Stout visions
Paul Stout has an offbeat way of looking at nature.
His sculpture and installation pieces are a quirky intersection of the natural world, technology and culture.
The Salt Lake City-based artist will be in Spokane next week as the second speaker in the 2005-06 Visiting Artist Lecture Series, “Work and Order/Nature and Home.”
The series, featuring three cutting-edge contemporary artists, is sponsored by the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, Eastern Washington University and Spokane Falls Community College, with additional support from the Sahlin Foundation.
“All three artists are distinctly different,” said EWU art professor Lanny DeVuono. “Yet, they are linked by their very creative and innovative ways of looking at the world around us – whether it’s a relationship to work, nature or home.”
Last November, the first speaker in the series, Madrid-born artist Santiago Sierra, discussed his unsettling performance pieces around labor and the inequities of social class, privilege and economic justice.
In May, nationally known artist Andrea Zittel will talk about how her installations examine actual living spaces and how people live in communities.
“Stout artificially reorders nature in his work,” said DeVuono, “so we felt he was perfect for this series.”
During a telephone conversation from his University of Utah office, the assistant art professor mused about his work.
“I’ve always enjoyed injecting humor in my pieces,” said Stout, who supported himself during college by working odd jobs such as blacksmithing, welding, furniture and plastic fabricating, and acting.
His Master of Fine Arts project, “Contrivance to Hunt Deer at Great Distances,” featured a series of guided missiles to hunt deer. It used electronics, remote control devices, physics, plastics, surveillance technology, foam deer targets, video editing and projection.
Stout said he viewed the project as an examination of the confluence of American hunting culture, technology and wonder.
His artwork frequently involves using traditional display conventions from science and museology, plus taxidermy, cabinetmaking and projected anthropomorphism.
It has been shown at such places as the Tucson Museum of Art; Bentley Gallery in Scottsdale, Ariz.; California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco; Rare Gallery in New York City; and the Salt Lake Art Center.
Tom O’Day, art instructor and gallery director at Spokane Falls Community College, first saw Stout’s work last year at the Suyama Space, Seattle’s premier installation gallery.
On view were two multi-piece projects: “Twenty Blades of Grass” and “The New American Landscape.” Both involved Stout’s unique repackaging of the natural order.
“Each piece was a beautiful little environment that speaks to the way society deals with nature these days,” said O’Day. “We seem to turn nature into amusement parks – miniature Disneylands.”
The “American Landscape” installation included 10 glass vitrines, each containing individual faux landscapes with different insects that had been dissected and reassembled with tiny motors attached. Each motor replicated an insect’s movements in nature.
“With each wing flapping,” explained Stout, “a counter at the bottom of the object clicks over a number. It’s sort of a quantification of an insignificant act.”
Stout spends months and even years perfecting his sculptures.
“If the object has enough visual appeal and interest,” he said, “it might seduce the viewer into spending more time with it – time enough for them to see the other parts I want them to see and obtain other information that they couldn’t get with a quick look.”