Ben Moore and 'Boom Drawings'

by Travis Ryder

Luther College assistant professor of art Ben Moore is primarily a painter.  His new work at MacRostie Art Center in Grand Rapids departs from that form, with silkscreened images from past parties he has attended intermixed with exceedingly subtle pencil drawings of explosions and dust clouds.  They're called "Boom Drawings", and he says the images portray "calamity, things that are about to go wrong.  That moment right when you know something bad is going to happen."

Double Head

Don't Be Jealous

These works and many others are hanging until Thanksgiving week at the center in downtown Grand Rapids.  I speak with Ben about his new images Thursday morning in the 8 o'clock hour.

Visual art on the radio, 10/7, 8 a.m.

Strom's Mother and Child

by Travis Ryder

It's a particularly visual-art-heavy edition of the arts, culture, and heritage segments brought to you every other Thursday morning.  These images might make the whole experience more rich and rewarding.

  

Jon Strom can make a lot of things from wood: from spoons and bowls to entire homes to amazing fine-art sculpture.  He lives in the northwoods in an off-the-grid log house of his own design.  His sculptures most often depict people and the relationships between them.  He was part of a group exhibition at MacRostie Art Center in Grand Rapids this past June, and we'll hear his comments about his work from the opening reception.

Voss' Reading Chair

Then, Paula Brandel of MacRostie Art Center joins us to talk about the October exhibitions there.  Professional artist Todd Voss has a prodigious display of oil paintings.  Subjects run the gamut from still life studies to exteriors of modest homes, waterfronts, pastoral scenes, and one of a donkey.  I'm taken by the use of light and shadow in the piece shown to the left, Reading Chair.  I also wonder about what's out of the frame - what's out the window, the apparent light source to the right?  Where did the reader go after leaving the book on the seat?  Did the phone ring?

Cowboy Job ponders salve for his skin sores

Reasor self-portrait

Itasca Community College art instructor Mick Reasor spent his most recent sabbatical on a couple of projects, the more Biblical of them being a retelling of the Old Testament book of Job in cowboy verse.  He wrote the charming, rhyming poetry and painted the illustrations with shades-of-grey gouache.  Reasor's son-in-law, Justin Cook, interviews him for us.  We also hear Reasor recite excerpts from the book, which is available for preview and/or purchase here.

The originals of these illustrations, as well as Reasor's other project depicting tractors, are on display in the hallways of Davies Hall at the ICC campus in Grand Rapids.

These segments and more will air at 8:10 a.m. Thursday, October 7 on 91.7 KAXE and streaming live at www.kaxe.org.  Archives of these segments will appear in short order on the Morning Show page.

These segments are made possible with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.