Driving American Myths
Red Cloud Opera House
413 N WEBSTER ST
Red Cloud, NE 68970
United States
University of Nebraska-Kearney professor of art foundations, photography, and design Derrick Burbul closes out our summer gallery roster with selections from his Myths of the West series.
Holding both English and photography degrees, Burbul is uniquely situated to explore the visual rhetoric surrounding the myths of the western United States. He was educated at the University of Wisconsin-Superior and earned an MFA in studio arts with an emphasis on photography from the University of Idaho.
Burbul's images are created from tintypes, which were relatively inexpensive and most often in use during and following the Civil War, the era that corresponds with the settlement of the West and the creation of the mythic framework of our Western states. He also experiments with other alternative processes that can mimic daguerrotypes and distress color film to create abstract effects.
The public is invited to an artist reception for this exhibit in the Red Cloud Opera House Gallery at 5:00 p.m. on Friday, September 5. The reception is free to attend.
Programming at the Red Cloud Opera House is made possible through a basic support grant from the Nebraska Arts Council and Nebraska Cultural Endowment.
About the Artist
Derrick Burbul’s creative work explores the environment and our relationship to it. He has research interests in photography, foundation design, visual culture, and environmental sustainability. His creative interests have explored a wide range of photographic processes from pinhole photography, to tintypes, digital manipulation with Photoshop, and combining historical and contemporary photographic processes. The results have lead to inclusion in many exhibitions, including:
- The National: Best Contemporary Photography 2014, at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art
- American Landscapes: Scenes from the Americas, at the Maryland Federation of Art
- Folktales and Legends: An Exhibition Without Borders at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygen, Wisconsin
- LaGrange National XXV Biennial, at the Lamar Dodd Art Center in LaGrange, Georgia.
I photograph, using tintypes, images that recreate that grand American illusion, the “West”: wind-up toy buffalo, faux covered wagons, plastic cowboys and “Indians," toy guns, etc. These subjects of masquerade are then exposed as tintypes, photographs of which it is very difficult to deny their authenticity, since they are done in camera with no darkroom or image editing software with which to alter the images. The tintype plates, showing recycled motifs of the West, bear the irregularities of the human and chemical presence necessary in this analog process. Dust, anomalies in the hand-coated emulsion, deviations in color as the chemicals weaken as plate after plate extract the necessary elements to reveal its interaction with light, all scar and haunt these unique images of kitschy symbols of the West.