W. David Powell

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I do not consider myself a collector, but my work does involve a quest for images that involves an accumulation of books. In most cases the books have no particular value as objects in themselves. Indeed, in many cases they are obtained from bins in public dumps, or for very low prices in university library silent auctions and junk stores. At a time when print is increasingly being replaced by digital reproduction, this printed matter becomes even more devalued and less relevant to contemporary culture. My work is a form of research. Unlike pure scientific research with a specific and formalized method and predetermined goal, my work is both a visual and a conceptual quest with a more tangential and open-ended approach. It has a method, but the method involves casting a broad net and gathering a large variety of images from various times, places and disciplines, and assembling them into a visually seamless, unified whole. I am a recycler of images. I have a hungry eye and a curious mind. I feel impelled to search for more and more visual information to reassemble into new configurations, creating new meaning for the viewer. This is not a rational or linear process. I am not searching for formally relevant images to “illustrate” some point or premise. The format I often choose to work in is quite often diagrammatic or organized on a grid. This structure has didactic or authoritative implications, as in a textbook, or encyclopedic explication of knowledge. This is not my goal. The interaction of the disparate objects, the implied narrative of the format, the harmonious arrangement of the objects on the page, the opportunity for creating new meanings, to engender wonder… as in the ultimate expression of the collector’s art, the Wunderkammern, or cabinet of curiosities, these are the ideas that resonate for me. Got curiosity?

Bio

W. David Powell was born in Sowega, a military-industrial part of the “New South” where he spent his youth in a suburbia carved from a pecan grove and surrounded by US Navy Nike Hercules installations, a Stategic Air Command US Air Force Base and the largest Marine Corps Supply Center east of the Mississippi River. From age 10 to 14 he attended the Wally Hill Art School, a school run by a transplanted Yankee beret-wearing, goatee-sporting hipster who had a musical duo featuring him on Hammond B-3 and his wife Kelley on drums. From this cradle of safety he went to the University of Georgia where he received a BFA in Drawing and Painting. After graduating, he lived in England and Ibiza, showing at the Sigi Krauss Gallery in London, in both group exhibitions and a solo show. After returning to the states, he formed Wonder Graphics in Athens, Georgia, and did design work for the recording industry. A subsequent move to Vermont led to the formation of Porcupine Graphix, more design work and continued showing of his art, which became increasingly digitally based after the advent of the first macs in the mid 80’s. After years serving as a Art Director for Computer Games Magazine, Powell returned to school and recieved a MFA inVisual Art from Vermont College of Fine Art, in Montpelier, Vermont. Venues where Powell has shown his work include the Hood Museum in Hanover, New Hampshire, the New York Hall of Science in Queens, New York, the Fleming Museum in Burlington, Vermont. and forthcoming in July 2011, the Fairbanks Museum and Observatory in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. He has also shown at the Carrie Haddad Gallery in Hudson, New York, the Van Brundt Gallery in Beacon, New York and will soon be showing at Central Booking in Brooklyn, New York. This show marks his first with Big Town Gallery. David Powell is now Associate Professor of Art at SUNY Plattsburgh in Plattsburgh, New York and lives in Underhill, Vermont.