Three new prints for winter moods. Free ground shipping within continental US!
New Prints Added to Store!
Three new archival pigment prints just added. Free ground shipping within continental US!
NEW: Sale of Works on Paper!
I need to make room in my studio for new work! Original works on paper are on sale at 40%-50% off in my brand new store. Many sizes and price points, and both framed and unframed works are available!
Prices are for local pickup in Minneapolis/St Paul, MN — shipping is available for some works at cost, so please inquire! Thanks for looking!
Drawings Featured in The Point Magazine
I am honored to have two drawings included to accompany Phil Klay’s thoughtful essay, “False Witnesses: On writing about war,” in the Spring 2022 issue of The Point Magazine. You can read the essay here.
Exhibition Opening July 24 at Soo Visual Arts Center
Installing Storm Surge (2020) at Soo Visual Arts Center.
Intervals, my solo exhibition at Soo Visual Arts Center, opens Saturday, July 24, with a reception from 6-9pm.
The work in this show bridges the span between pre- and late-pandemic life, and explores this uncertain time through three different subjects: water, the sky, and everyday domestic objects.
I would love to see you there!
Soo Visual Arts Center
2909 Bryant Ave S #101
Minneapolis, MN 55408
Masks are required inside the gallery.
Untitled (Zinnias), 2021. Watercolor and gouache on paper.
Solo Exhibition: "Intervals" at Soo Visual Arts Center
Untitled (Days), 2021. Watercolor on paper. Ongoing installation of daily paintings of the sky.
INTERVALS
Opening Reception: Saturday July 24th, from 6-9PM
Exhibition Runs: July 24 – September 5, 2021
The title Intervals is derived from all of its various meanings: an intervening time or space; a pause in activity; a space between two things; a gap. Megan Vossler’s work in Intervals bridges the span between pre- and late-pandemic life, and explores this uncertain time through three different subjects: water, the sky, and everyday domestic objects.
For several years, Vossler has been investigating water as both a literal and metaphorical force: specifically, the swells and waves of oceans and large lakes. Invisible forces surround you in these massive bodies of water—from methodical tidal contractions to the most unpredictable, deadly undertow. In the wall-sized watercolor installation Storm Surge, the separate panels focus the perspective in and out like a camera lens, and the horizon line shifts in each sheet of paper. When joined together, there is a disorienting sense of space, recalling the feeling of bobbing in a rough sea, the surrounding water lurching, shifting and recombining. Other images of turbulent water, placed throughout the exhibition, expand the metaphorical context for this loss of solid footing.
Interspersed with these works are others that respond more immediately to the strangeness of pandemic life. Since the months of lockdown, Vossler has been making drawings and watercolors of objects and small spaces in her immediate surroundings. Time spent rendering ordinary, familiar objects and minor spaces became a way to cope with the blur of pandemic time. As an antidote to the continual upending of routines, Vossler began in January to make a small painting of the sky each morning around sunrise. This became a grounding ritual, and a way to punctuate the fog of days in the depths of pandemic winter. She has continued to make a painting of the sky every day, even as the mornings have stretched earlier and the light has grown brighter again.
Soo Visual Arts Center
2909 Bryant Avenue South, Suite 101
Minneapolis, MN 55408
(612) 871-2263
Gallery Hours:
Wed-Fri 1pm-6pm
Sat-Sun 11am-5pm
Online Exhibition at The Royal
Untitled, 2018. Graphite on paper, 9 x 12 inches.
Twilight Procession
April 9th – May 2nd, 2021
Curated by Amelia Biewald, Barry Hazard, Katie Hector, Yizhe Huang, and Jason Clay Lewis
The Royal @ RSOAA is pleased to present Twilight Procession, a group exhibition featuring artists Fay Ku, Seren Morey, Nicolas Touron, Jae Won Jung, Ewelina Kołakowska, Megan Vossler, Sandra Lapage, Joy Bush, Melissa Capasso, Rebecca Major, and Yelitza Galan.
