STUDIO C SERIES
Type C Photographs, pencil: 20”x24”: 1984-85
November 14 – December 10, 1986
Influenced by the stillness and formality of European still life painting, I began collecting kitsch and low art items such as vases, plastic flowers, cheap dime store objects, and figurines, from Goodwill stores and off the streets of New York where I was living at the time. I was interested in resurrecting these objects and re-working them into classical still life motifs, which were then activated with marks, symbols, and writing, in order to balance stillness with expression. As typical of most of my practice, the mixing of symbols and signs looms large within this work, literally, and figuratively, as in the relation between kitsch objects and high art, still life and expression. By virtue of the visual interaction between elements, tensions between order and chaos, permanence and change, and the intuitive alongside the counterforce of human rationality, become larger issues within the work.
The images were purposefully brimming with color (bordering on garish, like some of the objects), and formally composed – each bending in its own direction resulting from the particular combination of different elements employed. The process of assembly was very similar to previous series (Flow Chart and Pattern Seekers), in that intuition and stream of consciousness were integral to their creation. Marking and writing on the images after printing allowed for a further point of layering and alteration, combining or contrasting with the syntax of the photographic image.
Dan Powell received his MFA degree from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana in 1980. Powell taught in the Art Department at the University of Northern Iowa from 1980-1987 before beginning his current position teaching photography at the University of Oregon in 1988 (retired 2015). Selected sites of Powell’s work in group exhibitions include the Royal College of Art, London; the Isetan Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan; Chicago Art Institute, Chicago, IL; Center for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Light Gallery, New York, NY; A. Robert Samuel Gallery, New York, NY; San Francisco Camerawork, S.F., CA; The Friends of Photography, Carmel, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Albright Knox Museum, Buffalo, NY; La Maison Europeane de la Photographie, Paris, France; Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, OR; C.E.P.A. Gallery, Syracuse, NY; The Silver Image Gallery, Seattle, WA; and Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, NY. Selected one-person exhibitions include Thom Barry Fine Arts, Minneapolis, MN; PPS Gallery, Hamburg, Germany; The Silver Image Gallery, Seattle, WA; Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR; Moore College of Art, Philadelphia, PA; G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle, WA; Ledel Gallery, New York, NY; Project Arts Center, Cambridge, MA; James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA; and Condeso/Lawler Gallery, New York, NY. Powell has received numerous grants and fellowships including University of Oregon research awards, Polaroid Corporation purchase awards, a Maine Photographic Workshops grant, and in 1981 he received an Emerging Artists Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. His work appears in collections at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA; Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; Lightwork, Syracuse, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; and Art Institute of Chicago. Powell’s work has been reviewed in prestigious publications including Art Week, New Art Examiner, Art News, Afterimage, and the New York Times.
A comprehensive archive of Powell’s work is being collected by Special Collections, Knight Library at The University of Oregon. In 2012 Powell was given the Honored Educator Award by the Northwest region of Society for Photographic Education.