Wanderings / Wonderings

A Duo Exhibit by Morgan Mercer & Derrick Burbul 

Artist's Statement by Morgan Mercer

Having grown up hunting for unusual rocks and exploring deep ravines in the woods behind her childhood home, Morgan Mercer is a Twin Cities-based oil painter and storyteller who s.ll has a fascination for finding wonder in unexpected places. She starts each of her paintings by creating a hand cut collage of black and white images, layering up to 40 different cut-outs to create a scene or moment. Then, she prints the collage on transparency paper, projects it onto her canvas and draws it. With each layer of paint, she interprets the imagery from the collage into paint by focusing on different shapes, lines, feelings or areas of negative space until the painting explodes in a mass of color, overlapping brushstrokes and energetic marks. Her work is a catalog of moments and scenes —a midnight dinner party, an underground circus in an abandoned warehouse or a cabinet of curiosi.es that opens to a sea of stars and forest — that encapsulate feelings of wonder, curiosity, adventure and discovery.

Artist's Statement by Derrick Burbul

Wanderings (Pathless)

To wander is not to be lost, and, to wonder is not to be ignorant, but both lead to imagination and hope. All of these works are photo-based, but use a wide range of photographic processes, from historical process like palladium prints to contemporary inkjet prints. I also explore a wide range of photographic theories here: The images are also fragmented in some way: using multiple frames to create a single image, or multiple processes combining multiple images into a singular, or something where the viewer has to work for a sense completion. Images can also be included that break into the third dimension, requiring pedestals. The work is framed eclectically as well, ranging from finely crafted hand-made frames from pallet wood, to contemporary metal frames, to found frames from thrift stores. The frames might be from many sources, but I always keep a high priority on appropriateness of the frame to connect to the piece and to communicate ideas about photography and it's history. Ultimately, with this work I hope to find deeper connections to those fragments of understanding that fill our lives.

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