You find yourself astray in a dark wood where the straight road is now lost from sight; a rustling in the bushes, a clearing in the distance. What and who will you encounter in this uncharted territory? Twilight Procession, a physical and online group exhibition, muses on the uncanny encounters which exist beyond the pale with a focus on work that is phenomenological, miraculous, and logic-defying. Pushing the limits of their chosen mediums each artist explores new realms through image-making, story-telling, and material mastery. Auto-biographical, bodily, mystical, and visceral the works featured in Twilight Procession, mine the human psyche and blur the line between waking life and the subconscious.
https://rsoaa.com/twilight-procession/
Royal Society of American Art
400 S. 2nd St., Brooklyn, NY 11211
Online Exhibition at Cultural Center of Cape Cod
Two of my artworks were selected for the juried online exhibition “The Magic of Water,” at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. It’s a lovely show: the artwork is thoughtfully juxtaposed online, and is best viewed on a larger screen. Explore the exhibition here.
Essay Published on Inside Higher Ed
My opinion essay, entitled “Semester on the High Seas: A Reimagining of Spring,” was published on Inside Higher Ed on January 5, 2021. Had I been able to choose the accompanying artwork, I would have chosen this one:
Ludolph Backhuysen, Fishing Vessels Offshore in a Heavy Sea, 1684. Oil on canvas.
Virtual Exhibition at Soo Visual Arts Center
Storm Surge, installation view. 2020. Approximately 8x15 feet. Watercolor, gouache and ink on paper.
Storm Surge is a reflection on the power of water as both a literal and metaphorical force. Growing up on the California coast, I often observed the ocean during storms, when the water was at its most unsettled. I would watch the surface contort and erupt as I looked for glimpses of what was underneath. Invisible forces surround you in the ocean—from methodical tidal contractions to the most unpredictable, deadly undertow. I’m intrigued by the way the artist Roni Horn has described water as both a noun and a verb: as both an identity in itself, and yet also as something best known in relation to the things with which it interacts. Water connects, transports, carries, submerges and drowns. It cleans, dilutes, and erodes. And as the seas warm and expand, their unpredictability increases. While my work draws heavily upon my own personal history of living near the ocean, it is also informed by the cycle of flooding that impacts Minnesota rivers, which has been increasing in severity and length over the last ten years.
In this installation, the individual images focus the perspective in and out like a camera lens, and the horizon line shifts in each sheet of paper. When joined together, there is a disorienting sense of space, recalling the feeling of bobbing in a rough sea, the surrounding water lurching, shifting and recombining. This can reflect both a literal, physical experience, and also a more broad sense of upheaval and disorientation. Unable to find solid footing, all we can do at this moment is fall into the turmoil and try to swim.
The physical exhibition of Storm Surge at Soo Visual Arts Center has been postponed, but the virtual exhibition can be viewed here.
Megan Vossler is a fiscal year 2019 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature; and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Student Work Featured at Macalester College
Under The Waves by Macalester student Mia Friedman '22
I’m pleased to share this recent article featuring students from my Fall 2019 Drawing 2 course: Narrative and Sequential Images. Click to see the four outstanding comics that are featured.
Comic Vocabulary
The assignment: Come up with an original story that follows a classic narrative arc over four to six pages. Your character expresses a desire or wish, encounters some obstacles along the way, and then reaches a point of resolution. The time progression is linear. Your character doesn’t have to be human. Most important, you are responsible for writing the words of the story and—using black ink or no more than three colors—drawing the images, with at least one panel per page. In other words: create a comic book.
“There’s a whole vocabulary of comics that is based around visual design principles,” says art professor Megan Vossler. “Things like the amount of negative space that you have around something that you’re showing, for example, or just the placement and number of panels that you put on a page or how you lay them out.” Creating comics was one part of Vossler’s fall semester Drawing II class, “Narrative and Sequential Images,” which focused on visual storytelling.
