“Keeping Time,” Michael Farrell’s new collection of boxes is on display in January 5-28 at WallSpace-LNK, 1624 S. 17, Lincoln. A First Friday opening reception runs from 5-8 p.m., Friday, January 6. These three dimensional still life assemblages offer meditations on the concept of impermanence, tinged with nostalgia, eroticism or wit. The collection was created over the last several weeks since Farrell’s seventy-fifth birthday.

“Sometimes life events cause one to reconsider everything. The counters reset to zero and you start over again. Many of these boxes had been sitting in an unfinished state in my studio, sometimes over decades, waiting to be paid attention to. Others just sprung to life fresh once I started working this way again,” the artist stated.

With titles like Nymph, Satyr, Herm, Kouros and Jeune Fille these objects remind us of the bittersweet fragility of life, the fruitlessness of ego, and the comedy of the human condition.  This tradition in western art dates back to the foundations of our European culture. But perhaps it is more appreciated in the Japanese idea of “wabi sabi,” the beauty found in the worn out, decayed or broken.

Michael Farrell has been making assembled objects for over five decades. His exhibition spanning his box making career, “Inside the Box”drew large attendance and sales last year at WallSpace-LNK. Noted art critic L. Kent Wolgamott observed Farrell’s “subtly stunning” work “continually reveals new ideas and emotions. That’s a primary function of art.”

“Feels Like Home,” color landscape images by noted Nebraska photographer Jan Christensen, was on exhibit December 1-30 at WallSpace-LNK, 1624 S. 17^th Street, Lincoln.

As a child Jan and her family explored Nebraska’s fields and streams every weekend, rain or shine. Learning how to “see” at a young age set Jan on a creative path that resulted in her being one of the first women to earn Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in the photographic program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a Graduate Diploma in Art Administration from Harvard University School of Business.

Her panoramic photos of Nebraska, the Adirondacks, Maine, & the East Coast were continuously displayed at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography in Rochester, N.Y. for more than seven years. Her writing and marketing efforts for corporate clients helped support her artistic work. Still, she has returned again and again to the Nebraska sandhills, because, as she says, “they feel like home.”

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