Events on January 15, 2025
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Object as Conceptual Workbook: Michael Lorsung and Duane McDiarmid (reception)
10:00am to 4:00pm @
Art and Journalism Building, Ball State University
The Ned and Gloria Griner Gallery
1001 N. McKinley Ave.
January 8-30, 2025Reception: January 15, 4-6 p.m.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Friday: 10 A.M. - 4 P.M. Closed weekends and all Ball State breaks and holidays.
About the Show
A two-person exhibition featuring work by Michael Lorsung, Assistant Professor of Art (Sculpture) at Ball State University, and Duane McDiarmid, Area Chair and Professor of Sculpture & Expanded Practice at Ohio University, Athens, Ohio.
Lorsung works in craft-based media (metalsmithing, glass, ceramics, wood working) to incorporate those methodologies into contemporary forms of digital fabrication, time-based initiatives, installation, and kinetic work. He views the use of new technologies and methods as extensions of existing fields and modes of (art) making rather than expecting those newer processes to supplant tradition and history. Lorsung was previously employed as a Studio Coordinator of Sculpture at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, CO.
McDiarmid constructs sculptures, designs performances, and initiates social intersections in fine art venues, digital communities and within remote landscapes. He has worked collaboratively with communities and individual artists. For example, he created a blanket dispenser for the homeless in New York City; fed the public ice cream from a solar work embellished with high-tech interactive gizmos in remote deserts across the American southwest; and bathed in used motor oil for an audience of animals in a Maryland wetland swamp. His recent projects have involved wearing a towering French-court inspired wig of script describing the pleasures of powers and luxury while traversing mountain passes with a Mr. Coffee pot and an entourage of minions; in London he dressed as a “Gimp Skunk” to discuss American foreign policy and personal failings; and he outfitted an Arabian horse in western saddle gear reconfigured into ‘I Dream of Jeanie’ inspired garb. With the support of the Santa Fe Art Institute, he made custom-designed ritual objects for squatter communities in derelict buildings. McDiarmid’s work has been supported by grant money from the National Endowment for the Arts; the Rockefeller Foundation, NY; and the Joan Mitchell Foundation, NY, as well as numerous academic institutions.
