Exhibition · Threshold Gallery, Highpoint Center for Printmaking

The Sideshow

six copper etchings of the circus in-between

July 19, 2013 · Minneapolis, Minnesota

printmakingintaglioetchingcircussideshowsojourn
Copper etching: a crocodile wearing a crown serves as a dirigible, a bathtub gondola of long-necked birds slung beneath it on lines; a round walking figure tows a chained diving-bell machine across a scrubby field, and a bird in a soldier's cap holds up a lantern. A single balloon floats at the corner.
The crocodile dirigible and its gondola · copper etching, one of the six

Six seventeen inch copper etchings: awkward circus creatures, figures caught in poses half graceful and half grotesque. Sideshow performers. Contortionists of the in-between. Careful technique married to strange subject matter, and the most honest work the maker had done in years.

The plates were etched at Highpoint Center for Printmaking, in the last of five years spent in Minneapolis working the design trade. For most of those years the art stayed in the periphery, close enough to ache, too far to hold; the maker had traded a website build for studio time and kept his heart at the presses without much using them. In the final year the copper and the acid caught up all at once, in long nights at the press in the months before leaving.

The first showing opened at the Threshold Gallery on the nineteenth of July, 2013, hung with a studio mate’s work beside it, and the prints traveled onward from there to print conferences and national exhibitions in the seasons after. The sojourn ended that August, and the plates came back east with everything else.

The circus creatures are the earliest full company of the practice’s abiding subject: the margins of things, the performers who do not quite fit the main tent.

Copper etching: a whale-bodied figure with a grimacing human face lies beached on a field of small sharp teeth; above it a rabbit paces in a hanging birdcage, a beach ball rests on the whale's back, a rat works a gramophone-flower from a wooden cart, and a grasshopper hauls hamburgers on sleds.
The beached one, with the caged hare and the gramophone flower · copper etching, one of the six
Copper etching: a goggled monkey rides a high-wheel bicycle that carries a tub marked A with an elephant standing in it; a bird pilots a finned rocket overhead, an armillary sphere floats on a stalk, and a masked monkey in a top hat drives a machine tricycle.
The procession, with the elephant in the tub · copper etching, one of the six
Copper etching: a melancholy antlered giant on all fours holds a fishbowl with a shrimp inside while a fanged cat-imp in a collar rides its back; beside them stands a riveted machine shaped like a beehive with a wind-up key, a snail holds drumsticks, and a mouse beats a bass drum. One hind foot rests on a circus pedestal.
The antlered one and its rider, the drum kept by the mouse · copper etching, one of the six
Copper etching: a tin-man machine strides across a plain, its chimney smoking, while a grinning cat flies a barrel-bodied biplane on strings tied to a star-marked bull; a clock-faced camper wagon sits behind, and a ruffed clown on a unicycle balances numbered serving cloches.
The tin man, the cat's biplane, the clown with the covered dishes · copper etching, one of the six
Copper etching: a great carousel horse with armored wooden legs on small wheels fills the frame; a pig walks a tightrope above with a whip over its piglets, a bear in top hat and tails leads the horse, a small pig-toy rolls on casters, and a bag-headed figure carries a mirrored staff.
The carousel horse led through · copper etching, one of the six