“A really good comic will take you on a journey of different timeframes, in addition to just going through that narrative,” says Vossler. To create the comics, students did a lot of what’s called “thumb nailing”—using Post It notes to lay out different key moments and spacing them out on different pages to feel out the timing. For developing narratives, Vossler’s colleague Matt Burgess, a professor in the English Department, came to class and talked about narrative, arc structure, and conflict-based plots, and walked students through an exercise.
For comics, the trick is finding the right balance between words and images. “Everything about drawing is problem solving—from the materials, to the paper, to the right type of ink,” says Vossler. “But you also have to think: how am I going to fit this entire scene into one panel? What can I leave out? What’s really unnecessary to the story? What’s really essential that I have to keep in no matter what?”
All of the students took really different approaches, she says. While some pieces are autobiographical, others are cerebral, and even fantastical. “I was really impressed with the stories the students came up with,” she continues. “They really went for it and created these narratives that have a lot of depth and complexity.”
Art Professor Megan Vossler instructs a student during a drawing class.
The Beginning of Everything : An Exhibition of Drawings
Rubble, 2006, will be included in the exhibition The Beginning of Everything at the Katherine E. Nash gallery.
The Beginning of Everything : An Exhibition of Drawings
Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota
Regis Center for Art
January 21 – March 28, 2020
Public Reception and Program : January 25, 6 – 10pm
When I see a white piece of paper, I feel I’ve got to draw. And drawing, for me, is the beginning of everything. - Ellsworth Kelly
Drawing is, in many ways, the most versatile of all artistic mediums. It can serve as the beginning of an idea, the beginning of a more ambitious project, or the beginning of a completed artwork unto itself. Because drawing is so elemental, so direct, such a primary means of expression, it is cherished for its immediate and intimate access to the possibilities of creative expression.
This group exhibition will survey a broad range of approaches to drawing, and include works from a wide variety of geographies, time periods, and esthetic perspectives. It will include works by Edgar Arcenaux, Leslie Barlow, Circle of Federico Barocci, Hannelore Baron, Harriet Bart, Robert Bechtle, Kim Beck, Hazel Belvo, Sadie Benning, Melissa Cooke Benson, Frank Big Bear, Judith Bernstein, Rachel Breen, James Boyd Brent, Andrea Carlson, Rebecca Clark, Robert Cottingham, J.M. Culver, Stephanie DeArmond, Jim Denomie, Mary Esch, Jacob El Hanani, David Feinberg, Sheila Ghidini, Michela Griffo, Carmen Herrera, Jim Hittinger, Larassa Kabel, Shana Kaplow, Imi Knoebel, Anne Lindberg, Kristen Lowe, Joyce Lyon, Kevin Martin, Henri Matisse, Ana Mendieta, Lynda Monick-Isenberg, Clarence Morgan, Stuart Nielsen, Lamar Peterson, Sonja Peterson, Raymond Pettibon, Zilia Sánchez, Kristen Sanders, Megan Scheffer, John Schuerman, Lauren Seiden, Amy Sillman, Joe Sinness, Laura Stack, Nancy Spero, Priya Thoreson, Tonja Torgerson, Jonathan Thunder, Jack Tworkov, Amanda Valdez, Aaron van Dyke, Megan Vossler, Russ White, Dyani White Hawk, Cosmo Whyte, Francis Yellow, Jack Youngerman, Mathew Zefeldt, and others to be announced.
The exhibition is curated by Howard Oransky, Director, and Teréz Iacovino, Assistant Curator of the Katherine E. Nash Gallery.
Studio Featured on Yaddo Annual Report Cover
I was honored to have my photograph of the Helen Frankenthaler Studio featured on the cover of Yaddo’s 2018 Annual Report. My work in progress, “Surge,” is seen through the windows. More information about Yaddo’s residency here.
Work with Students Highlighted at Macalester
My summer research with students was highlighted in an article on the home page of Macalester College. Read the whole article here!
