Sometimes an overlooked or understated object can take on important symbolic and emotional meaning, both personal and universal. Artist Michael Farrell captures these “significant details” in an exhibition of color drawings and black and white photographs opening on First Friday,  June 7 at WallSpace-LNK, 1624 S. 17^th, Lincoln.  

“Small Gestures” explores why out of all the stuff we encounter day by day, some certain things take on important symbolic significance. Something we’ve kept since childhood, an item that belonged to a departed friend or relative, something found on a hike and brought back from nature. Mementoes. Relics. Talismans.

Highly detailed renderings in color conte crayon of things like a pair of wax candy lips or a child’s well-worn rubber toy car elevate these items beyond the ordinary. Equally well seen and executed gelatin silver large format photographs of evocative objects such as a baby shoe or a bird skull encourage the viewer to make meaning from small things.

“Back in Otoe County,” a collaboration by photographer Michael Farrell and former State Poet Twyla Hansen is on display May 3 – May 26.  This exhibition features 26 previously unseen images as well as a dozen of Twyla’s poems printed on high quality paper paired with small versions of the images that inspired them.

Michael Farrell’s large-format black and white landscape photographs capture scenes in rural Otoe County, many along minimum maintenance dirt roads. Twyla Hansen’s poems were inspired by the same scenes. They offer a clear-eyed assessment that stems from her rural roots and her studies and employment in organic farming certification. 

A new third edition of the previously sold-out book of 61 photographs and 30 poems “Seen in Otoe County,” will be available for sale. This signed and numbered edition includes a brief introductory essay and notes by the collaborators. Don’t wait to get your copy. This book will become a collector’s item once these have sold.

While the pictures and words depict Otoe County, Nebraska, they reflect realities in many of our nation’s rural areas. The issues and circumstances here in the heart of the heartland are found throughout farming America.

Celebrate the heritage of the Surrealist artistic movement with a new exhibit.

“Invoking American Spirits,” marks the centennial of Dada & Surrealism with a series of assembled objects exploring “the realms of dreams, fantasies, and the irrational.”

French poet/philosopher Andre Breton published the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, embracing “the creative potential of the unconscious mind.” Surrealists welcomed using chance and unlikely juxtapositions as a method to shock the mind and senses.

Lincoln artist Michael Farrell has been making work inspired by this tradition for more than half a century, but this new work was made in a “fever of activity following a spate of vivid dreams and chance encounters with the materials of their making.”

The works invoke the spirits of American ancestors, both famous and anonymous. “I want to call down a feeling of empathy for the inevitability of the fate that awaits us all. April brings forth new life for those of us who share the stage of this particular moment, but not for all those who lie beneath the greening grass.”

Seeking historic and found photographs, antique objects, tools and items from nature Farrell has assembled contemporary surreal reliquaries, tabernacles, shrines and stelae reminiscent of ancient funerary and religious icons.

See and hear more about these remarkable objects 12-5  p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays April 5-28 and at the First Friday reception from 5-8  p.m. April 5. Viewing and sales also available by appointment; text to 402-429-3684

“Erosion,” an exhibition of museum-scale large format color photographs will be featured at an opening reception 5-8 p.m., First Friday, March 1, at WallSpace-LNK, 1624 S. 17^th, Lincoln. On the cusp of the spring thaw, these images reveal places etched by the power of water across the Platte Basin and beyond in Nebraska, Colorado and Wyoming. Craggy canyons, sandhills streams and barren badlands testify that “all that is built up will be worn down.” 

Photographer Michael Farrell observes, “I am drawn to those locations that make me think about the short time that we, as mere mortal humans, are allowed to exist here on earth and the eons of time that have passed since the water began flowing out of the mountains and through the canyons down to the plains, shaping that environment into what we see today. Almost nothing we do as humans will have the same power and effect that flowing water has. The planet is patient and water will outlast humanity.”

The product of more than 30 years of exploration in the Platte Basin, these images visually capture water’s musical sound as it gurgles over rocks, roars down canyon cascades or silently shimmers in a lake at dawn. Some depict locations documented daily over the last 14 years via the Platte Basin Timelapse Project, which Farrell co-founded with Mike Forsberg. 

The big, colorful photographs  “reflect the variable paths of our minds and spirits as we make our way minute by minute toward the inevitable…” Farrell notes.

“Erosion” is available for viewing and sales Fridays-Sundays, March 1-31, 12 – 5 p.m. and til 8 p.m. on First Friday. For appointment visits, text to 402-429-3684. More information at wallspace-lnk.com or on Facebook. Or visit https://plattebasintimelapse.com/erosion/

“WYSIWYG: Recent Paintings,” an exhibition of new work by Michael Farrell will be featured at a First Friday reception February 2 from 5-8 p.m. at WallSpace-LNK, 1624 S. 17th Street, Lincoln. Regular gallery hours are Friday-Sunday, 12-5 p.m. through February 25.

A spirit of playfulness emanates from these new paintings that feature “universal” symbols rendered in unexpected colors and backgrounds. Common expressions are reframed in plays on words or puns in some of the works’ titles, adding to the sense of whimsy.  “Pair-o-Dice,” and “Phone Home” are among works on display. 

Farrell’s work is inspired in part by the symbols and words his father and grandfather inscribed over decades on gravestones in the family monument business. Those mostly religious symbols expressed comforting messages about the deceased for generations to come. “Now,” Farrell noted, “electronic media have made many prosaic symbols ubiquitous, but how they’re presented has a big impact on what they mean and how they’re interpreted.”

The bursts of color are offered as an antidote to winter’s gray. Viewers are invited to consider the artist’s idiosyncratic renditions of familiar symbology and determine for themselves if “what you see is what you get.”

In addition to the First Friday opening, works are available for viewing and purchase Friday-Sunday 12-5 p.m., February 2 -25 or by appointment (text to 402-429-3684). More information at wallspace-lnk.com or Facebook.