Exhibition celebrates the use of self-imposed constraints on the creative process and the surprisingly innovative results that can occur.
Playing by the Rules: Artists Creating Under Constraints features the work of 6 national and international artists who have used self-imposed rules in their creative process, be it comics, short stories, paintings, or haiku’s.
The exhibit is in the Elzay Gallery of the Wilson Art Center on the ONU campus.
These artists were members of Matt Madden’s online course, Build Your Own Labyrinth offered through the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the works on view are samples of the results of this course.
Constraints and limitations have played a part in the creative process for artists, writers, designers, and composers throughout history. Constraints are an anecdote to the paralysis created by the innumerable choices and possibilities that come with a blank page, canvas, or screen.
Constraints can provide structure and set boundaries that channel creativity and direct artists away from their routine approaches and thought patterns toward surprisingly innovative results.
The exhibition features the work of author Rudi Dornemann, Maine; painter/poet, John Dierking, Guam; cartoonist and graphic recorder, Lisa Frühbeis, southern Germany; Martha Kuhlman, Professor of Comparative Literature at Bryant University in Rhode Island; Matt Madden, cartoonist, author and teacher, Philadelphia; and Melissa Eddings Mancuso, Associate Professor of Art at Ohio Northern University.
In conjunction with the exhibit, Matt Madden will be on campus Feb. 25-27. He will present a workshop to ONU’s studio art, graphic design and creative writing students on using constraints as a means for overcoming creative paralysis.
Matt Madden is a cartoonist who has also taught in art schools around the world. His best-known book is 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style (Penguin), a comics adaptation of Raymond Queneau's, Exercises in Style, which led to his initiation into Oubapo, The Workshop for Potential Comics, in 2005.
In 2013 he was named Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government. He has also done translations from the French and Spanish, including Aristophane's The Zabîme Sisters (First Second) and Edmond Baudoin’s Piero (New York Review Comics).
He wrote two comics textbooks in collaboration with his wife, Jessica Abel, and the couple were series editors for The Best American Comics from Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt for six years. From 2012 to 2016, he and his family did a four-year residency in Angoulême, France at La Maison des auteurs.
They are currently living in Philadelphia where he is working on a new comic, The Reading Room in between ferrying his kids to and from school. More information can be found at www.mattmadden.com.
Matt will give a public lecture, Tuesday, Feb. 26, at 6 p.m. in room 115 of the Wilson Art Center, Ohio Northern University. A reception for the artist will immediately follow in the Elzay Gallery.
On View
February 8, 2019 – March 1, 2019
Exhibition Credits
The exhibition was made possible by the Cultural Arts & Special Events Committee at Ohio Northern University.
Related Programs
Tuesday, February 26, 2019, 6:00 pm
Gallery Talk with Matt Madden, reception in Elzay Gallery immediately following.
All programs are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.
Gallery hours: 1-4:30 pm daily. For more information contact: Melissa Eddings, (419) 772-2751 or [email protected]
