MAY 28 – JUNE 21, 2019
OPENING PARTY: MAY 28
Facebook Event | Photos from Opening Night
Donald VanAuken is an artist and educator based in Augusta, MI. VanAuken works primarily in painting and woodcut prints. He is able to seamlessly combine everyday imagery with historical and even fantasy. Using strong line work and confident color placement, he creates other-worldly atmospheres and moody landscapes that almost appear to vibrate while you view them.
Originally from Michigan, Donald W. VanAuken’s most current work deals with location and one’s place within an environment. Having recently purchased a 1915 farmhouse within the Olivet area, the artist and his wife have begun to explore this concept of “location” and it’s relationship to how and what one creates. Artifacts from the past such as found photographs and previous owners random junk, as well as encounters with native wildlife have spun off into a narrative of this environment. Animals and relics of the past are often used as an allegorical means to describe situations, quandaries and everyday experiences that can describe a place.