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BSU Prof’s exhibit at Boise Art Museum shows the real nature
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Kristen Furlong, adjunct art professor
Exhibit: “Creative Nature: Wild and Domestic”
Part of the “Fresh Visions” exhibitions
Boise Art Museum through March 18
Kristen Furlong came to Boise to study painting. What she found was a whole new medium — polyester-plate lithography.
For the past 2 1/2 years, Furlong, an adjunct art professor, has been working with polyester-plate lithographs and incorporating them with her oil paintings – a technique well represented in her show “Creative Nature: Wild and Domestic” at the Boise Art Museum as part of the “Fresh Visions” exhibitions.
This wall installation extends the work of her master’s thesis on nature and how it’s represented. With her thesis, Furlong began researching and commenting on how nature is represented in field guides and at places like natural history museums. “Often these representations are not accurate,” she says. “They’re skewed somehow or kind of strange.”
Furlong explains that while the animals in physical form may be accurate, the presentations are not. For instance, in a natural history museum, you might see a diorama of a father, mother, and baby bear all grouped together. This grouping is more about human values and how humans see family interaction than how bears realistically act. “A bear family just wouldn’t be out like that,” says Furlong.
“I’m not critiquing natural history museums because I don’t like them,” she stresses. It’s just that the exhibits and representations of animals and nature are “so manufactured in every way you see.” In her work, she strives “to make viewers think twice about what they’re seeing.”
Most pieces in her current exhibit are general critiques of those representations, says Furlong, though one piece does refer to a particular issue. The piece (they are all untitled, a source of some confusion) is created on wood panels and contains a combination of black-and-white lithographs and oil painted images of bison. This piece specifically addresses the issue of bison in Yellowstone National Park and the diminishing bison population nationwide. Through her combination of colors and media, Furlong seeks to illustrate how the diminishing bison population is due to human intervention and interaction. “Bison used to live in great numbers, but because of human interaction, they are relegated to a small amount of space,” she explained. “They’re not really wild, even the ones who are wild. They’re managed.” Bison who wander out of the park’s parameters are often shot.
The piece also features a hand enclosed in an orange square and a collage of what appear to be clip-art elements near its center. The meaning of the piece becomes much clearer once hearing Furlong’s explanation, for simply observing the piece hardly leads one to that meaning.
As with her other pieces, the most striking elements are the lithographs. They appear as almost scientific illustrations and their crispness stands in stark contrast to the painted elements.
In another piece, lithographs of wild animals such as zebras and antelopes line one vertical edge of the panel while the opposite corner sports a provocative image of a cluster of bees in a hive surrounding their queen. It is this image that draws the most attention. Atop these images are painted two-dimensional representations of solid gray rats. The images stand in clear juxtaposition to each other, illuminating wild, domestic, and test-subject animals. Unfortunately, the rats verge on distracting, and their repetition is a bit heavy handed.
An intriguing element is the process itself. The thin polyester plates can be run through a computer printer, allowing for output of digital images. Ink is then applied to the plate, sticking to the places containing the printer toner.
Furlong was one of the first two graduates of BSU’s new Master’s of Fine Arts program (she received BFA from the University of Nebraska in Omaha). Her past shows include pieces in the Basement Gallery group shows, and the BSU Women’s Center Women’s History Month exhibits. She received support from the Idaho Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts for this exhibition.
Misty Schymtzik