A Conspiracy of Accidents: Group show curated by Timothy van Laar
Featuring artists: Barbara Kendrick, Ryan Standfest, Michelle Wasson, and Timothy van Laar
Opening Reception at Popps Packing, on November 10th from 7-10pm and running through January 5, 2019. The gallery will be open to the public Saturdays from 12-5pm or by appointment at poppspacking@gmail.com.
Popps Packing
12138 St. Aubin St.
Hamtramck, MI 48212
Timothy van Laar (Detroit, MI) is a Detroit artist and writer who has exhibited his artwork nationally and internationally. He has co-authored three books and has written numerous reviews and essays. Fulbright, Yaddo, the Howard Foundation, Illinois Art Council, the Karl Hofer Gesellschaft, and the Ucross Foundation are some of the organizations that have supported his creative activities. The Detroit Institute of Arts, The Illinois State Museum, and Herman Miller are among the collections that include his artwork. For 32 years, he taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and more recently he served as Professor and Chair of Fine Arts at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
Ryan Standfest (Detroit, MI) was born in Detroit, Michigan and earned an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Iowa.
Maintaining a studio practice in Detroit, he is also the editor and publisher of Rotland Press, presenting satirical publications of a culturally relevant nature. Rotland Press has published work by Sue Coe, David Lynch, David Shrigley and Art Spiegelman, among many others. The press was recognized by Art In America in 2016 as publishing a project that was one of the top five “significant artworks” to emerge from Detroit in that year. His publications and prints are in numerous collections, including The Art Institute of Chicago Ryerson & Burnham Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France Prints and Photographs Department, and the Harvard University Library. Standfest has exhibited work nationally and abroad, most recently in the Mike Kelly Mobile Homestead at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the International Print Center of New York, the Association Les Abattoirs in Riom, France and Eastern Michigan University. In 2018, the Wayne State University Art Department Gallery presented a solo exhibition of his work. Standfest was recently the subject of an essay by Timothy van Laar in Essay’d #110, available at essayd.org.
As an arts writer, Standfest has penned articles for the Detroit arts and culture journal Infinite Mile, contributed an essay on the artist Jim Chatelain for the book Cass Corridor: Connecting Times, edited by Simone DeSousa, and authored the chapter “A Useful Bile: André Breton’s Humour Noir in 1960s America” in the forthcoming book Radical Dreams: Surrealism and Counterculture, edited by Elliott H. King and Abigail Susik, from Penn State University Press.
Standfest is an instructor at The College for Creative Studies in Detroit, where he teaches courses in Printmaking and The Graphic Novel.
Michelle Wasson (Chicago, IL) is an internationally exhibiting artist based in Chicago. Her work has recently been included in exhibitions at Aspect/Ratio and Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago and Tiger Strikes Asteroid Los Angeles. She received her MFA from Washington University in 2001, and has served as faculty at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago and The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She currently co-directs Tiger Strikes Asteroid Chicago.
Barbara F. Kendrick (Omaha, NE), Professor Emerita, School of Art and Design, University of Illinois, received her B.F.A. at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and her M.F.A. from The Ohio State University. Kendrick has exhibited her work in France, England and Greece as well as throughout the United States. She has received fellowships from the Millay Colony, the MacDowell Colony, the Henry Luce Foundation and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Other residencies include Yaddo, Jentel, Ragdale, Bemis, the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Cergy-Pontoise, France, Fundacio Artigas, Gallifa, Spain and the Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, Ireland. She has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council, Shirley Holden Helberg, the Mid-America Arts Alliance and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.