BHSU assistant professor’s art show features

In his most recent art exhibit, Black Hills State University assistant professor Dustin Hinson combines the unique topographies of the Earth’s surface with random lines, shapes and contours to create abstract pieces that provide some sense of reality.

The exhibit titled “Imaginary Topographies” runs through Feb. 15 at the Apex art gallery on the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology campus. A reception with Hinson is scheduled for Friday, Feb. 8 from 5-7 p.m. with an artist talk at 6 p.m.

The more than 30-piece mixed-media exhibit includes drawing, painting, sculpture, digital illustration, and motion graphics.

Each piece depicts an overhead view of the landscape including natural formations like islands, continents, rivers, and oceans, yet with an abstract twist, Hinson said.

“A few places in the artwork I used actual images such as the North Carolina coast, river deltas from the Ganges and the Mississippi River, but the majority are hand drawn illustrations from scratch,” he said. “They are a mesh between a bit of North Carolina, Ganges River, and some made up shapes that resemble topography.”

Hinson said he has done a lot of different things with his art throughout the years, but he always likes to include abstraction. While his current exhibit is abstract, it is reminiscent of something that the viewers will recognize, he said.

“It is abstraction; I am making up shapes, but the way they look calls to mind something that does exist,” Hinson said.

“I’ve always been attracted to maps based on their purely aesthetic qualities,” Hinson said in his artist’s statement. “They have a way of bringing a sense of order to the twisting and craggy edges of continents and islands. Rendering landmasses and bodies of water as simplified, drawn images produce something that is representative of a real space and at the same time an abstraction.”

While he usually switches subjects of his art quite frequently, Hinson said he really enjoyed working with topographies and may use them again as the subject of a future exhibit.

He also wants to explore a different way of presenting art to the public. “Digital is nice, even when it is motion graphics, but I really would like to see if I can push something into actual interaction – the ability for the person to change the artwork as they are viewing it.”

He retired as The Star’s chief photographer in July 2000 at the age of 65, ending 42 years in the newspaper industry, according to an article by Basil Penny, dated July 30, 2000, in The Star. His awards — which numbered in the hundreds and included recognitions from the Associated Press, Alabama Press Association and Press Photographers Association — gave testament to his skill with the camera, his genuine interest in people, and his knack for putting his subjects at ease.

But he had another passion. He liked taking up the paintbrush to tell a story, a part of his life that has kept a low profile until now. His subjects, primarily animals and flowers, reflect memories from the farms he knew as a young boy, according to Karen Elkins, his daughter. His TULIP series and PIGS are important examples of the light-hearted approach he took to his work.

Unlike most of the photojournalist’s black-and-white prints, Elkins’ oils and watercolors radiate almost every hue in the rainbow, with repetitions and many interpretations of the same subject. Exhibit viewers will see about 20 of his folk art pieces in Noble Gallery inside Nunnally’s custom framing on Noble Street. These include a few self-portraits and, in my view, a definite quality of contentment.

Elkins must have kept busy after retirement. His interests included family, bass fishing, painting and completing his 2005 book “Picture Taker,” a collection of his best photos of people in places such as Calhoun, Clay and Randolph counties. The book can be found at Karen Elkins’ art gallery in Quintard Mall.

Brogi defines her silver jewelry, on display in Noble Gallery’s loft, as “wearable art.” The materials used in these pieces are sterling, pure silver, bronze or copper, and the gems are semiprecious or handmade glass beads from other artists, Brogi explains in her artist’s statement.

“My style came from two very different influences,” she adds. “First, I spent a decade in Italy as home base, haunting the museums in Europe. I was fascinated by antique jewelry ravaged by time. Next, I spent two decades in Alaska on a homestead overlooking two rivers, which met at a glacier. The natural erosion of the landscape and the time-destroyed jewelry of Europe combined to shape the creation of my silver.”

Other highlights included another Madonna work, Botticelli's "Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist," which sold for $10,442,500, well over Christie's' $6 million estimate.

Known as "the Rockefeller Madonna" owing to its five decades in the collection of John D Rockefeller, the work, along with the Fra Bartolommeo Madonna, was sold at Christie's Renaissance sale, devoted to European works from 1300 to 1600.

Both works set auction records for the artists, and Hall said that Christie's was so pleased with the $42.6 million total that it would repeat the special sale again in 2014.

Il Gaetano's "Portrait of Jacopo," fetched $7,586,500, nearly four times its estimate and also an artist's record. At Christie's Old Master drawings auction, Claude Gellee's "A wooded landscape" soared to more than 10 times its estimate, selling for a record $6.13 million.

One casualty for the auction house was "Portrait of a Young Man with a Book," an early 16th-century painting by Italian artist Agnolo Bronzino touted as one of the most important Renaissance portraits remaining in private hands, which carried an estimate of as much as $18 million but went unsold.