|
|
Powelson Biography
I received my M.F.A. from Michigan State University and my B.F.A. from the University of Nebraska. Although I majored in painting and printmaking and worked with traditional materials after graduate school, my travels to Egypt and Jordan in 1992 changed both my life and my style of making art. Inspired by the color, light, and texture in the Middle East I collected papers and detritus, and when I got home they quickly found their way into my paintings. Now my studio process is like “working in the bottom of a waste paper basket,” and my travels in China and most recently in India have given me a never ending flow of ideas, images, and new materials.
I have just retired from the faculty of Lower Columbia College in Longview, Washington where I have introduced over 4,000 students to the history of art and studio art. During my tenure at the college I chaired the art department, created Connecting Waters, a biennial regional art exhibition, and developed courses integrating art with drama, English and the sciences.
These collaborations with colleagues lead to the publication of Deluxe Motel with my illustrations for the poems of Joseph Green, and performances on the stage in such varied productions as a mask ensemble, “Our Town,” and a comic olio in a melodrama. Currently I am “hoofin” it with a tap dancing group called Tapestry. My idea of heaven is working all day in the studio and performing all night on the stage.
Ten years ago I moved to the country, and again my life and art changed. Without the interference of city light I became more aware of the seasonal changes of light, and while on sabbatical in 2000 I completed “Dawn and Dusk: A Year’s Sketchbook of Drawings “. That was followed by “A Book of Days,” another year-long drawing project integrating text and the view out my window, and a series of mixed media collages based on the landscape paintings of Pieter Bruegel. In 2005 I was in Spain at an artist’s residency at The Fundacion Valpariso to study the light and the Arab influences in Andalucia.
I am currently at work creating the images for a broadside of the poem “Talc” by Jane Hirshfield that will be printed by The Peasandcues Press. Along with gallery artists Gordon Nealy and Jennifer Kemp I will be showing at Gallery 110 in April 2009. The title of the show is “Under the Skin”. I am also a member of Blackfish Gallery in Portland where I had a two person show titled “Suspended Chambers” in August.
|