Mike Calway-Fagen

Artist Statement

My Dad is an iconoclast and unknowingly instilled in me an affinity for defiance. Norm’s stories of Black Panthers, free dental clinics, giant snapping turtles, and war protests galvanized my pursuit for hope.

The sense of urgency that the sixties brought has been marginalized and trivialized; my work acts to resuscitate this sense of activism. Images such as John Carlos and Tommie Smith atop the podium at the 1968 Olympics proved to be an important cultural statement and boon to the civil rights movement. This action and others like it are a significant foundation for my artistic process and are in direct opposition to our nation’s culture of complacency. I make objects and public interventions to encourage awareness.

I’ve lit the underside of bridges with sunlight reflected off borrowed mirrors, used passing cars’ headlights projected thru cutout cardboard to project a moon on my girlfriend’s dark wall, and built a stoop on wheels to push around town and get to know people better. But my approach oscillates, and recently I have been creating objects. Objects to further inundate an already crowded world of stuff. Objects that seem so blissfully separated from reality; critiquing complacency and aestheticising catastrophe.

My work incorporates disparate media with different approaches on the coming, current, and past apocalypse; human’s inability to escape anthropocentrism. The projects offer alternatives to disaster, critique our creation of disaster, and soft-heartedly accept our fate.

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I was here but now I’m gone

The project titles are in order of the images as you travel through the space:

Went to leave
digital photograph taken from bridge of chalk drawing mounted on poplar 50" x 4" x 30"

The projection of hindsight or the ideas I remind myself to think about #2
drywall ((text= ALMOST NO ONE MAKES IT OUT)), wood, steel 12" x 4" x 86"

The projection of hindsight or the ideas I remind myself to think about #1
hand tooled leather (text= ALMOST NO ONE MAKES IT OUT), steel, cast plaster, resin, mud, paint, clay 87" x 14" x 75"

The progression of regression
taxidermied german shepherd, antique wolf pelt 73" x 49" x 42"

From bad to worst
different stick fragments, glue, shooter marbles, frame, postcards 40" x 25" x 40"

I’ve never been so happy. I’ve never been so sad. I’ve never been so angry
old belts, cast resin snapping turtle head, wood 30" x 60" x 14"

We will never really know
framed digital print, snapping turtle shells, fiberglass 38" x 19" x 62"

I have never been so happy. I have never been so sad. I have never been so angry.

old belts, cast resin snapping turtle head, wood 30" x 60" x 14" 2010

Endless Column

old tires, ceramic tile, grout, adhesive 28" x 75" x 28" 2010

Empire of Dirt

mud, hair, straw, clay, wood, casters 8' x 8' x 2' 2010