This month BELLWETHER is proud to present the work of sculptor, Marc Swanson.
For the past several years Marc Swanson's sculptures and installations have formed a lexicon of personal iconography involving several central motifs: gay fabulousness, the forest primeval, punk rock and hunter's prey.
Raised in the "Live Free or Die" state Marc is the son of an ex-Marine sharpshooter turned White Mountain deer hunter. His adolescence produced this strange language which combines stag heads, rhinestones, pot leaves, rabbits, snakes, etc... into monuments of desire and loss. The central theme to this, Marc's third solo show, is the exquisite pain of unrequited love.
The show must be entered through a curtain of dream catchers painted on the storefront windows. This web forms a metaphysical barrier from which dreams are prevented from exiting (or entering) the exhibition. Once inside the viewer is confronted by the elegant, erect, rhinestone encrusted, head of a ten point buck who proudly greets all who enter with a sidelong glance.
Behind a wall of satin curtains is a room containing Marc's self-portrait as a Yeti. This life size albino creature, frozen in a dejected slump, emerges from the moonlit darkness with fistfuls of dead rabbits. In Marc's lore the rabbits are lost loves...the loves his abominable beast-self has destroyed. Scattered about the monster's feet are red bejeweled antlers that seem to hint towards a more beautiful and profound love that has left a trail of last year's cast off horns.
Pushing even deeper into the gallery you find a quiet tableaux...the skinless body of a deer sitting before a fireplace on a rug made of its own hide. This self-consciously cliché moment is shocking in its rawness, which is what can be said of Marc's work as a whole.
BELLWETHER is an artist-run space in support of emerging artists.
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