At Macalester, professors don’t just teach—nearly all are also actively contributing to their fields through original research, scholarship, and other work, just like they would be at a larger research university. Collaborating side-by-side with their undergraduate students (and in some cases, even alumni!), they’re contributing to our knowledge in fields ranging from biology to foreign languages. We recently caught up with a few to learn more.
Illustrating History
When Britt Abel, associate professor of German and Russian studies, embarked on a project to create a new, open-access German language textbook online, Megan Vossler offered to contribute her expertise as an assistant professor of art and art history. Read more
Highlights Foundation
I spent a glorious four days at the Highlights Foundation Illustration Intensive workshop in the beautiful Pocono Mountains, learning new techniques for picture book illustration and having portfolio reviews. Highly recommend! More info here.
Residency at Yaddo
Photo by Wes Haynes, from yaddo.org
For the month of March, I will be living and working at the historic artists' colony of Yaddo. From their mission statement: "Yaddo is a retreat for artists located on a 400-acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment." Website here
Artists as Change-Makers in Community
Panel Conversation with Sharon Louden, Mara Duvra, Tia-Simone Gardner, and Megan Vossler
Thursday, February 8, 2018, 7pm
Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center, Macalester College
Free and open to the public.
More information here
The Artist as Culture Producer: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life is a collection of essays by 40 visual artists. Edited by artist, educator, and advocate for artists Sharon Louden, the book is a platform for conversation that describes how artists extend their practices outside of their studios. All of the contributors have made impactful, artistic contributions as change agents in their communities. Their first-hand stories show the general public how contemporary artists of the 21st century use their out-of-the-box thinking not only as part of the creative economy, but more importantly, to enhance the well-being of others. Although there is a misconception that artists are invisible and hidden, the truth is that they work to produce measurable and innovative outcomes at the front lines of education, the non-profit sector, corporate environments and in our day-to-day lives. By sharing concrete examples, Sharon addresses how the myth of the singular "Artist Hero" is no longer relevant in today's society.
For our conversation at Macalester College, Sharon Louden will moderate a lively conversation between artists Tia-Simone Gardner, Mara Duvra and Macalester drawing professor Megan Vossler, talking about what it means to sustain a creative life today. Who are we as contemporary artists, and what do we want and need in order to thrive? The audience will be invited to reflect on these questions, and to participate in this wide-ranging conversation. The artists will not only field questions, but also make connections with those who attend. A book-signing will follow the conversation, with books available for purchase. We hope you'll join us for this special event!
Encyclopedia Project, Vol. III (L-Z)
I'm thrilled to be a part of this beautiful book!
ENCYCLOPEDIA PROJECT
VOLUME 3 | L - Z
Editors: Tisa Bryant, Miranda Mellis
Publisher: Publication Studio Hudson (Troy, NY)
PubDate: November, 2017
ISBN: 97897734421
Binding: SOFTBOUND
Pages: 369
Book Release: November 17, 2017 @ The Poetry Project, NYC
Encyclopedia Volume 3 L-Z is the third and final volume of the Encyclopedia Project with over 200 entries submitted by 100 contributors, on subjects like LEGITIMACY, MEANINGS, OCCUPATION, and REENACTMENT. The final volume features writing from new and seasoned contributors, including LETTER, by Samuel Delany; OIL by Julianna Spahr; POST-COLONIAL, by Yma Johnson; STRANGER, by A. Igoni Barrett; SUBMISSIVE, by Fred Moten; UNCANNY VALLEY, by Sun Yung Shin; WAR, by Ernest Hardy; and WHITENESS, by Naima Lowe.
The Art portfolio includes works by Rikki Ducornet, Courtney Johnson, and Wura-Natasha Ogunji.
Borders: MCAD Alumni Juried Exhibition at Public Functionary
August 18–August 20
Opening Reception: Friday, August 18, 7:00 p.m.–1:00 a.m.
