at WallSpace-LNK during September only. Contact Michael via text 402 429 3684 or email mfarrell.1st@gmail.com for details.

“Stream Crossings: Where the River Meets the Road” August 5-27, 2022 at WallSpace-LNK

with an opening reception Friday August 5, 5-8pm…

Streams, creeks, and rivers meander their sinuous curves across Nebraska’s landscapes. These ribbons of water intersect with the “relentless rectangularity” of our road grid, one-mile squares laid out over state. “Stream Crossings,” large-format color photographs, examines some of the places where the river meets the road. Photographer Michael Farrell searched out the bridges and culverts people imposed on the waterways, and discovered some surviving, handsome steel-truss bridges that add their own aesthetic element to nature’s scene.

Only Alaska has more river miles than Nebraska, so these intersections of angles and curves are frequent. The steel bridges are rapidly vanishing, in some cases replaced with concrete structures that barely differ from the roadway. In other places, nature is slowly but inevitably encroaching on abandoned wood and steel. An essay by Farrell traces the development of the land survey that created roads and bridges. It poses questions for the future, too. If our water is considered to be a resource owned by the public, what of these complex river systems? How can we divorce our watercourses from the life-giving water that runs through them? Isn’t a river, creek or stream an integral natural system overflowing with all manner of life and complexity – including our own? Who among us will be empowered or emboldened enough to dare to speak out or to act on behalf of our essential yet increasingly vulnerable watercourses?