McEnroe’s Rage 1
Beacon College assistant professor of art Dustin Boise is a hard-charging soul in his desire to elevate students’ understanding and in his pursuits as a studio artist. Therefore, the one word you’d never associate with him is … “capitulation.”
Yet, that word titled his solo exhibition that enjoyed an 11-week summer run at the Mount Dora Center for the Arts in Florida.
For Boise, it was his first regional exhibition outside of the walls of the Kristin Michelle Mason Art Gallery at Beacon College, where he serves as gallery director, and which displayed his talents in a 2014 solo exhibition, “Bored.”
Bored certainly doesn’t capture the artist who worked in mixed media to create pieces such as the whimsically named “Nomad Sock” that were featured in “Capitulation. And for Boise, the show was an opportunity to exhibit more than just his artistic vision.
It “helps to expose the hard work of the Studio Arts Department to those who may not be aware of our program and gallery,” Boise said, but also “helps to create excitement within the Central Florida arts community and leads to new and returning visitors checking out what is going on in the gallery and studios.”
He reveals more about “Capitulation” in the Q&A below.
Q: What’s the story behind the exhibition?
A: Mount Dora Center for the Arts gallery manager Chelsey Velilla approached me last year to be part of the center’s “Decorativ” exhibition. This particular show focused on craft- (form and function) based works. After reviewing my portfolio, she felt that not all of my work was appropriate for the exhibition. However, she was intrigued by my use of materials and ideas and invited me to have a solo exhibition of my conceptual-based artwork.
Q: What style or movement in art would you say this quotes or channels?
A: Conceptual art. The works are driven by their ideas and manifest through a variety of materials and processes that I believe best represent them.
Q: When did you create the exhibition pieces?
A: It begins through engaging with the world. Ideas spring forward and I look for the right methods and materials, which help to dictate their formal characteristics. A majority of the pieces were created over the past academic year, paired with older works that helped reaffirm the exhibition’s theme.
Q: In what mediums did you work?
A: The artworks utilize a wide range of mediums, painting, assemblage, casting, upholstery, papier-mâché, and found objects. I view the artmaking process like a buffet. Growing up, my grandparents use to take the family to Golden Corral; there was never any fuss among the kids and grandkids about what to eat. If you wanted pizza there was pizza; if fried chicken and asparagus was your flavor, they had it.
Q: What were you trying to communicate with these works?
A: Combining mundane materials with great wit and craft, I explore the intimate relationships of material objects and the imagination. My studio work glorifies banal objects through the interweaving of contemporary ideas and issues with a mischievous and satirical undertone.
Through our active involvement with life, we encounter a great number of hindrances. While some are life changing, I find that oftentimes it is the simplest of tasks that seem wrought with opposing forces. It is in this place of conflict that the works featured in “Capitulation” originated and generated their own creative skirmishes and aftermaths.