Long-time photographic artist John Spence will be showcasing new assemblage sculptural work during a two-day pop up show First Friday, August 4 and Saturday August 5 at Wallspace-LNK Gallery, 1624 S. 17th Street, Lincoln. 

This assemblage work features a long-standing interest in the childhood play activity of “Cowboys and Indians” and the depiction of the American bison in our culture. Spence drew inspiration for this body of work from the Hastings artist, Dave Stewart. “After completing an hour video program about Dave and his work, I realized I wanted to have as much joy making art as he did,” Spence said, “I looked at my twenty-year-plus collection of buffalo figurines and thought, ‘I need to put these guys to work!’’’ 

As the series progressed, happy associations with other long term collections and interests integrated themselves with the original focus. This has resulted in recent work which presents wider and deeper associations to engage the viewer. Most recently Spence has integrated elements of Classic 1930’s Tramp Art to the assemblages.

Note: This show is a Pop-up for two days only August 4 & 5. WallSpace-LNK will be closed for parts of August for family vacations and events. Stay tuned for information about another Pop-up event later in August!

July’s offering at WallSpace-LNK

“Sacred Places of the Near West,” large format color photographs of Nebraska and Colorado, are on display July 6-29 at WallSpace-LNK, 1624 S. 17^th Street, Lincoln.  A First Friday reception July 7 from 5:00-8:00 p.m. will feature artist’s remarks at 6:00 p.m.

Gathered from over two decades of travel to photograph unique and inspiring landscapes, these color images and the places they represent are imbued with meaning not only to photographer Michael Farrell, but to many who see the land as a living entity. From long before our contemporary geopolitical boundaries and place names, these locations were important to the Otoe, Pawnee, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Lakota and Ute peoples. Today they offer solitude, visual beauty, and the opportunity to contemplate the brevity of our existences measured against the seeming timelessness of the land.

Photographed using the challenging high-craft 8×10 inch film camera process, these scenes are unequalled for clarity, detail and subtle rendering of light and shadow. “They need to be seen in person to appreciate their intensity, quality, and spirituality,” Farrell noted.

WallSpace-LNK is open Th-Sat, noon to 5pm or by appointment at 17th & Sumner in Lincoln, NE.

Back to the Bohemian Alps is the title of June’s exhibition at WallSpace-LNK. A few years ago, these large-scale color photographs made in parts of Butler, Saunders and Lancaster Counties were featured in a very popular exhibition at the Great Plains Art Museum. We’re bringing them back due to the many requests from gallery visitors.

The Bohemian Alps is a region of gently rolling loess hills that sits like an overturned shallow basket on the table of eastern Nebraska between the Platte River to the north and the capital city of Lincoln’s salt flats to the south, David City to the west and Wahoo to the east. A visitor driving the gravel roads will notice the many Czech names on the mailboxes and on the gravestones in the small community cemeteries. Many Bohemian Alps farming families are still on places originally settled by their Czech or Moravian immigrant forbears in the 1870s and 1880s.

The WallSpace-LNK show will feature favorite images from the 2019 exhibition as well as some images not seen previously.

The illustrated companion book with an original essay by photographer Michael Farrell will be available as are prints from the show.

WallSpace-LNK is open Th-Sat, noon to 5pm or by appointment.

On view Th-Sat May 4-27 noon to 5pm

Beginner’s Mind is an installation view into the wide variety of work Michael Farrell created in the three decades of the 1960s through ‘80s. 

K’s Heart Box, 1968

Michael Farrell began producing his signature assembled box constructions while a student in the late 1960s. After becoming a filmmaker, moving to Nebraska in 1972 and working professionally in public television he continued to pursue a very personal, private, and idiosyncratic artmaking practice largely hidden from public view. That changed when he had his first public exhibition in 1991. The next year he won a coveted Nebraska Arts Council’s Visual Artist Fellowship and that launched his career as a serious artist.

Shit Creek Saga, 1972

The variety and complexity of that inward-looking early work offers insight into the development of this artist’s mind. In addition to the familiar assembled objects viewers will see Jungian inspired collage, deeply personal diaristic photography, plans, drawings, and sketches for conceptual art pieces, never seen before objects and the highlight of the show: a one of a kind artist book titled Space Man is Dream Boat.

Lewd & Lustful Man, 1979

Join us for a First Friday celebration with refreshments and music from 5pm on at the gallery at 17^th & Sumner. Music at 7pm by Perseid Winds (see below for details).

Magikist Series, Eros Matrix, 1971

About the 7pm music for our opening reception:

Perseid Winds is a Graduate wind quintet based at the Glenn Korff School of Music, formed in the early Fall of 2022. This group is made up of flutist, Rose Khorsandi, oboist, Joey Schrotberger, clarinetist, Emily Rose, bassoonist, Natale Francel Stone, and horn, Bradley Greathouse. Their newest project was in collaboration with many of the composers of UNL, both new and old. The call for compositions created a program of pieces outside of traditional quintet repertoire, which then begged the idea–“what if we create a concert setting outside of traditionalist means?” The culmination of these  efforts will be heard in the background of WallSpace-lnk’s newest showcase, Perseid Winds looks forward to seeing you there! 

First Strike’s Coup Stick, 1981

featuring photographs by Michael Farrell and poems by Twyla M. Hansen.

We’re extending the exhibition through April due to great audience response, a sold out first edition of the companion book and a lot more work to be shared.

Reception with the artists Friday, April 7, 5-8 pm
with refreshments and acoustic music by Duo Brazil at 5pm

Brief remarks and a poetry reading around 6pm

House Without a Dreamer
 
The farm house a family once inhabited
with its front porch and upstairs dormers
 
where a child, a girl, perhaps, witnessed
the moonrise from her tall bed,
 
fell asleep to the rise and fall of wind
through cottonwood leaves and ferns,
 
snowball bush blooms and common
ditch-lilies that fold up their orange
 
business for the night. She tucks
her turtle-neck under the covers,
 
protected, lonely, dreams of what
the word elsewhere might promise.

 – Twyla M. Hansen

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Companion Book in Second Printing!

A signed and numbered second edition of the companion book will be available for purchase as well as signed image poem/pairs suitable for framing.

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Large scale prints on view!

This month we’ll be featuring museum scale prints of some of the images not previously seen and which will showcase the very high quality inherent in the 8×10 view camera. Don’t miss this chance to see these images at 40″x50″!