Timothy Ely at the MAC

Timothy Ely’s exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Culture, Timothy C. Ely; Line of sight, is a collection of beautiful handcrafted manuscripts, which are the art objects that Ely creates. Each book is full of detail, there are diagrams, maps, pictures, found objects, and Ely’s own made up language filling each book. Ely draws inspiration from biology, chemistry, astronomy, ancient Egypt, alchemy, science fiction and many other things to create one of a kind books. Each book seems to be reminiscing of sacred texts from hundreds of years ago, and at the same time they look like the are from the distant future. Ely says, “My books are atlases of arcane territories and theoretical futures.”
While I would highly advise going to this exhibit there were a number of things that bothered me about the concepts within the art. From what I gathered by going to the museum, and reading the wall texts and the provided literature I got the impression that each book has a theme that it focuses on. However, without being able to flip through the books, or have pictures of each of the pages, or additional texts on each of the individual books the viewer is unable to see how this done within the books or what the themes of any of the books were.

Matt Boland at the Kolva Sullivan Gallery

This evening I attended Matt Boland's art exhibit at the Kolva Sullivan Gallery. Matt was raised here in Spokane and has resided here most of his life. He attended Spokane Falls Community College for a short while and also attended college in Pullman, Washington. After college Matt was a little unsure of what his life had in store. He came to the conclusion that he wanted to pursue his dreams of becoming an artist. "I just wanted to get out of Spokane," he said. So he moved to Georgia to work with another artist. After some time spent there he realized that Spokane is where he wanted to be.

Matt is an extremely gifted artist and sculptor and displays this through his unique artwork. The exhibit appropriately labeled Scream and Shine was of ceramics and mixed media. Clay was the base for his pieces, while some were accented by screws, bolts, paint, and some other forms of mixed media. His biggest inspiration and influence was from comics, cartoons, and horror movies. Matt realized, specifically at the young age of 12, that he was fascinated by horror movies and wanted to create what was happening in them.

One piece I felt a strong connection with was called, "Too Carry My Own Weight" (as seen in the picture to the right). It really caught my eye with the intense struggle and emotion shown in the piece. Matt explained it as depicting the stress and pressures of finishing school and entering the "real world." This is something many people can connect with. One can literally see the emotions that often times may come with the transition to a new chapter in life.

Matt explained to me that much of his work rooted from arguments and/or conflicts within himself. I really think his work can relate to anyone. All of us face struggles and our own battles through life and he has expressed many of his own through his sculptures. It was an extremely interesting exhibit in the way that each individual piece carried its own story and such a strong identity. Do you think that artwork is more relatable and enjoyable to the audience when it is on a more personal level such as Matt Boland's work?