Derrick Te Paske

During my many years as a university professor of media studies, I was primarily concerned with theoretical principles and digital production methods. In purposeful contrast, my art has always involved wood and other common tangible materials, employs tools and processes which are decidedly low tech, and results in unique and very physical objects.

That doesn’t really surprise me, because ever since I was a boy in rural Iowa, I have enjoyed making things with my hands. By now, I find such work to be ecological, therapeutic, even redemptive. If that sometimes appears to represent “inefficiency in the pursuit of the unnecessary,” it’s a happily embraced perspective and an act of quiet defiance. It is deeply gratifying in ways I can’t easily explain. Some of the pleasure, though, is surely that it makes me feel connected with ancient artists and artisans–-across cultures and throughout the world—who routinely made things which were more carefully crafted and beautiful than they really needed to be. As a thumbnail statement: “My work explores the boundaries of ‘meaning’ and ‘being.’ And I have always been interested in classical forms, the ancient, the so-called primitive, and the strange.”

ARTISTS AT THIS LOCATION: Christie Allan-Piper, Marian Dioguardi, Larry Grob, Sidney Hutter, Will Kirkpatrick, Deborah MacFail, Gene Mackles, Mary Mandarino, Ted Prato, Sharon Schindler, Shannon Slattery, Derrick Te Paske