Artist fills the spaces between
LAURIE OLSON-HORSWILL’S face sags in dismay as her husband, artist Michael Horswill, points to “Archive,” an artwork hanging on their kitchen wall.
The piece with old library file cards, strips of rawhide, slices of bamboo, wood and rugged, rocklike plaster is heading for the Art Spirit Gallery in downtown Coeur d’Alene for a monthlong exhibit. It’s for sale and Laurie knows the chance “Archive” will hang in her home again after October is slim. Michael’s intriguing, three-dimensional wall-hangings are popular.
“You have to make more to replace what we’re losing,” she says to Michael with a playful pout. She’s only half-teasing. “I hate to give all this up.”
Laurie’s loss is the public’s gain.
“He’s trying things never seen,” says Steve Gibbs, who owns Art Spirit and arranged Michael’s exhibit. “I like to show local, quality artists. His work gets a lot of attention and it sells well.”
Michael, an easy-going and lighthearted North Idaho College art instructor, calls his wall-hung sculptures constructions. They begin with a wood foundation and grow. They’re comfortably abstract with recognizable features in unfamiliar environments. For example, an X-ray of an arm glows like a nightlight from a window in a three-dimensional, semicircular structure the size of a mailbox. A type of plaster and nailed-on metal covers the wood frame. Relaxing earth tones of paint cover the plaster.
“I like wood and its inherent properties,” Michael says. “You can adhere things to it, pound things into it, cut it, sand it, disguise it, model it and carve it.”
His show is called “The Space Between,” meaning the moment between thought and movement. That moment is where creativity dwells and people often overlook it. The process of doing art helped Michael fine-tune his senses and benefit from his creative moments.
“There’s that magical quality,” he says, then smiles. “Sometimes it’s successful and sometimes it’s not. You need to be free enough to let things evolve.”
His post-college career began with cartooning and illustrating in Seattle. But Michael’s imagination craved more freedom. When Laurie’s degree pursuit moved them to Spokane, Michael found work freelancing and adjunct teaching at NIC. He needed a graduate degree to teach full-time at that level, so Michael enrolled in the University of Idaho’s master of fine arts program.
His creativity flourished at UI. He experimented with texture, plastering surfaces without smoothing them. He added twine or wads of paper on top of paint. He expanded flat works by building on sides and began combining materials – rawhide, copper, paper, sinew. He found his most interesting materials in thrift stores and salvage yards.
“I started seeing things in ways I never had before,” Michael says. “I became more aware of the environment. It’s that magic I love.”
Images under a microscope and the skeleton fascinated him. He enlarged microscopic images into full-blown wall sculptures and experimented with methods to build works around X-rays.
“People are more willing to engage in the work when they see something they recognize,” Michael says.
He teaches full-time at NIC now.
“I get a lot of students in here and they tell me they really appreciate him as a teacher,” Steve says. “He’s real inspirational.”
Michael is also prolific. In his basement studio in Coeur d’Alene’s Fort Grounds, he’s poured his creativity into dozens of works that beg for closer looks. “Silver Harp” blends tin and leather in a keyboard pattern under a plaster cloud painted in muted colors. Sinew lacing connects the materials, at least visually, and announces Michael’s penchant for the organic.
“Exuberance” suggests an underwater plant or a multi-armed alien with curious skin. Michael sliced carrot-sized bamboo reeds into inch-long segments and stuck them lengthwise into plaster to hold them in place.
“Conversations” is a sculpture of two profiles, nose to nose, on a copper and brass checkerboard background. Below one profile are round wood chips bearing letters. Below the other are square shapes bearing numbers.
“A Space Between” opens Friday with a free public reception, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., at the Art Spirit Gallery, 415 Sherman Ave. Michael will present a slide show and discuss his work at the gallery at 7 p.m. Saturday. For information, call 765-6006.