All are invited to a free gallery opening reception for the fall semester exhibition!
MAJOR Exhibition Statement
Mark Brosmer ’85 and Ryan Lane ’85 are among the first students to graduate from Wabash with a Major in Art—a major they helped establish through a petition supported by Professor Emeritus Greg Huebner. Over the past forty years, both artists have cultivated distinct approaches to painting. In this two-person exhibition, fittingly titled MAJOR, their work explores the complexity of the everyday, the unseen, and the sublime.
Mark Brosmer is a contemporary realist painter with a surrealist edge. His unique vision, subject matter, and technical prowess with a brush is unmistakable, with a signature style that is always evolving. The LA Times covering his show at the Brand Library said it was “big, bold, and surreal in an orderly way.”
Favoring very common items such as apples, marbles, clouds, and bubble wrap as subject matter, Brosmer turns the ordinary on its head, making them anything but common. Turning his clouds into trompe l’oeil peel off Post-it notes or encasing that apple in a box made of clouds, you know immediately that this man has a great sense of humor and a vivid imagination. He believes it stems from a certain college assignment given by Professor Greg Huebner that required him to sketch an object that was out of place or context to the environment it was resting in. Looking back, he surmises that Huebner and that assignment led him down the surreal path, boosted into overdrive upon one day seeing the artwork of René Magritte in art history class. That moment had a profound impact on his direction as an artist and still influences his work to this day.
Ryan Lane is a professional furnituremaker and painter. He has exhibited his furniture and paintings as a solo artist and in group shows in galleries across the country. His Wabash Art connections run deep, having participated in Alumni shows and Lane has exhibited several times with Professor Emeritus Greg Huebner and his classmate Mark Brosmer. In addition to his painting, he continues to be heavily involved in the woodworking industry working as a representative for Indiana Architectural Plywood, one of the preeminent custom veneer houses in the country.
In this exhibition Brosmer and Lane invite you into a world where reality is not so easily defined. Their paintings challenge us to see what is normally overlooked, to question what is placed before us, and to embrace the playfulness and depth that lie hidden within the simplest of things.
20th Century Indiana Art: A Private Collection of Midwestern Regional Paintings
During the late 19th century and early 20th century, our American art community moved away from European style influences and developed a desire to create its own “American Impressionism.” During that time multiple art colonies sprang up across our country and aided the development and appreciation for this new and unique American art form. These artist groups also provided diversity within the American artists’ spectrum of work as the unique and different cultural aspects of our country’s melting pot of people were expressed independently in the various art colonies and groups. Two Indiana-based groups of artists, the Hoosier Group and the Brown County Art Colony, played an important role in the Midwestern variable of the “American Impressionism.”
The Hoosier Group was composed of T.C. Steele, J. Ottis Adams, William Forsyth, Otto Stark, and Richard Gruelle. These artists mainly received their academic training in Europe. Instead of returning to the East Coast for their careers, these artists returned and adapted Impressionism to fit the scenes and landscapes of their native Indiana. The Hoosier Group dominated Indiana art through the 1920s.
The Brown County Art Colony followed the timeline of the Hoosier Group and heavily influenced Indiana art through the 1950s. This generation of artists were either homegrown or were attracted to the alluring hills and folk of Brown County. The group mainly continued the regional Impressionism of T.C. Steele, who was the first artist to settle in Brown County. These artists, also, played a leading role in starting the Hoosier Salon Art Exhibition which has been a vital mainstay to Indiana art over the past 100 years.
The current exhibition provides the viewer with fine examples of some of the leading artists of these two groups of Indiana artists of the 20th century. These works are generously on loan from the collection of Dan Kraft '85.
Collectors Dan Kraft (Wabash ‘85) and Marci Royalty (Hanover ‘94) have developed a deep appreciation for Indiana historic art which has translated into a collection of paintings focused mainly around historic Brown County art. It started with the painting “The Heart of the Village” by Brown County artist C. Curry Bohm. The piece immediately moved Dan with its energy, passion, light, and joyful recollections of beautiful sunny Fall days. It seemed natural to ultimately focus their collecting energy around Bohm and his Indiana contemporaries in Brown County and the associated Hoosier Group.
Dan graduated from Wabash as a biology major and followed his interest in medicine to develop a career as a sports medicine physician. In addition to collecting art, Dan is a member of the Brown County Art Gallery Foundation Board of Directors. He helped start and lead a grassroots project that created a traveling retrospective exhibition on C. Curry Bohm’s career works and an exhaustive book about Bohm’s career and life. Dan has also helped curate other historic Indiana art exhibitions at the Brown County Art Gallery.
Also check out other Arts events in Crawfordsville, Exhibitions in Crawfordsville, Fine Arts events in Crawfordsville.
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