Public Functionary
1400 12th Ave NE, Mpls MN 55413
MCAD Alumni Board presents:
Borders: A 2017 juried exhibition of work by MCAD alumni
A border may be metaphorical, symbolic and definitional. A border may also be literal, material and tangible. Intimately, borders are a constant in the practice and process of an artist. Globally, borders impact us as citizens, visitors, travelers and transient humans. Current events lend a moment in which the contemplation of “borders” both symbolic and literal can bring various perspectives and ideas together on common ground. The MCAD alumni board invited the far-reaching community of MCAD alumni to submit work in response to this broad but poignant theme. The final selections will be presented together at the opening reception on August 18 at Public Functionary.
Hend Al-Mansour, MFA ’02
Sarah Evenson ’16
Tom Gormally ’77
Gale Jorgenson ’89
Colin Kopp ’06
Greta Kotz ’16
Nick Kovatch, MFA ’13
Josh Meillier ’13
Shelly Mosman ’95
Shiraz Mukarram, MFA ’17
Emmett Ramstad, MFA ’07
Sandy Resig ’60
Lindsay Splichal ’12
Sara Suppan ’15
Nicole Thomas ’15
Megan Vossler, MFA ’02
Mary Welke ’76
Ekphrastic 2.0: A collaborative storytelling experiment
OPENING SATURDAY JULY 29:
a mixed-media drawing and storytelling extravaganza!
EKPHRASTIC 2.0
at Soo Visual Arts Center
Ekphrastic (2016) finished collaboration. Photo © 2016 Rik Sferra.
July 19–August 27, 2017
OPENING RECEPTION SATURDAY JULY 29, 6-9PM
I'm excited to announce that, for the second year in a row, I will facilitate a collaborative drawing and poetry project at SooVAC!
This year's iteration—EKPHRASTIC 2.0— features over three dozen artists, who will visit the gallery over five weeks to add to a massive, exquisite corpse-style drawing. Each week will feature a new, open-ended prompt for the artists to consider (or ignore) —all variations on the idea of DYSTOPIA.
After the drawing is completed, five (or more) writers will visit the gallery to create written responses and interpretations. (Ekphrasis=the interpretation of one art form through another art form.) The results will then be compiled into a publication, featuring the drawings and the writings together, which will be available in the fall!
You're invited to come and see the drawing in progress anytime between July 19 and August 27. And be sure to stop back in the fall, for a book release and reading! (Stay tuned for the date and time.)
If you are in the Twin Cities this summer, I hope you will stop by to view this exciting collaborative work in progress. If you can't make it, you can still watch the narrative unfold on Instagram by following me or SooVAC!
Soo Visual Arts Center
2909 Bryant Avenue South, Suite 101, Minneapolis 55408
Gallery Hours
Wed 11am-5pm, Thu-Fri 11am-7pm, Sat-Sun 11am-4pm.
This project is funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
EKPHRASTIC 2.0 ARTISTS
Kelly Abeln
Jaime Anderson
Kai Arnone
Alyssa Baguss
Taylor Baldry
Erik Benson
Michael Carina
Melissa Cooke
Jennifer Davis
Jim Denomie
Andy DuCett
Julia Eshaghpour
Christi Furnas
Ruthann Godollei
Paige Guggemos
Christopher Harrison
Sherry Muyuan He
Sophia Heymans
Sophia Hill
Larassa Kabel
Kathranne Knight
Ann E. Lawton
David Lefkowitz
Erik Lervold
Niky Motekallem
Terrence Payne
Alex M. Petersen
Rachel Poli
Jenny Schmid
Caitlin Skaalrud
Alanna Stapleton
Andy Sturdevant
Tessa Sutton
Carolyn Swiszcz
Jade Townsend
Haruna Ujo
Megan Vossler
Chris Willcox
EKPHRASTIC 2.0 WRITERS
Jim Cihlar
Michael Kleber-Diggs
Anna George Meek
William Reichard
Elizabeth Tannen