On August 7 of this summer, I was honored to show three digital prints with the Omaha Print Guild in their final art show.  It was my first art show since high school and it was thrilling.  I’m grateful to Amy Haney for putting everything together, and to Mike Krainak for his glowing review of the show in Shout! Omaha.

I’d never been to an art show before and I’m not sure what I was expecting.  This show was alive and loud!  People everywhere weren’t just breezing through, passively glancing through the art.  They were talking, gesturing, unabashedly pointing at and discussing the prints on the walls.  They’d make a slow, thoughtful lap, then return to pieces they wanted to see more of.  I was doing the same things, excited by the variety and the vividly new ideas people had come up with and committed to paper.  I was amazed to see my work being stared at and talked about.  I’ve never felt that before – that my work meant something to someone else.

I know what kind of emotion went into Waiting and Science, what those mean to me, the feeling I was trying to communicate with those two figures.  But it was an entirely new and moving experience to hear that people were excited and uplifted by Science, and the people who saw themselves in Waiting to the point of seeing old Knox as a woman.  People kept coming back to stare at Waiting, reportedly unsettled by Knox and his posture in that room of his.  It gave a couple people a worried feeling, and an anticipation of wanting to know the rest of the story.  I’m just amazed at that experience, of emotions I put out into the world through art being honestly reciprocated.

I was happy to elucidate with my standard enthusiasm who Mary X is and why she’s in Science.  I slightly more hesitant to gush forth about who Knox Greyfriar is and where he comes from inside me, but I overcame that self-consciousness of being a Harry Potter role-player and just went with honesty.

A friend of mine, James W. took some really insightful photographs not so much of the pieces, but of people engaging them.  It wasn’t out of some ego that I enjoyed seeing people stare into one of my prints, honestly.  I was fascinated that something I created of my own emotion called forth emotion in another person.  It felt like I’d communicated something individual and universal.

Another exciting detail was selling Science.  Someone gave this new artist from Ames a chance to hang on a wall. :)

I’m grateful to Amy Haney for putting everything together, and to Mike Krainak for his glowing review of the show in Shout! Omaha. I’m also very happy that Brad Miller tipped me off and I could share that special day with him during his first solo show.

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