I am happy to announce I am a 2026 recipient of an Individual Artist Award from the Central Minnesota Arts Board. Congratulations to the other seven awardees! This award will help me make improvements to my home studio and fund the production of new artworks.

Studio views of one of many new collages from the last few weeks (collage seems to be the best term for this, but it sure doesn’t look like what I picture as a collage). The working title of the collection of works is “Unfixed Machine.” I documented all the collages, 15 in total, and quickly returned them to their light-proof container since continued exposure to light will alter their appearance.

In the first image, “Meditation Shop,” the same retail shop window in Alnwick, England has been captured four years apart, printed locally in MN by Walmart Photo, and affixed to expired, fogged Kodak gelatin silver paper I acquired from the darkroom of a deceased, longtime hobbyist photographer in Saint Cloud. Time could be “the” perennial subject of photography no matter the subject depicted in an image, and I’ve long struggled with how to communicate/remind us of this without plainly stating it. This statement obviously helps, but how to hint at it otherwise? Four years of time exists between the two machine prints while the gelatin silver paper is decades older and will continue to absorb light and change forever, more or less. This collage will not look like this after today. The machine prints will stay relatively the same, but their surroundings, by comparison, will undergo dramatic change. I really love working with fogged gelatin silver paper; it’s both alive and dead. Alive because it’s organic and light sensitive and dead because it can’t be used for its intended purpose in the darkroom. Overall dimension is 16” x 20”.

The following images are two pictures of the same oak log photographed from opposite angles and collaged on 14” x 11” paper.

Lastly, a collage of a rogue maple tree growing through my fence whose leaves are turning. Overall dimension is 14” x 11”.

My solo exhibition, Work Life Balance, opens Friday, November 22 in the Denler Gallery at the University of Northwestern-St. Paul with a reception from 5:00-8:00pm. Work Life Balance presents recent photographs and sculpture that study and imagine a range of subjects from deeply personal narratives to familiar architectural elements. Central to the exhibition is the theme of mortality and its complex relationship to animate and inanimate objects. Many thanks to Joe Smith for inviting me and helping organize this show. The exhibition is up until December 20, 2024. The gallery is open Monday-Friday, 9:00am-5:00pm and is located on the second level of the Totino Fine Arts Center on the campus of the University of Northwestern-St. Paul. 3003 North Snelling Ave, St. Paul, MN 55113.

Exhibition postcard in a plant; Welding for Work and Leisure, 2024, archival pigment print, 14 x 11 in; studio view of Ramp/Slide, 2024, stair stringers, lumber, drywall, kettlebells, 38 x 38 x 48 in.

Thinking about touch, gesture, and mark-making in relationship to growth and transitions. The “X” is a to-scale reproduction of my brother’s “signature” from his emergency room intake form on the day of his departure in 2018. I erased everything except his final mark. Looks a lot like the gestural language of my office plant touching the window.

flowering rhizome perennial, city water, humid heat wave, Canadian wildfire smoke, sun, notes

3D printer failures, archival pigment prints, acrylic picture stand, plexiglass.

A local rental center has chairs to fit the perceived quality of your event.

A behind-the-scenes view of my DIY set up for filming books. I’m using this quarantine time to finally shoot some of my books. Blending low-tech and high-tech to make it happen.

Souvenirs (2006) is currently on view at the Tucson Museum of Art in the exhibition Travelogue: Grand Destinations and Personal Journeys. I collected dust bunnies from three sites along the south rim of the Grand Canyon and made cyanotype photograms of the clumps which look a lot like clouds in the sky. This piece spiraled out from a larger project titled Brief Notes on Existence. I hadn’t seen it in over a decade before this month - it’s holding up so well!

A passage from Godfre Leung’s essay in AA4 is featured on The Third Rail.

3.5 years in the making - AA4 launches in late April!

Centered around an experimental artist publication, AA4 is an art project that utilizes a chance encounter with the sound of a typewriter to produce new music. Artists Peter Happel Christian and Phillip Andrew Lewis, along with curator and critic, Godfre Leung, will launch the publication with a reading and present live musical performances at Spectrum Business Systems, a typewriter repair shop located at 957 Front Ave. in St. Paul, MN on Saturday, April 27 from 3:00-5:00pm. 

AA4, designed by Elana Schlenker, includes an experimental text by Godfre Leung, a 12” vinyl record of music by eight musicians, a drawing by Lenka Clayton, and sheet music of the original score. The launch event will feature an introduction to the project by Peter Happel Christian and Phillip Andrew Lewis, a reading by Godfre Leung, performances by Minnesota-based artists Michael Masaru Flora and Jonathan Kaiser with Zosha Warpeha, and a small exhibition of typewriter models owned by Ansel Adams. A special performance by carrillonist, Tiffany Ng, whose music is included on the record, will occur at House of Hope Presbyterian Church at 797 Summit Ave. in St. Paul, MN on Sunday, April 28, beginning at 11:15am. Interpretations by Flora, Kaiser, and Ng are all included in the AA4 record. Additional contributors on the record include Chris Duncan, Barbara Held, Steve Roden, Greg Pond & Cesar Léal.

The soul of AA4 is a found audio recording of a letter typed by Ansel Adams, the contents of which are unknown. Working with a sheet music transcription of the typewriter sounds as an original musical score, Happel Christian and Lewis, who have collaborated on art projects since 2007, and Leung commissioned artists and musicians to execute interpretations of the score to create new sounds works. Included with each copy of AA4 is sheet music of the original typewriter sound which can be performed on any instrument by any person. The project embodies the spirit of Fluxus and proposes that chance is a primary element in the making of art. AA4 is the fourth volume in what will be an eleven volume set of artist publications by Happel Christian and Lewis. The multidisciplinary project was produced with generous support from the Ansel Adams Fellowship at the Center for Creative Photography, a Visual Arts Fund from Midway Contemporary Arts and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Jerome Foundation, The Loft Literary Center, The University of the South, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, The Third Rail, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.

PRE-ORDER AA4 right here. Orders will ship June 2019. A limited number of advance copies will be available on April 27.

Full documentation of the exhibition in the Cyrus Running Gallery at Concordia College, Moorhead, MN, Oct 9 - Nov 1, 2018. Titles and details coming soonish. Give me a shout out if you want details on something specific!