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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Boland exhibit at Kolva-Sullivan searches for connections in an unsafe world

By Audrey Overstreet Correspondent

Spokane artist Matt Boland believes all you need is love. And a lot of caution. Mixed with a large dose of paranoia.

“Shark Love” is the title piece of Boland’s exhibit of off-kilter ceramic figures and faces on display at the Kolva-Sullivan Gallery in downtown Spokane. The figure is a sculpture of a smiling man, dressed in a tie as though on a date, hugging a hungry-looking shark. Watching this love-starved human, smile fading, trying to cradle a cold-hearted man-eater is more than pathetic. It’s alarming.

“The question throughout the show is: ‘Is this giving me succor, or is it destroying me?’ ” Boland said. “I’ve had my struggles with self-destruction in my life, so it’s kind of a natural thing for me to make a show about.”

Boland’s exhibit runs through Sept. 30 and is being billed as his “re-introduction” to the Spokane arts community. He started his undergraduate degree at Spokane Falls Community College in 2003, later moved to Pullman to pursue a bachelor of fine arts at Washington State, then relocated to Athens where he earned a master’s degree at the University of Georgia. The Lewis and Clark High School graduate is now back in Eastern Washington, living in Tekoa, where he teaches art to high school students. It’s the arts community in Spokane that Boland said has provided him the most support to pursue and share his art.

“Something I’m really teaching my kids is that the idea of the artist alone in the attic studio is a recipe for failure because you need more than just yourself,” Boland said. “It’s hard to make (art) a priority, follow through, put on a performance.”

Jim Kolva, co-owner of the Kolva-Sullivan Gallery, is the one who pushed Boland to share and mount this month’s exhibit. It’s Boland’s fourth show at the gallery.

“I like the gestural work,” Kolva said. “There’s a little rawness to it, and it’s very expressive. I just think he creates some interesting characters.”

Boland’s characters are arresting, with expressions that give the term “fake smile” new meaning. A closer look reveals that the smiles plastered on the figures are beyond forced. Some are actually grimaces, or merely masks covering the characters’ faces. Some masks are even screwed into place, permanently and painfully.

Forced happiness has been a recurring theme in Boland’s provocative sculptures.

“You go to work every day, and people ask, ‘How are you doing?” Boland said. “But no one really wants to know. They just want you to say, ‘Oh, I’m good, how are you?’ ”

The disguises we all hide behind and the depression we don’t discuss fascinate Boland. His figurative ceramic sculptures reveal how our need for love and connection puts us all at risk of failure when we don’t choose wisely. Take his seemingly playful figure of a man sitting cross-legged on the floor, hugging a bunny rabbit. The seemingly benign scene, tellingly called “Love Stew,” is fraught with danger. “Snuggle” could turn into “struggle” at any moment.

“You wonder, is the man in love, or is he hungry?” Boland said. “I’m talking about what people go through, but I’m also seeing it from the side of the rabbit, and he’s being held real tight. That could be love, or that could be dinner.”

In addition to the mask, the bunny-hugging figure is sporting red Converse sneakers, a signature of Boland’s. He exhibits a character clad in the distinctive shoes in nearly every show. When Boland was in junior high school, his father refused to allow him to buy a pair.

“It would associate me with the wrong crowd,” Boland said. “This was in the ’80s when punk rock was kind of big in Spokane and I was really into that.”

Boland’s dark show features the kind of edgy artwork that Kolva and gallery co-owner Pat Sullivan are interested in sharing. “It’s just nice to be able to show people who have some statements to make that may be beyond just the platitudes,” Kolva said.

Kolva said Boland fits into his philosophy of “letting artists express whatever they want.” Shows at the Kolva-Sullivan have included “SEXT” in which 10 people created comments on sexuality and ended the show by stripping down to their underwear to read their lines out loud. Another exhibit called “24” consisted of 20 people spending 24 hours straight creating their art in the gallery. Another artist painted two dozen portraits of homeless and street people at the Kolva-Sullivan and will gather those works to exhibit them for another show there next year.

Like most exhibits the gallery puts on, Boland’s thought-provoking body of work “is not a nice watercolor society show,” Kolva said. “Some people might think it is disturbing, but the majority of people always enjoy it.”

Boland’s figures, searching for love and connection in an unsafe world, aren’t completely hopeless. According to the text he wrote for his show: “Love must first find a hold in something unbreakable, something that, perhaps, will love us back.”