Russell Ferguson
Russell Ferguson’s massive installations explore the conflicted sites where nature and technology meet: a meandering river gorge carved over eons of time, spanned by a trestle bridge engineered for efficiency; a rugged mountainside scarred by abandoned mining tipples and tailings. By placing aesthetically mediated versions of these damaged places in the gallery, Ferguson asks us to consider the price of progress.
At the same time, he creates shrinelike homages to the meeting of spirit and matter.
Raised in Kansas City, Ferguson studied at the Kansas City Art Institute (where his father, Ken, chaired the ceramics department) before earning his MFA at Yale. His deep feeling for nature led him to the Findhorn community in Scotland and to an eight-year apprenticeship with architect Paolo Soleri at Arcosanti in Arizona. His involvement with Zen studies in Port Townsend, Washington, and on a Navajo reservation brought further insights. Best known as a draftsman, printmaker, and sculptor, Ferguson also has designed gardens, interiors, stage sets, costumes, and a teahouse. He is director of the foundations program at the Kansas City Art Institute and has been honored twice for his inspired teaching by election to Who’s Who Among American Teachers.
Ferguson’s installations typically consist of a three-dimensional structure set before a charcoal, ink, and/or watercolor drawing. Some drawings stretch out horizontally, like oversized Chinese landscape paintings, while others function as murals, covering an entire wall. All surge with the power of gesture and chiaroscuro. Swirling and rolling, coalescing and dispersing, they record the flow of pure energy—that of the artist and that of nature. The sculptural components are constructed of wood and resemble architectural models of bridges and mechanisms. Together, the drawn and constructed elements speak to the complementary nature of life, to the conflict and resolutions of intuition and reason.
Ferguson explores related themes in his often-colorful, smaller scale drawings and prints. Here, the sublimity of the large installations is replaced by wit, irony, and, at times, an irreverent mirth. Yet beneath the humor lies a discomfiting reminder. Human beings invented technology and now must do its bidding. It has become the master and we its servants, as the earth bears witness.
—Jan Schall
