The Spovangelist

You already missed out on opening night, now don’t miss out on the exhibit!

We generally avoid reposting announcements for community events, but the subject matter of “Overripe Apple Pie” is so entwined with the Spovangelist’s preoccupations, we’d be remiss in not pointing it out.

Enter the back door of Saranac Art Projects Friday night. Greeted with a series of large format charcoal sketches by Spokane artist Scott Kolbo, we were struck by the stark beauty of his figure drawings and landscapes, swirling with mysterious and dark, pestilential clouds.

Then we noticed the perks of turning out on opening night: free popcorn and a root beer keg, artistically offered on a museum pedestal in the middle of the room.

The show dug deep into the kind of gritty, expansive, post-industrial beauty that Spokane calls all its own. White picket fences turned inside out and scrambled in space represent the daggers and arrows of harsh reality that assault us every day. Figures look like sullen scarecrows in their windswept, architecturally unstable environments.

Spoken by Scott:

I believe that despite our best efforts to look important, rational, and dignified, we all make fools of ourselves in the end. Human nature is corrupted by folly, and even our best intentions are subverted by our mixed motivations. My work is an investigation into the ways that this phenomenon manifests itself in individual lives and in society as a whole.

I create a world where reality mixes with exaggeration, absurdity, and the grotesque in an attempt to expose and deflate the distortions that pass for truths in our media-soaked and self-absorbed culture. My ultimate goal is to lead the viewer to recognize the fundamental foolishness of human nature and to make visible the discrepancies that exist between what we pretend to be and what we really are.

The other half of the gallery was occupied by an odd arrangement of quaint little box-style houses, dangling precariously in mid-air. Little pock marks scuff the otherwise shiny surfaces of these structures, like they’ve been visited by a hungry, giant rat. Take home message from Meagan Stirling’s installation? All is NOT well in Pleasantville.

Perfect suburban house before shotgun.

Spoken by Meagan:

My artwork examines some of the complexities and illusions through the antithetical patterns and configurations of American suburbia, exploring to what extent safety is part of the national psyche. Can safety be controlled? And, do the spaces and rules of safety cover over the fear of being unsafe?

This is an excellent question for City Hall as the public is forced to endure the ruse of constantly checking in and out of the front entryway to the building.

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