MARCH2013

MIKE LYON: POST-DIGITAL PRINTS AND DRAWINGS
“Maggie, 2012”
85.5″ x 44″
white & black ink on pigment tinted watercolor paper

Based in Kansas City, artist Mike Lyon is in equal parts a serious and dedicated student of both Japanese art and culture and 21st Century computer technology. Through his indigo woodblock prints and large scale pen and ink drawings, he pays homage to the past while being firmly rooted in the present. The tools Lyon employs to create his supremely beautiful images are reductive digital photography, skillful use of computers, inventions of his own design, and paper made by Iwana Ichibei, who has been accorded the status of Living National Treasure of paper making. Lyon refines and merges Eastern and Western artistic traditions in innovative and mindful ways to create a body of work that is provocative and powerful and seems entirely new.

Mike Lyon has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally including Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, New York; Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Aspen, CO; Abercrombie Gallery, Lake Charles, LA; Burns Atrium Gallery, Union College, Schenectady, NY; The Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, CT; Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS; Florida Printmakers Society, Tampa, FL; Gallery of the Quebec Printmakers Council, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Tokyo, Japan; Gallery EZOSHI, Kyoto Japan; Yad LeBanim Gallery, Tiberias, Israel; Horncastle College, Lincolnshire, UK and others. His work is in the permenant collections of the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; The Marianna Kistler Beah Museum of Art, Manhattan, KS.

CALEB TAYLOR: NEAR/FAR
Crimson Divide
oil and acrylic on canvas
20″ x 16″

“I have found that sensorial phenomena are created through the reduction of visual information. This discovery forces me to question the significance of what cannot be seen, but remains present. Near/Far continues to investigate the concealment of images in an attempt to define spatial experiences for the viewer and myself.” Caleb Taylor

Caleb Taylor’s painting reflect the reach and communication between body and mind as he physically and conceptually translates and transforms his experience into the abstract visual language of painting. Taylor is a questioning, analytical observer and investigator guided by intuition and a formal aesthetic. As an artist, he alternately reveals and conceals images and information, mining the territory between what is known and unknown, distilling sensation and information to visual essence and energy of gesture.

Caleb Taylor is a 2010 Charlotte Street Foundation Fellow and recipient of the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant. Taylor has completed residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Urban Culture Project, and Ucross Foundation. Additional awards include a 2009 ArtsKC Inspiration Grant and a ThinkTank Emerging Educator Fellowship. His paintings and drawings have been published in New American Painting and exhibited at numerous venues including the Nerman MoCA, Grand Arts (KC), CUE Art Foundation (NY), and Brenda Taylor Gallery (NY). Taylor’s work is collected nationally and is included in the collections of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art and University of Kansas Hospital. He received his MFA in painting from Montana State University-Bozeman (2008) and his BFA from Northwest Missouri State University (2004).

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